Quantitative relationships between investments in farms and environmental effects in some European countries

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, in many European Union member countries, there has been a significant improvement in their own agricultural economic growth due to the Common Agricultural Policy. The increasing levels of investment in land and in machinery have been one of the pivotal pillars in improvement levels of food self-sufficiency. However, a growth in investments has increased pollutant emission in terms of carbon dioxide, nitrogenous compounds and a deterioration of an environment. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the impact of investments on agricultural and arable land in improving agricultural production towards environmental quality. The quantitative methods have used a neural relation analysis through the Kohonen?s maps or self-organizing maps (SOMs). Findings of Kohonen?s maps have pointed out a good ability to classify the time series data and the spatial evolution of data over the time; furthermore, SOMs have been useful in describing the impact of investment on production specialization, levels of pollution and food self-sufficiency in the European countries. To sum up, an improvement of food self-sufficient levels has been tightly linked to an increase of pollution in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.