Environmental Performance Of Agriculture Research Articles

Exploring the Linkages between farm efficiency, farm environmental performance, and agri-environmental scheme adoption: Lessons from France

The agricultural detrimental effects on the environment are a source of concern. Public mea-sures, such as agri-environmental schemes (AES), have been designed to incentivize farmers to adopt more sound environmental practices on the farm. In this study, we examine the effects of past initial economic and environmental performances on AES adoption by focusing on crop farms. Using Firth's logistic regression to address small sample bias with French FADN data from 1997 to 2007, we mainly find that technical efficiency has heterogeneous effects on AES adoption, depending on environmental indexes. This result suggests the presence of windfall effects. We also show complex interactions (antagonism or synergy) between economic and environmental performances in adoption decisions, and heterogeneous effects depending on the type of farming.The agricultural detrimental effects on the environment are a source of concern. Public mea-sures, such as agri-environmental schemes (AES), have been designed to incentivize farmers to adopt more sound environmental practices on the farm. In this study, we examine the effects of past initial economic and environmental performances on AES adoption by focusing on crop farms. Using Firth's logistic regression to address small sample bias with French FADN data from 1997 to 2007, we mainly find that technical efficiency has heterogeneous effects on AES adoption, depending on environmental indexes. This result suggests the presence of windfall effects. We also show complex interactions (antagonism or synergy) between economic and environmental performances in adoption decisions, and heterogeneous effects depending on the type of farming.

Economic and Environmental Performance of Farms in Vietnam: Does Contract Farming Matter?

Economic and Environmental Performance of Farms in Vietnam: Does Contract Farming Matter?

DIGITAL AGRICULTURE – BASICS AND PREREQUISITES FOR DEVELOPMENT

Nowadays, the results achieved both from an ecological and an economic point of view are extremely important for the agricultural sector. Higher environmental performance cannot be achieved if the competitiveness of agricultural sectors declines. To increase the sustainability of the sector, better economic results must be achieved, which will lead to an opportunity to increase investments to protect the environment. This is where the need comes from, in this new, developing era, to think about "new" agriculture responding to the new circumstances. Without turning our backs on the past, both with its mistakes and its achievements. Vast agronomic knowledge can be integrated into digital innovation and mobilized to workforce the r better economic and environmental performance of farms and for the benefit of citizens and consumers. The report summarizes the main technological innovations. The aim is to outline the parameters and possibilities of modern agriculture to respond to the developing digital world. Based on the definition of the review, summaries and conclusions are made about the development of digital agriculture in the world

Environmental performance evaluation of European farms by assessing polluting factors in joint production

Measuring the environmental efficiency of firms using data envelopment analysis (DEA) has recently gained momentum due to the urgency of climate change. The existing literature on environmental efficiency ignores the internal structures of the production system and treats the production unit as a ‘black box’. Thus, it fails to identify the exact source of inefficiencies, which complicates course correction in a multi-stage production system. In response to these inadequacies, this study takes into account the amount of pollutants emitted, in addition to the classic input and output parameters in DEA, in each of the stages to measure the environmental efficiency of the overall system and decompose it into stage-level environmental efficiencies. Two separate models assign each country two separate efficiency scores for its environmental and technical performance. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework, the environmental performance of farms in the European Union is measured. The numbers of efficient farms in technical and environmental approaches are 21% and 8% of the total 130 farms, respectively. The average environmental efficiency scores of the two stages (crop production and animal husbandry) across the farms are found to sharply increase and decrease, respectively in comparison to their corresponding technical efficiency. The study also reveals some interesting conclusions. For example, the environmental performance improves for inefficient farms when they try to achieve technical competence. To achieve overall environmental efficiency, all the stages need to be fully efficient. Based on the shadow prices of the polluting inputs and outputs obtained from the two models, we calculate the marginal rate of substitution for the inputs and marginal rate of transformation for the outputs which help one in carrying out comparative analysis. For instance, the results indicate that fertilizer and forage land are responsible for the majority of the environmental inefficiency. Production of cereal and meat is economically efficient; whereas dairy farming is both resource-intensive and environmentally harmful. Based on this analysis, we suggest important policy measures at both the farm and the country levels.

Technical efficiency and environmental impact of seabream and seabass farms

Sea cage farming of seabream and seabass is the most important form of aquaculture production in the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the continuous global growth in aquaculture production and demand, the economic performance of seabream and seabass companies has not followed the same trend. In recent years, companies have faced successive periods of market instability, with high volatility in supply and market prices that have strongly affected their operational margins. Despite the regional importance of this industry, only a handful of studies have examined the economic performance of these farms. In this paper, we investigate the technical efficiency and scale effects of Mediterranean aquaculture farms. Furthermore, environmental impact in terms of nutrient emissions from the farms is examined and discussed. Technical efficiency effects are analyzed using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), and the bootstrap procedure is used for bias correction. The results show that the mean technical efficiency could be improved by between 16% and 34%, and scale efficiency suggests that farms could improve their efficiency by operating at an optimal scale. Compared to measurements in previous studies, the environmental variables show that the emission of nutrients from the farms per kilo of fish produced has not changed over the past twenty years. Finally, policy implications suggest that more attention toward improving technical efficiency may help improve the robustness of the sector and that environmental regulation might be needed in order to improve the environmental performance of farms.

Considerations regarding improving the ecological and environmental performance of agriculture

Abstract The agri-environment economy provides a significant database for environmental policy decisions. The prioritization of an actionable behavior regarding the agri-environment vulnerabilities, favors the orientation of the agriculture through more environmentally responsible methods, represents a current trend, with a broad support within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The promotion of an agricultural model capable of ensuring its own sustainability implies the existence of a set of common values and rules in which to buy as many producers as possible, with a common objective, respectively to reduce greenhouse emissions and to promote an ecological responsibility of the production model. Agriculture can significantly contribute to achieving the objectives of reducing the negative effects of climate change, not only from the perspective of ensuring the conservation of carbon reservoirs, which are still present in the soil, or by expanding their size and favoring the formation of humus, but in particular by reducing the consumption of energy needed in agricultural production and the supply of biomass needed for renewable energy production., much greener. The transition to a low carbon economy, more environmentally responsible, in the national agricultural sector can contribute, both to the significant increase of food security, but also to the optimization of the agricultural production structures, which will thus conform more easy to environmental requirements. It becomes primarily the role of implementation in agriculture of feasible standards more environmentally friendly, and environmentally friendly in this context, the research in the field and the continuous training acquiring new values. An important role is played by the implementation of best practice methods in the proper management of the land and the promotion of organic production models can significantly contribute to increasing the carbon absorption in the soil and, at the same time, to indicate possible improvments in their performance.

A model-based exploration of farm-household livelihood and nutrition indicators to guide nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions

Assessing progress towards healthier people, farms and landscapes through nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) requires transdisciplinary methods with robust models and metrics. Farm-household models could facilitate disentangling the complex agriculture-nutrition nexus, by jointly assessing performance indicators on different farm system components such as farm productivity, farm environmental performance, household nutrition, and livelihoods. We, therefore, applied a farm-household model, FarmDESIGN, expanded to more comprehensively capture household nutrition and production diversity, diet diversity, and nutrient adequacy metrics. We estimated the potential contribution of an NSA intervention targeting the diversification of home gardens, aimed at reducing nutritional gaps and improving livelihoods in rural Vietnam. We addressed three central questions: (1) Do ‘Selected Crops’ (i.e. crops identified in a participatory process) in the intervention contribute to satisfying household dietary requirements?; (2) Does the adoption of Selected Crops contribute to improving household livelihoods (i.e. does it increase leisure time for non-earning activities as well as the dispensable budget)?; and (3) Do the proposed nutrition-related metrics estimate the contribution of home-garden diversification towards satisfying household dietary requirements? Results indicate trade-offs between nutrition and dispensable budget, with limited farm-household configurations leading to jointly improved nutrition and livelihoods. FarmDESIGN facilitated testing the robustness and limitations of commonly used metrics to monitor progress towards NSA. Results indicate that most of the production diversity metrics performed poorly at predicting desirable nutritional outcomes in this modelling study. This study demonstrates that farm-household models can facilitate anticipating the effect (positive or negative) of agricultural interventions on nutrition and the environment, identifying complementary interventions for significant and positive results and helping to foresee the trade-offs that farm-households could face. Furthermore, FarmDESIGN could contribute to identifying agreed-upon and robust metrics for measuring nutritional outcomes at the farm-household level, to allow comparability between contexts and NSA interventions.

Production intensity in dairy farming and its relationship with farm environmental performance: Empirical evidence from the Swiss alpine area

In the last two decades, agricultural production intensity has become a subject of growing attention in the field of agricultural sustainability. Based on an empirical application for Swiss mountain dairy farming, the goal of our research was to better understand the relationship between agricultural production intensity, defined as the biophysical agricultural production per unit of land use area, and farm environmental performance. We thereby revisited the definition of production intensity and, more precisely, of the spatial system boundaries of its denominator. For that purpose, we analyzed the relationship between the “classical” production intensity indicator accounting only for the on-farm land use area and a cradle-to-farm gate intensity indicator encompassing off- and on-farm land use area. In a subsequent step, we investigated the relationship between farm environmental performance and the two production intensity indicator types. The analysis relied on the cradle-to-farm gate Life Cycle Assessments of 56 farm observations. Spearman's correlation analysis revealed a very strong positive correlation between on-farm and cradle-to-farm gate production intensity. The definition of production intensity did not play a crucial role in the observed relationship between production intensity and farm environmental performance. Production intensity was positively correlated with farm global environmental performance. Conversely, it was negatively correlated with both on-farm local environmental performance and cradle-to-farm gate aggregate local environmental performance. By revealing this environmental trade-off associated with agricultural intensification, our findings highlight the challenging nature of achieving sustainable intensification simultaneously on the global and local ecosystem scales.

Comparing nitrogen management on dairy farms – Canterbury case studies

Five Canterbury dairy farmers participate in the Forages for Reduced Nitrate Leaching programme (FRNL) to co-develop options for less environmental impact. Farm practices were adapted and new mitigation options were implemented. To assess farm environmental performance, the Overseer model was used to estimate nitrogen (N) leaching, N surplus and N conversion efficiency (NCE) for each farm and each year. When discussing the results with farmers, it appeared that these indicators for environmental performance are limited when comparing farm management strategies. The Overseer estimates include N fixation, which is influenced by model assumptions, and N leaching, estimates that strongly depend on soil type and climate entered into the model. To enable better comparisons between farms and years, a simplified N surplus and NCE were calculated using farmer recorded N inputs and N outputs, i.e. fertiliser, imported supplement, production and exported supplements. Effects of improved management and new mitigation options are presented. Four of the farms improved their N surplus and NCE and three reduced their Overseer-estimated N leaching over 3 years (2014, 2015 and 2016).

Environmental assessment of seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and seabream (Sparus aurata) farming from a life cycle perspective: A case study of a Tunisian aquaculture farm

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was applied to assess potential environmental impacts generated by production of 1ton of European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) on a sea-cage aquaculture farm in Tunisia. The studied farm produces 2100tons of fish per year. Impact categories included in the current study were acidification, eutrophication, global warming, land occupation, total cumulative energy demand and Net Primary Production Use (NPPuse). In addition, a refinement of “sea use” impact category was proposed to assess impacts of aquaculture on the area of sea required and seabed degradation. Calculations were performed using the software SimaPro® 8.0, and the database ecoinvent 3.0 was used for background data. Uncertainty analysis was performed using Monte-Carlo simulations. Results of this study indicate that seabass rearing has lower mean impact than seabream rearing for all the impact categories considered. However, no significant differences were observed in all the impact categories except the global warming. Fish feed is the main contributor to most of the impacts studied, which is directly related to production of fish meal and oil as feed ingredients and the large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus released into the environment. Management decisions aiming to optimize production and use of fish feed may have a positive impact on the environmental performance of the farm. It is essential to optimize diet formulation and to follow better feeding strategies and farming practices (e.g. stock management, feed distribution, accurate ration calculation) to lower feed-conversion ratios and consequently improve the environmental performance of aquaculture farms. LCA is a valuable tool for assessing decisions for improving environmental sustainability of aquaculture because it performs overall impact assessment and helps identify main areas for improvement.

Environmental performances of agriculture in the European Union countries

The strong impact of agriculture on the environment has caused the integration of environmental objectives into the Common Agricultural Policy. In parallel with the development of CAP, attempts have been made to make agricultural production more ecologically oriented. The subject of this paper explores the environmental performance at the level of the European Union, with special emphasis on the environmental performance of the agriculture. The environmental performances of agriculture will be analyzed on the basis of the data on Environmental Performances Index (EPI) for the issue area - Agriculture. The aim of this research is to classify the European Union countries into homogenous groups according to the level of achieved environmental performance of agriculture.

Local versus Global Environmental Performance of Dairying and Their Link to Economic Performance: A Case Study of Swiss Mountain Farms

Complying with the carrying capacity of local and global ecosystems is a prerequisite to ensure environmental sustainability. Based on the example of Swiss mountain dairy farms, the goal of our research was firstly to investigate the relationship between farm global and local environmental performance. Secondly, we aimed to analyse the relationship between farm environmental and economic performance. The analysis relied on a sample of 56 Swiss alpine dairy farms. For each farm, the cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle assessment was calculated, and the quantified environmental impacts were decomposed into their on- and off-farm parts. We measured global environmental performance as the digestible energy produced by the farm per unit of global environmental impact generated from cradle-to-farm-gate. We assessed local environmental performance by dividing farm-usable agricultural area by on-farm environmental impact generation. Farm economic performance was measured by work income per family work unit, return on equity and output/input ratio. Spearman’s correlation analysis revealed no significant relationship, trade-offs or synergies between global and local environmental performance indicators. Interestingly, trade-offs were observed far more frequently than synergies. Furthermore, we found synergies between global environmental and economic performance and mostly no significant relationship between local environmental and economic performance. The observed trade-offs between global and local environmental performance mean that, for several environmental issues, any improvement in global environmental performance will result in deterioration of local environmental performance and vice versa. This finding calls for systematic consideration of both dimensions when carrying out farm environmental performance assessments.

The Relationship of Dairy Farm Eco-Efficiency with Intensification and Self-Sufficiency. Evidence from the French Dairy Sector Using Life Cycle Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling.

We aimed at quantifying the extent to which agricultural management practices linked to animal production and land use affect environmental outcomes at a larger scale. Two practices closely linked to farm environmental performance at a larger scale are farming intensity, often resulting in greater off-farm environmental impacts (land, non-renewable energy use etc.) associated with the production of imported inputs (e.g. concentrates, fertilizer); and the degree of self-sufficiency, i.e. the farm’s capacity to produce goods from its own resources, with higher control over nutrient recycling and thus minimization of losses to the environment, often resulting in greater on-farm impacts (eutrophication, acidification etc.). We explored the relationship of these practices with farm environmental performance for 185 French specialized dairy farms. We used Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling to build, and relate, latent variables of environmental performance, intensification and self-sufficiency. Proxy indicators reflected the latent variables for intensification (milk yield/cow, use of maize silage etc.) and self-sufficiency (home-grown feed/total feed use, on-farm energy/total energy use etc.). Environmental performance was represented by an aggregate ‘eco-efficiency’ score per farm derived from a Data Envelopment Analysis model fed with LCA and farm output data. The dataset was split into two spatially heterogeneous (bio-physical conditions, production patterns) regions. For both regions, eco-efficiency was significantly negatively related with milk yield/cow and the use of maize silage and imported concentrates. However, these results might not necessarily hold for intensive yet more self-sufficient farms. This requires further investigation with latent variables for intensification and self-sufficiency that do not largely overlap- a modelling challenge that occurred here. We conclude that the environmental ‘sustainability’ of intensive dairy farming depends on particular farming systems and circumstances, although we note that more self-sufficient farms may be preferable when they may benefit from relatively low land prices and agri-environment schemes aimed at maintaining grasslands.

Implementing farm-level environmental sustainability in environmental performance indicators: A combined global-local approach

As major generators of environmental impacts, farms play a crucial role in enhancing the environmental sustainability of food-supply chains. However, appropriately assessing farm environmental performance poses a challenge; a plethora of different indicators have been used for this purpose, sometimes in the absence of conceptual considerations. This paper develops a broadly implementable framework for defining and measuring farm environmental performance which complies with the environmental sustainability concept viewed from an ecological perspective. After providing a critical review of existing indicators in the literature for measuring farm environmental performance and identifying their strengths and above all their weaknesses, it proceeds to develop ideas on how to implement the environmental sustainability concept at farm level. Starting at the macro level, these ideas are based on the central concept of ecosystem carrying capacity (constraints) referring to biophysical threshold thinking. The implementation of this concept at farm level results in the framework that we propose for measuring farm environmental performance. Environmental sustainability requires compliance with the carrying-capacity constraints imposed by the natural ecosystem within which a farm operates. Compliance with carrying capacity must occur at both local and global ecosystem levels, requiring a distinction between local and global farm environmental performance. The global environmental performance of a farm is defined as its relative contribution to compliance with the carrying capacity of the global ecosystem, and is measured by means of an indicator of environmental intensity over the entire production chain up to the farm gate. The local carrying-capacity constraint can be understood as the maximum environmental impact per unit of farmland area that can be sustained by the local ecosystem. Local environmental performance is therefore measured by means of an area-based indicator. Whereas all environmental issues must be considered at a global level, for some of them local level consideration is also required. Implementing separate local and global environmental performance indicators, as opposed to using only global or local indicators without distinguishing between them in conceptual terms, provides a more appropriate assessment of the environmental performance of farms, as well as a better basis for comparison between farms. Furthermore, it eliminates the risk of shifting environmental problems from the local to the global scale or vice-versa. The framework highlights the complexity of the environmental sustainability concept, which cannot be reduced to a single “one size fits all” indicator.

Environmental Performance of Agriculture in OECD Countries

EuroChoicesVolume 12, Issue 3 p. 30-31 Parlons Graphiques Environmental Performance of Agriculture in OECD Countries Les performances environnementales de l'agriculture dans les pays de l'OCDE Umweltleistung der Landwirtschaft in OECD-Ländern Julien Hardelin, Julien Hardelin Julien.Hardelin@oecd.org Search for more papers by this author Julien Hardelin, Julien Hardelin Julien.Hardelin@oecd.org Search for more papers by this author First published: 04 December 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/1746-692X.12037Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume12, Issue3December 2013Pages 30-31 RelatedInformation

CAFOs and Environmental Justice: The Case of North Carolina

On the coastal plain of eastern North Carolina, families in certain rural communities daily must deal with the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure—reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia—wafting from nearby industrial hog farms. On bad days, the odor invades homes, and people are often forced to cover their mouths and noses when stepping outside. Sometimes, residents say, a fine mist of manure sprinkles nearby homes, cars, and even laundry left on the line to dry.1 Today’s industrial-scale farms—called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—house thousands of animals whose waste is periodically applied to “spray fields” of Bermuda grass or feed crops.2,3 The waste can contain pathogens, heavy metals, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria,4,5 and the spray can reach nearby homes and drinking water sources. The odor plume, which often pervades nearby communities, contains respiratory and eye irritants including hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.6,7,8 A growing body of research suggests these emissions may contribute not only to mucosal irritation9 and respiratory ailments10 in nearby residents but also decreased quality of life,11 mental stress,12,13 and elevated blood pressure.14 The home of a minority family in Kenansville, North Carolina, situated next to a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. Dust, odors, and manure from CAFOs can reach nearby residents’ homes, including their laundry. Although the Midwest is the traditional home for hogs, with Iowa still the top-producing state, North Carolina went from fifteenth to second in hog production between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s.15 This explosive growth resulted in thousands of CAFOs located in the eastern half of the state—squarely in the so-called Black Belt, a crescent-shaped band throughout the South where slaves worked on plantations.16,17 After emancipation many freed slaves continued to work as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. A century later, black residents of this region still experience high rates of poverty, poor health care, low educational attainment, unemployment, and substandard housing.18,19 The clustering of North Carolina’s hog CAFOs in low-income, minority communities—and the health impacts that accompany them—has raised concerns of environmental injustice and environmental racism.20 As one pair of investigators explained, “[P]eople of color and the poor living in rural communities lacking the political capacity to resist are said to shoulder the adverse socio-economic, environmental, or health related effects of swine waste externalities without sharing in the economic benefits brought by industrialized pork production.”21 Although North Carolina is not the only area with environmental justice concerns vis-a-vis CAFOs, it has become one of the best studied.

The use of Farm Business Survey data to compare the environmental performance of organic and conventional farms

This paper considers two main questions: Is it possible to use Farm Business Survey (FBS) data to derive well-established environmental indicators and can these FBS derived indicators also provide a reasonable comparison of the environmental performance of organic and conventional farms? The results suggest that the indicators can be obtained from FBS data and that the majority of the indicators provided meaningful results, despite some data limitations within the FBS dataset. The comparison of organic with conventional FBS data in the UK suggests that organic farms have lower fertiliser and crop protection costs (as would be expected) but that differences in feed costs, stocking density and cropping diversity were dependent upon farm type. This research confirms that FBS data can be used to derive indirect environmental indicators which are able to identify significant differences between farm types and management systems. These indicators are also likely to be applicable at EU level through their use within the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), which collates farm economic data across the EU. This is of interest to researches and policy-makers who could use FADN data to track some aspects of environmental performance across many countries and track changes over time. These results may also be useful to farm consultants and managers who could potentially use a similar approach in using individual farm financial information to benchmark some aspects of farm environmental performance.

The Effect of Mandatory Agro‐Environmental Policy on Farm Fertiliser and Pesticide Expenditure

AbstractEU farmers are subject to mandatory cross‐compliance measures, requiring them to meet environmental conditions to be eligible for public support. These obligations reinforce incentives for farmers to change their behaviour towards the environment. We apply quasi‐experimental methods to measure the causal relationship between cross‐compliance and some specific farm environmental performance. We find that cross‐compliance reduced farm fertiliser and pesticide expenditure. This result also holds for farmers who participated in other voluntary agro‐environmental schemes. However, the results do not support our expectations that farmers who relied on larger shares of public payments had a stronger motivation to improve their environmental performance.

Coupling landscape water storage and supplemental irrigation to increase productivity and improve environmental stewardship in the U.S. Midwest

Agriculture must increase production for a growing population while simultaneously reducing its environmental impacts. These goals need not be in tension with one another. Here we outline a vision for improving both the productivity and environmental performance of agriculture in the U.S. Midwest, also known as the Corn Belt. Mean annual precipitation has increased throughout the region over the past 50 years, consistent with climate models that attribute the increase to a warming troposphere. Stream gauge data indicate that higher precipitation has been matched or exceeded by higher stream flows, contributing to flooding, soil loss, and excessive nutrient flux to the Gulf of Mexico. We propose increasing landscape hydrologic storage through construction of ponds and restoration of wetlands to retain water for supplemental irrigation while also reducing flood risks. Primary productivity is proportional to transpiration, and analysis shows that in the U.S. Midwest both can be sustainably increased with supplemental irrigation. The proposed strategy should reduce interannual yield variability by limiting losses due to transient drought, while facilitating adoption of cropping systems that “perennialize” the landscape to take advantage of the full potential growing season. When implemented in concert, these practices should reduce the riverine nitrogen export that is a primary cause of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Erosive sediment losses should also be reduced through the combination of enhanced hydrologic storage and increased vegetative cover. Successful implementation would require watershed‐scale coordination among producers and landowners. An obvious mechanism to encourage this is governmental farm policy.

The Effect of Mandatory Agro-Environmental Policy on Farm Environmental Performance

The EU farmers are subject to mandatory cross-compliance measures requiring them to meet environmental conditions to be eligible for public support. These obligations reinforce incentives for the farmers to change their behavior towards the environment. We apply quasi-experimental methods to measure the causal relationship between cross-compliance and farm environmental performance. We find that cross-compliance reduced farm fertilizer and pesticide expenditure. This result also holds for farmers who participated in other voluntary agro-environmental schemes. However, the results do not support our expectations that farmers who relied on larger shares of public payments had a stronger motivation to improve their environmental performance.