The effects of environmental degradation on agriculture: Evidence from European countries

Abstract

Currently, one of the most significant challenges of agricultural sector of an economy is to keep pace with the world's rapidly growing population in order to feed them. But continuous environmental degradation is posing serious threat to the agricultural production. The objective of this study is to look at how environmental degradation in the form of biodiversity loss, deforestation and agricultural emissions can affect agricultural production as well as cereal and vegetable production in 35 countries of Europe. The study utilizes Driscoll and Kraay estimator to understand the potential impacts of environmental degradation as well as other variables such as organic farming, renewable energy, political stability, e-governance, social progress and women empowerment on agriculture. The result reveals that biodiversity loss harms agricultural, cereal and vegetable production while forest area increase positively affect the cereal production and vegetable production. Agricultural emissions, on the other hand, does not significantly affect the three independent variables but it has a negative effect on cereal and positive impact on vegetable production. Renewable energy use, political stability and women empowerment all have positive and significant impacts on all the three dependent variables. E-governance significantly and positively affects agricultural and vegetable production and social progress has positive but insignificant effect on the dependent variables. Finally, the study provides crucial policy implications for the agricultural sector of Europe.