Efficiency of using environmentally harmful inputs in field crop production in Bulgaria

Abstract

There is a long-standing issue relating environmental to economic goals of agricultural production systems. An attempt to examine all possible aspects of this relationship is highly challenging and beyond the scope of the study. To gain insights into simultaneously improving the economic and ecological performance of the field crop farms, the research is focused on measuring the efficiency of using production inputs that have a large environmental impact. The paper investigates different field crop production regions in Bulgaria from 2014 to 2020 in an attempt to identify regional disparities. Such an investigation could help in consolidating policy measures addressing agro-environmental issues. By employing a mathematical programming approach (DEA method) on public data from the Farm Accounting Data Network and applying a non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test over the obtained scores, no significant difference in the efficiency of using environmentally harmful inputs between six field crop production regions in Bulgaria is found. Regarding this finding and the Common Agricultural Policy strategies, recommendations for further research are proposed.