Abstract
Research background: Agriculture plays a vital role in producing food to ensure food security, but it is one of the biggest contributors to environmental pollution. One of the main goals of the new CAP is to set higher ambitions for environmental actions, which brings into the front the concept of agricultural eco-efficiency. The notion of eco-efficiency includes the economic and also ecological dimensions of sustainable agriculture.
 Purpose of the article: The main goal of this paper is to evaluate the eco-efficiency of agricultural production and its dynamics during the years 2013, 2015, and 2017 of NUTS 2 regions within the Visegrad 4 (V4), i. e. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The part of the main goal is to verify the research hypothesis that all the biggest agriculture producers are eco-efficient.
 Methods: V4 regional eco-efficiency of the agricultural sector is expressed by the Malmquist productivity index and is estimated using the output-oriented Data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, under the assumption of constant return to scale (CRS). The Malmquist index is decomposed to technical eco-efficiency change (EC) and technological change (TC). Based on the eco-efficiency, technological and pure technical eco-efficiency change, V4 regions are classified into three groups: the most progressive regions, the progressive regions, and the regressive regions.
 Findings & value added: CZ02: Central Bohemia, CZ04: Northwest, HU33: Dél-Alföld, HU31: Észak-Magyarország, HU32: Észak-Alföld, PL21: Malopolskie, PL41: Wielkopolskie, SK01: Bratislava region, and SK02: Western Slovakia have an eco-effective agricultural sector, the remaining V4 regions have eco-ineffective agricultural sector. The research hypothesis that all the biggest agricultural producers are eco-effective is not confirmed. During the analyzed years, 19 V4 regions improve their agricultural eco-efficiency. The main contributor to eco-efficiency improvement is technological progress, which indicates that producers implement innovations that lead to more eco-efficiency agricultural production.
Highlights
Agriculture plays a vital role in producing food to ensure food security
Visegrad 4 (V4) regional eco-efficiency of the agricultural sector is expressed by the Malmquist productivity index and is estimated using the output-oriented Data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, under the assumption of constant return to scale (CRS)
According to Bianchi et al (2020), the eco-efficient regions are those with a high agglomerations concentration, but in the case of agricultural eco-efficiency it is not the same, the eco-efficient regions are those with good climate conditions or the small ones, oriented mainly on organic farming
Summary
Agriculture plays a vital role in producing food to ensure food security. At the same time, the agricultural sector is one of the biggest contributors to environmental pollution. It represents the main source of ammonia pollution and nitrate pollution of ground and surface water. It is a contributor to the phosphate pollution of rivers and is one of the principal sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere (FAO, 2001). Policymakers start to pay higher attention to environmental protection. A new Common agricultural policy (CAP) set higher ambitions for environmental and climate action pushing producers to avoid or reduce the environmental consequences of their production (European Commission, 2017)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
