IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/daredp/1508.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impact of diversification on technical efficiency of organic farming in Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Lakner, Sebastian
  • Kirchweger, Stefan
  • Hoop, Daniel
  • Brümmer, Bernhard
  • Kantelhardt, Jochen

Abstract

The paper investigates the impact of subsidies and of para-agriculture on the technical efficiency of organic farms in Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany. The data-set consists of bookkeeping data with 1,704 observations in the years 2003 to 2005. Technical efficiency is modelled using a stochastic distance-frontier model combined with a Metafrontier-model. The results show almost no efficiency differences among the farms in the three countries. Para-agriculture shows a strong impact on farm's efficiency and output in Austria and Switzerland, whereas in Germany the effect is rather small. The study confirms that agricultural subsidies have a direct impact on farm's efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Lakner, Sebastian & Kirchweger, Stefan & Hoop, Daniel & Brümmer, Bernhard & Kantelhardt, Jochen, 2015. "Impact of diversification on technical efficiency of organic farming in Switzerland, Austria and Southern Germany," DARE Discussion Papers 1508, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (DARE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:daredp:1508
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/121296/1/837252849.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lakner, Sebastian, 2009. "Technical efficiency of organic milk-farms in Germany - the role of subsidies and of regional factors," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51301, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Mamardashvili, Phatima & Bokusheva, Raushan & Schmid, Dierk, 2014. "Heterogeneous Farm Output and Technical Efficiency Estimates," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 63(01), pages 1-15, March.
    3. Ani L. Katchova, 2005. "The Farm Diversification Discount," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(4), pages 984-994.
    4. Jochen Meyer & Stephan von Cramon‐Taubadel, 2004. "Asymmetric Price Transmission: A Survey," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 581-611, November.
    5. Christopher O’Donnell & D. Rao & George Battese, 2008. "Metafrontier frameworks for the study of firm-level efficiencies and technology ratios," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 231-255, March.
    6. Bernhard Brümmer & Thomas Glauben & Geert Thijssen, 2002. "Decomposition of Productivity Growth Using Distance Functions: The Case of Dairy Farms in Three European Countries," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(3), pages 628-644.
    7. Carlos D. Mayen & Joseph V. Balagtas & Corinne E. Alexander, 2010. "Technology Adoption and Technical Efficiency: Organic and Conventional Dairy Farms in the United States," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 92(1), pages 181-195.
    8. Chaplin, Hannah & Davidova, Sophia & Gorton, Matthew, 2003. "Agricultural Adjustment And The Diversification Of Farm Households In Central Europe," 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa 25843, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Weiss, Christoph R. & Thiele, Holger D., 2002. "Diversifikation und Wachstum landwirtschaftlicher Unternehmen," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 51(03), pages 1-8.
    10. Mamardashvili, Phatima & Bokusheva, Raushan & Schmid, Dierk, 2014. "Heterogeneous Farm Output and Technical Efficiency Estimates," Journal of International Agricultural Trade and Development, Journal of International Agricultural Trade and Development, vol. 63(1).
    11. Henningsen, Arne & Kumbhakar, Subal C. & Lien, Gudbrand D., 2009. "Econometric Analysis of the Effects of Subsidies on Farm Production in Case of Endogenous Input Quantities," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49728, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Mishra, Ashok K. & El-Osta, Hisham S. & Johnson, James D., 1999. "Factors Contributing To Earnings Success Of Cash Grain Farms," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 31(3), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Sauer, J. & Walsh, J. & Zilberman, D., 2014. "Agri-Environmental Policy Effects at Producer Level – Identification and Measurement," Proceedings “Schriften der Gesellschaft für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften des Landbaues e.V.”, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA), vol. 49, March.
    14. Latruffe, Laure & Bravo-Ureta, Boris E. & Moreira, Victor H. & Desjeux, Yann & Dupraz, Pierre, 2011. "Productivity and Subsidies in European Union Countries: An Analysis for Dairy Farms Using Input Distance Frontiers," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114396, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Schilling, Brian J. & Attavanich, Witsanu & Jin, Yanhong, 2014. "Does Agritourism Enhance Farm Profitability?," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 39(1), pages 1-28, April.
    16. Aditya R. Khanal & Ashok K. Mishra, 2014. "Agritourism and off-farm work: survival strategies for small farms," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 45(S1), pages 65-76, November.
    17. George Battese & D. Rao & Christopher O'Donnell, 2004. "A Metafrontier Production Function for Estimation of Technical Efficiencies and Technology Gaps for Firms Operating Under Different Technologies," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 91-103, January.
    18. Barnes, Andrew P & Hansson, Helena H. & Manevska-Tasevska, Gordana & Shrestha, Shailesh & Thomson, Steven G, 2014. "The Influence of diversification on short-term and long-term viability in the Scottish and Swedish agricultural sector," Working Papers 190937, Scotland's Rural College (formerly Scottish Agricultural College), Land Economy & Environment Research Group.
    19. Barnes, Andrew Peter & Hansson, Helena & Manevska-Tasevska, Gordana & Shrestha, Shailesh & Thomson, Steven, 2014. "The Influence of diversification on short-term and long-term viability in the Scottish and Swedish agricultural sector," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182654, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    20. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hayatullah Ahmadzai, 2017. "Crop Diversification and Technical Efficiency in Afghanistan: Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Discussion Papers 2017-04, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sebastian Lakner & Stefan Kirchweger & Daniel Hoop & Bernhard Brümmer & Jochen Kantelhardt, 2018. "The Effects of Diversification Activities on the Technical Efficiency of Organic Farms in Switzerland, Austria, and Southern Germany," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-18, April.
    2. Lakner, Sebastian & Kirchweger, Stefan & Hoop, Daniel & Brümmer, Bernhard & Kantelhardt, Jochen, 2014. "Technical Efficiency of Organic Farming in the Alpine Region – the Impact of Farm Structures and Policies," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182763, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Lakner, Sebastian & Breustedt, Gunnar, 2015. "Efficiency analysis of organic farming systems- a review of methods, topics, results, and conclusions," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212025, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Phatima MAMARDASHVILI & Dierk SCHMID, 2013. "Performance of Swiss dairy farms under provision of public goods," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 59(7), pages 300-314.
    5. Laure Latruffe & Andreas Niedermayr & Yann Desjeux & K Herve Dakpo & Kassoum Ayouba & Lena Schaller & Jochen Kantelhardt & Yan Jin & Kevin Kilcline & Mary Ryan & Cathal O’Donoghue, 2023. "Identifying and assessing intensive and extensive technologies in European dairy farming," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 50(4), pages 1482-1519.
    6. Farnaz Pourzand & Mohammad Bakhshoodeh, 2014. "Technical effici ency and agricultural sustainability–technology gap of maize producers in Fars province of Iran," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 671-688, June.
    7. Latruffe, Laure & Fogarasi, József & Desjeux, Yann, 2012. "Efficiency, productivity and technology comparison for farms in Central and Western Europe: The case of field crop and dairy farming in Hungary and France," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 264-278.
    8. Richard Adjei Dwumfour & Eric Fosu Oteng-Abayie & Emmanuel Kwasi Mensah, 2022. "Bank efficiency and the bank lending channel: new evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1489-1542, September.
    9. Bravo-Ureta, Boris E. & Higgins, Daniel & Arslan, Aslihan, 2020. "Irrigation infrastructure and farm productivity in the Philippines: A stochastic Meta-Frontier analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    10. Chen, Ku-Hsieh, 2012. "Incorporating risk input into the analysis of bank productivity: Application to the Taiwanese banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1911-1927.
    11. MARCHAND, Sébastien & GUO, Huanxiu, 2014. "The environmental efficiency of non-certified organic farming in China: A case study of paddy rice production," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 201-216.
    12. Phuc Trong Ho & Pham Xuan Hung & Nguyen Duc Tien, 2023. "Effects of varieties and seasons on cost efficiency in rice farming: A stochastic metafrontier approach," Asian Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 13(2), pages 120-129.
    13. Athukorala, Wasantha & Lee, Boon L. & Wilson, Clevo & Fujii, Hidemichi & Managi, Shunsuke, 2023. "Measuring the impact of pesticide exposure on farmers’ health and farm productivity," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 851-862.
    14. Nguyen, Hoa-Thi-Minh & Do, Huong & Kompas, Tom, 2021. "Economic efficiency versus social equity: The productivity challenge for rice production in a ‘greying’ rural Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    15. Cristian Barra & Raffaele Lagravinese & Roberto Zotti, 2022. "Exploring hospital efficiency within and between Italian regions: new empirical evidence," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 269-284, June.
    16. Tanko, Mohammed & Ismaila, Salifu, 2021. "How culture and religion influence the agriculture technology gap in Northern Ghana," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 22(C).
    17. Llorca, Manuel & Orea, Luis & Pollitt, Michael G., 2014. "Using the latent class approach to cluster firms in benchmarking: An application to the US electricity transmission industry," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 6-17.
    18. Temoso, Omphile & Villano, Renato & Hadley, David, 2016. "Evaluating the productivity gap between commercial and traditional beef production systems in Botswana," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 30-39.
    19. Breustedt, Gunnar & Latacz-Lohmann, Uwe & Tiedemann, Torben, 2011. "Organic or conventional? Optimal dairy farming technology under the EU milk quota system and organic subsidies," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 223-229, April.
    20. Dakpo, K Hervé & Desjeux, Yann & Jeanneaux, Philippe & Latruffe, Laure, 2016. "Productivity, efficiency and technological change in French agriculture during 2002-2014: A Färe-Primont index decomposition," 149th Seminar, October 27-28, 2016, Rennes, France 244793, European Association of Agricultural Economists.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technical Efficiency; Organic Farming; Grassland Farming; Para-Agriculture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • C54 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Quantitative Policy Modeling

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:daredp:1508. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iagoede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.