Soil resource, at the core of competitiveness and sustainability issues in agriculture: an economic approach

Alice Issanchou

No 230002, Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2)

Abstract: Agriculture is facing an expected increase in food production demand, caused by an increased global population of 9 billion people by the middle of this century. At national scale, competitiveness and economic growth issues are at stake. To insure this increase in production, there are two solutions: extend the proportion of agricultural lands at the expense of natural ecosystems; and increase agricultural productivity. Through a review of agronomic and economic articles, we show the importance of considering soil quality in the productivity and sustainability of farms. However, farming practices preserving soil quality are not widely adopted, particularly in France. An economic analysis of these issues provide an understanding of farmers' decision making process, and indicate what the optimal strategies can be to cope with these challenges. We propose an optimal control model that illustrates the links between farming practices and soil quality when soil quality is considered as an endogenous production factor. The interest and originality of this article is to associate different disciplines to investigate the role of soil quality in the sustainability and profitability of farms.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; Environmental Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/230002/files/wp16-01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:inrasl:230002

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.230002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().