Economic Development and Pesticide Use in EU Agriculture: A Nonlinear Panel Data Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach

Eleni Zafeiriou (), Christos Karelakis, Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, Konstantinos Galanopoulos and Dimitra Gkika
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Eleni Zafeiriou: Department of Agricultural Development, School of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, 68200 Orestiada, Greece
Christos Karelakis: Department of Agricultural Development, School of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, 68200 Orestiada, Greece
Konstantinos Galanopoulos: Department of Agricultural Development, School of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, 68200 Orestiada, Greece
Dimitra Gkika: Department of Agricultural Development, School of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, Democritus University of Thrace, 68200 Orestiada, Greece

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-22

Abstract: Within the regime established by the Directive on Sustainable Use of Pesticides (SUDP); the present work explores the relationship between pesticides’ agricultural use per hectare of cropland and the GDP per capita of the rural population for twenty-five EU countries to unveil the efficiency of the current EU strategy. With the econometric tool of panel nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) cointegration technique; we try to capture potential asymmetries in the agricultural use of pesticides concerning positive and negative variations in agricultural income. The findings validate the existence of a long-run relationship that supports an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC); i.e., an inverted U-shaped relationship between the variables; since increasing agricultural income is related to reductions in the use of pesticides after the turning point. Even though this result is not validated in the short run; our findings confirm the existence of a steady-state situation with asymmetric responses to pesticides. In terms of policy implications; more measures need to be taken; along with the education of farmers; aiming to enhance their consciousness towards environmental issues and; in consequence; for them to prefer environmentally friendly plant protection methods over chemical ones.

Keywords: environmental and ecological economics; agricultural policy; climate change; greenhouse; econometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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