Using a sample of French crop farms during the 1999-2006 period, we test whether less technically efficient farmers are more likely to engage in organic farming in order to benefit from conversion subsidies. Despite some limitations in our data, we find no evidence of such selection effect. On...

Agriculture’s impact on climate change is unambiguous although its role is multifaceted as it is a source of greenhouse gases but also a sink. It’s feasibility to mitigate climate change has raised interest, but thorough studies about the net benefits of the mitigation practices are needed....

In order to measure agriculture sustainability, the efficient use of inputs becomes a crucial issue. In this perspective, the analysts concentrate their attention on the total factor productivity index (TFP). In this view, Lynam and Herdt (1989) proposed the TFP as a suitable assessment of the...

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of agricultural products, but the intensive agriculture contributes in a remarkable manner to environmental problems. Since environmental protection has recently become a popular issue in China, the government attaches great importance to the...

Nitrogen is an important input to agricultural production but also detrimentally affects the environmental quality of air, soil and water. Identifying the determinants of nitrate pollution and in turn defining sensible performance indicators to design, enforce and monitor regulatory policies is...

In this paper, an ordered probit model is used to assess the factors that affect the probability of livestock farmers having plans to adopt manure separation technology in the future. A survey, based on a postal and computerized questionnaire of representative dairy and pig farms in the...

Agriculture is the main user of the world’s water resources. Due to increasing concern on water quality and quantity, there is a growing interest to use the scarce water resources in the most efficient way to feed the growing world population. By employing a meta-analysis, this paper shows...

In modern agriculture, pesticides feature so prominently in growers’ arsenal to reduce crop damage caused by various pests and diseases. But their indiscriminate use can harm human health and the environment and, eventually, impact agricultural productivity negatively. In an era of an...

The Health Check (HC) of the European Common Agricultural Policy in 2003 sped up the process of policy reforms toward decoupled payments in order to urge agricultural production to respond to market signals. However, since decoupled payments could generate “coupled” effects on production, it...

Recently the olive sector has had important changes in Andalusia due to both the enlargement and the intensification of farming. The expansion of the olive grove in Andalusia is causing sustainability problems, not only from the socio-economic dimension (profit reduction) but environmental...