Keywords
environmental efficiency
European Union
greenhouse gas emissions
DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)
How to Cite
Abstract
The objective of this study is to evaluate the technical and environmental efficiency of agriculture in the member states of the European Union (EU). The research employed the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method – a standard BCC model to measure technical efficiency and its modification, which takes into account undesirable outputs and makes it possible to perform an assessment of environmental efficiency in the sample countries. This study has demonstrated that accounting for undesirable outputs, such as greenhouse gas emissions, did not affect the consistency between the country rankings based on the environmental efficiency score and the technical efficiency score in countries where the latter was high. The relative emission level in all these countries was either low or decreased considerably between 2013 and 2022. On the other hand, in countries with high emissions per agricultural output, a widening gap between environmental and technical efficiency has often been observed. The findings of this study justify changes in agricultural production based on sustainable intensification and the choice of the right direction of investment in agriculture.
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