Livestock farming eco-efficiency analysis: a systematic literature review of frontier approaches for sustainability assessment

Assessing both the economic and environmental efficiency, or eco-efficiency, of farms is essential for informing sustainability in agriculture. This article presents a systematic review of the literature on frontier approaches to assessing the eco-efficiency of livestock farming, with a focus on their integration into the weak or strong sustainability paradigm. Using the PRISMA methodology, we analysed 98 articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, published between 1990 and 2025, that investigate the eco-efficiency of livestock farms. The results highlight a predominance of articles focusing on cattle farms (71%) and pig farms (21%), with particular attention to environmental indicators such as greenhouse (GHG) emissions and nitrogen surplus (55%). Positive environmental externalities are still underexplored in these articles and represent a promising area for further research. The approaches used to model the environment have evolved over time, from environmentally adjusted production efficiency (EAPE) models to by-production technology (BPT) models and from material balance-based (MB) models to frontier eco-efficiency (FEE) models. Although these approaches do not fully adhere to the strong sustainability paradigm, the BPT models stand out as the most promising for assessing eco-efficiency in agriculture, offering a more integrated approach.