Creation of climate-smart and energy-efficient agriculture in the European Union: Pathways based on the frontier analysis

Creation of the climate-smart agriculture requires efficient resource use and mitigation of the environmental pressures among other objectives. Therefore, it is important to assess the energy efficiency and productivity growth in the European Union's agriculture. This paper analyses the sample of the selected European Union member states. The productive technology including the energy consumption and the resulting greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is constructed. The measurement of the energy efficiency and productivity change relies on the slacks-based measure and Luenberger productivity indicator. The productivity growth was decomposed with respect to the input/output variables and the sources of growth (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). The average annual productivity growth of 0.79% was obtained for the selected countries during 1995-2016. The highest productivity gains were observed in Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium and Romania (1.27%-1.94% per year). The productivity growth related to GHG emission dominated the contributions by the input/output variables in Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, Romania, Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and Estonia.

Automated summary

This paper analyzes the energy efficiency and productivity growth in the agriculture of the European Union. The average annual productivity growth of 0.79% was obtained for the selected countries during 1995-2016, with Lithuania, Denmark, Belgium, and Romania showing the highest productivity gains. The productivity growth related to GHG emission dominated the contributions by the input/output variables in several countries.