Abstract
Farm-level sustainable intensification metrics are needed to evaluate farm performance and support policy-making processes aimed at enhancing sustainable production. Farm-level sustainable intensification metrics require environmental impacts associated with agricultural production to be accounted for. However, it is common that such indicators are not available. We show how satellite-based remote sensing information can be used in combination with farm efficiency analysis to obtain a sustainable intensification (SI) indicator, which can serve as a sustainability benchmarking tool for farmers and policy makers. We obtained an SI indicator for 114 maize farms in Yangxin County, located in the Shandong Province in China, by combining information on maize output and inputs with satellite information on the leaf area index (from which a nitrogen environmental damage indicator is derived) into a farm technical efficiency analysis using a stochastic frontier approach. We compare farm-level efficiency scores between models that incorporate environmental damage indicators based on satellite-based remote sensing information and models that do not account for environmental impact. The results demonstrate that (a) satellite-based information can be used to account for environmental impacts associated with agriculture production and (b) how the environmental impact metrics derived from satellite-based information combined with farm efficiency analysis can be used to obtain a farm-level sustainable intensification indicator. The approach can be used to obtain tools for farmers and policy makers aiming at improving SI.
Highlights
Over the last decades, China’s agriculture has been transforming from traditional to modern practices leading to a significant increase in the use of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser and pesticide, e.g., synthetic N fertiliser application increased from 7.07 to26.21 million tons (a 271% increase) between 1997 and 2005 [1]
It is worth pointing out that we evaluated a range of possible suitable environmental indicators (EIs) available from earth observation (EO) data provided by the European Commission Copernicus services that could be used for our analysis
We have demonstrated how environmental impact indicators can be constructed from satellite data and used within a farm efficiency analysis framework to obtain sustainability indicators
Summary
26.21 million tons (a 271% increase) between 1997 and 2005 [1] This has led to a problem of overuse of fertiliser and pesticide, which has resulted in serious pollution of water, soil and air [1,2,3,4]. One tool that can be used to monitore is the use of remote sensing for earth observation (e.g., monitoring crop N status [6]) We use this information in combination with information on production inputs and output to (a) obtain a measure of sustainable intensification (SI) and (b) compare it with standard efficiency analysis metrics to show how incorporating an environmental dimension matters in farm efficiency scores
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