Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level

This deliverable investigates the socio-economic effects of ecological approaches to farming through implementing two participatory approaches, namely Delphi exercise and Q-method, at the level of a case study area (CSA). The focus is on how people and other productive assets are employed and remunerated by ecological approaches to agriculture, particularly those aspects that can influence employment, and drive the prosperity and vitality of local communities and some rural businesses. It is based on the collaborative research on Task 4.2 ‘Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level’ of the LIFT project between UNIKENT (United Kingdom-UK) (Task Leader), BOKU (Austria), INRAE (France), VetAgro Sup (France), DEMETER (Greece), MTA KRTK (Hungary), UNIBO (Italy), IRWiR PAN (Poland), IAE-AR (Romania), SLU (Sweden), SRUC (UK). Beginning with the Delphi exercise, this deliverable presents qualitative information extracted from stakeholders in the following four steps. First, the researchers build a presentation of differences between ecological and conventional farming approaches in each CSA. Second, stakeholders elaborate on how they understand ecological farming approaches to exist in each CSA. Third, stakeholders develop a scenario of adoption of ecological approaches to farming depending on two factors: pattern (ecological farms forming clusters or randomly spread within the territory) and rate of adoption 10 years in the future. After establishing this scenario across two rounds, the stakeholders explore the socio-economic effects of their adoption scenario. The Q-methodology then presents a Q-set of statements that the Delphi has developed and, through factor analysis,studies the key stakeholder perspectives of the socio-economic effects of the perceived adoption of ecological practices in 10 years in the future. Four key results can be derived from the Delphi exercise and the Q-methodology. First, a higher adoption of ecological farming approaches, especially so at a 50% adoption rate, is mostly thought by stakeholders in the Delphi Exercise to lead to an increase in skill level and quality of life in on-farm employment. This is as a result of an increased diversity of farming enterprises on farms using ecological farming approaches, the interest generated from this, the knowledge of natural processes and biology required, engagement with nature and change in machinery that is coming into the industry. Strongly related to this need for skills is a predicted increase in the number of advisers and civil servants to deal with more complicated farms and incentives as well as monitoring of ecological effects on farm. An increase in required skill level is repeated across all Q-studies. Second, especially where farms are clustered together, Delphi Exercise respondents predict an increase in the trade of inputs such as manure and compost replacing synthetic fertiliser, as well as more sharing of capital and labour. Q-methodology highlights that these clusters may support a stronger social movement, more consumers buying local food and increase collaboration between farmers. Supply chains are expected to become shorter as farmers sell more directly and there are fewer intermediaries upstream of the farming sector. As farmers collaborate more with each other on environmental objectives, trading inputs and sharing best practices, farmer relationships should improve in rural communities. Third, Delphi exercise finds that contracting, machinery purchasers, and machinery traders and dealers could increase, decrease or display no change – the anticipated effects are mixed. Stakeholders are in no doubt that machinery use will change and therefore new skills will need to be learnt, but the wider effect on machinery purchase is uncertain. However, stakeholders conclude that a greater specialisation in machinery will occur leading to changes in farm management as well as the suppliers of this machinery. Q-methodology highlights that ecological practices will not mean the end of machinery and a lot more labour – often machinery will be useful in weeding and reducing physical labour as technology has significantly improved and skills are improving too in order to use these technologies. Fourth, Delphi respondents argued that although rural populations might be little affected by ecological farming, a shift in people moving from urban to rural settlements, and thereby a higher rural population density, seeking a more attractive rural environment, might contribute to higher local consumer demand. The Q-methodology highlights that where there is high adoption, rural areas are expected to become more attractive, as landscapes will have a much greater variety of crops instead of fields of monocrops. This variety of crops may include agroforestry (farmers interested in ecological approaches to farming may also be interested in agroforestry as a way of boosting their yields and protecting crops and livestock from the elements) as well as intercropping

On the estimation of damage reducing functions

The aim of the paper is to analyze the use of pesticides in multicrops farms. To this end, we propose a framework to estimate damage reducing functions based on an extension of the Lichtenberg-Zilberman specification to a vector output. The estimation provides useful insights for farmers about the effectiveness of pesticides application among productions at farm level. Besides, from a perspective of pesticides reduction, our analysis may provide guidance for policymakers since it highlights the effective role of pesticides in production processes

Spatial dependence in production frontier models

International audienc

From the microeconomic characterization of pesticides to the estimation of their marginal productivity

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’élargir au cadre multicultures la spécification des technologies de production tenant compte de la spécificité des pesticides. Cela permettra d’une part d’estimer la productivité marginale des pesticides et d’autre part de voir les conséquences de la caractérisation que l’on adopte pour modéliser les pesticides sur le niveau de cette productivité marginale. Nous partons de l’observation que les analyses empiriques essayant d’extraire la productivité marginale des pesticides se heurtent au manque de cadre théorique permettant d’analyser les exploitations agricoles multicultures. Ces études, pour contourner cette limite, soit agrègent les différents outputs pour se ramener au cas d’un seul produit, soit se limitent uniquement aux cas monocultures et/ou aux procédures d’estimation non paramétriques, procédures qui ne permettent pas l’incorporation des inputs luttant contre les ravageurs, soit passent par l’estimation d’une fonction de coût en utilisant les prix. Cette observation nous a motivé à mettre en place un cadre d’analyse adapté aux exploitations multicultures. Cela permettra de mieux comprendre le rapport des agriculteurs à cette substance. Les résultats de nos estimations montrent globalement, sur notre zone d’analyse d’Eure-et-Loir, que les exploitants agricoles utilisent de manière sous-optimale les pesticides. Ce résultat traduit d’une certaine façon l’effet de la réglementation des pesticides : les politiques publiques mises en place pour faire diminuer l’usage des pesticides ont des effets sur les décisions de production des agriculteurs d’Eure-et-Loir.The main goal of this thesis is to enlarge to the multi-crops framework the specification of production technologies that account for the specificity of pesticides. This allows, on one side, the estimation of the marginal productivity of pesticides and on the other side to investigate the impact of the considered characterisation of pesticides on the level of their marginal productivity. We start form the observation that the current empirical analyses, trying to extract this marginal productivity of pesticides face the lack of an appropriate multi-crops framework. These studies, to get around this problem, either aggregate the different outputs to come down to the case of one crop (output), or use non parametric estimation techniques, whose drawbacks is not to handle the damage reducing input, or pass through the estimation of a cost function using the inputs price information when they are available. This observation motivates the setting up of an appropriate framework for the analysis of multi-crops farms. This enables us to well understand the intensity of farmers’ relation to this input. The results of our analysis show that the Eure-et-Loir’s farmer level of pesticide use is under-optimal. This result highlights somehow the effects of the regulation of pesticides: public policies setting up to lower the use of pesticides impact significantly the production decisions of Eure-et-Loir farmers

The spatio-temporal dynamics of pesticide use: a global exploratory analysis

International audienceWe utilize exploratory techniques to identify patterns in pesticide use spatial and temporal dimensions. Using data on 149 countries from 1993 to 2020, we find that some countries with low pesticide use are “catching-up” slightly. From a Markov chain analysis, we also note that the distribution of pesticide use per hectare is characterized by a low inter-class mobility, more pronounced in the head and tail of the distribution. This suggests a lock-in phenomenon once “unsustainable” agricultural systems are adopted. We complement this temporal analysis by exploring the role of “proximity” between countries in the use of pesticides and its dynamics. Three definitions of proximity are considered. The first is geographical, the second and third are based on crops produced at the country level and on countries’ GDP per capita respectively. Our results suggest that countries’ economic development explains more pesticide use than their geographic proximity or their crop similarity

Can we really use prices to control pesticide use? Results from a nonparametric model

International audienceIn this paper, we assess to what extent pesticide price can be used to bring about more sustainable agricultural practices in field crop farms. We use an innovative three-step nonparametric frontier approach to simulate price increases that would persuade “rational” farmers to adopt practices that use the smallest possible amount of pesticides while still enabling them to continue to produce the same output, given the current production technology. The procedure is based on a data envelopment analysis (DEA) estimation of the production technology. The result suggests that very large price changes are necessary to bring about fairly small change of the quantity of pesticide used, thus challenging the efficacy of price as a policy tool in the short run. Consequently, managing pesticide is likely to require a multi-channel procedure, as prices appear not to be a fully effective instrument. Since the short-run demand structure for pesticides seems to be inelastic, a clear communication of the long-run objective is desirable if not essential for any policy to be implemented

Beyond GDP: an analysis of the socio-economic diversity of European regions

Beyond GDP: an analysis of the socio-economic diversity of European regions. 59th ERSA Congres

The impact of single farm payments on technical inefficiency of French crop farms

International audienceAbstractThis paper analyses the effect of single farm payments (SFPs) introduced by the Luxembourg agreements (2003) of the Common Agricultural Policy, on the performance of crop farms in Eure-et-Loir, France, over the period 2005–2008. Technical inefficiency scores of these crop farms are first estimated. Then, the estimated technical inefficiency scores are regressed on SFPs received by farmers following a standard two-step procedure. The analysis shows a negative effect of SFPs on the technical inefficiency of Eure-et-Loir farms. This implies that subsidies granted to farms without production restrictions seem to reduce technical inefficiency

Nonlinear impact estimation in spatial autoregressive models

International audienceThis paper extends the literature on the calculation and interpretation of impacts for spatial autoregressive models. Using a Bayesian framework, we show how the individual direct and indirect impacts associated with an exogenous variable introduced in a nonlinear way in such models can be computed, theoretically and empirically. Rather than averaging the individual impacts, we suggest to graphically analyze them along with their confidence intervals calculated from Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We also explicitly derive the form of the gap between individual impacts in the spatial autoregressive model and the corresponding model without a spatial lag and show, in our application on the Boston dataset, that it is higher for spatially highly connected observations