Eco-Efficiency of Agricultural Landscapes--Insights from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Stefan Seifert, Saskia Wolff and Silke Hüttel

No 344236, GEWISOLA 63rd Annual Conference, Goettingen, Germany, September 20-22, 2023 from GEWISOLA

Abstract: We analyze ecological improvement potentials of agricultural landscapes in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Using an eco-efficiency approach, we model agricultural landscapes at a 20km² hexagonal grid. Ecological output is captured by indicators based on agricultural land cover data from the Integrated Administration and Control System. We derive measures for landscape configuration and composition including a Shannon crop diversity index, edge density, grassland shares, ecological focus areas, and landscape elements. We approximate economic output potential using local standard farmland values. Ecological improvement potentials are measured against a non-convex frontier estimated with the non-parametric, robust order-m estimator. We find overall high eco-efficiency of the agricultural landscapes; yet for the given economic output potential, landscapes could improve in the ecological direction. We detect spatially concentrated improvement potentials for single ecological indicators. Our results underline that eco-efficiency requires coordination at the landscape scale where directional improvement potentials can help designing locally adapted strategies.

Keywords: Agribusiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13
Date: 2023-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/344236/files/114_Seifert.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:gewi23:344236

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.344236

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GEWISOLA 63rd Annual Conference, Goettingen, Germany, September 20-22, 2023 from GEWISOLA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).