Sostenibilidad global de la agricultura en América Latina y El CaribeEvaluación de diferentes niveles de eficiencia e índice de productividad, utilizando el análisis envolvente de datos

Abstract

The analysis of agricultural productivity and its evaluation form part of an important basis for developing policies aimed at economic development so as to guarantee food security and improve farmers' income. The literature on the productivity of the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is broad, however, although there are few studies that assess the environmental performance of agriculture in this region. This approach is essential for the design of the economic and environmental policies of any State and, ultimately, for the sustainable development of this sector. With this objective in mind, this research uses the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for the environmental assessment, i.e., it intends to evaluate the global sustainability of LAC agriculture in the following ways: first, it analyzes the operational efficiency, environmental efficiency, unified efficiency (operational and environmental), returns to scale (RTS), and damages to scale (DTS) of 18 countries for 2012. Second, agricultural environmental performance is examined under three types of efficiency -natural efficiency, managerial efficiency, and unified efficiency (natural and managerial)- to determine whether countries adopt environmental regulations positively or negatively. In addition, the RTS and DTS types of 25 countries are determined for 2012. Finally, an agricultural environmental performance by evaluating of natural efficiency and managerial efficiency of 25 LAC countries during the period 2000-2012 is carried out. In addition, the Malmquist index is incorporated into the analysis to determine the degree of a frontier shift among multiple periods. The measurement of this index is used considering that there is a crossover efficiency frontier between the considered periods, which have been separated into two-year windows. Here, the frontier shift indicates the technology progress during an observed period. The conventional input variables of agriculture have been considered: Animal feed consumption of fertilizers, capital stock (crop capital and livestock capital), labor and land. Regarding the output variables, it has been included a desirable one, the value of the gross agricultural production, and an undesirable one, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture (CO2eq). In addition, the DEA analysis of this research uses the range of adjusted measurement (RAM) to easily incorporate the desirable output and the undesirable output into a unified treatment. In first place, this empirical study found that in 2012 the average operational efficiency (0.9953) and environmental efficiency (0.9846) were relatively high when measured separately. However, the unified efficiency (operational and environmental) (0.9789) is still below the operational efficiency and environmental efficiency. In this way, six countries reached the highest level of operational efficiency, environmental efficiency and unified efficiency (operational and environmental). In addition, three countries achieved the highest level of unified efficiency (operational and environmental), although they show a certain level of inefficiency in the other two types of analyzed efficiency. On the contrary, nine countries failed to reach the maximum value of unified efficiency (operational and environmental). Secondly, in LAC, during 2012, the natural efficiency (0.9408) is comparatively higher than the managerial efficiency (0.8137) and the unified efficiency (natural and managerial) (0.6877). In general terms, the countries of LAC have adopted in a negative way the regulation for the protection of the environment. In such a way, eighteen countries reached the maximum natural efficiency. Meanwhile, only twelve obtained the maximum managerial efficiency. Only five of them have achieved the highest level of unified efficiency (natural and managerial). Third, between 2000 and 2012 the results, on average, confirm that in LAC, the natural efficiency (0.9586) is always above the managerial efficiency (0.7910). In this case, seventeen countries achieved the maximum natural efficiency, while four countries achieved maximum managerial efficiency. This means between 2000 and 2012 the LAC countries were concerned firstly to reach their objectives of production objectives (measured by the value of agricultural production), and secondly by the use of technological innovations to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture (CO2eq). In addition, the Malmquist index of the low natural efficiency frontier (1.0931) is always above the Malmquist index of the managerial efficiency frontier (1.0222) during the evaluated period. However, the results show that both Malmquist indices are greater than the unit (1.0). That is to say, there is a shift in the efficiency frontier due to technological progress in the agricultural sector of LAC. Finally, it is interesting to note that nine countries (Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Mexico) reached maximum levels of efficiency in the three analyses that were carried out. So, it can be concluded that these countries are focusing on achieving better environmental performance for the recovery of the economy through better agricultural practices. Therefore, these countries should be used as a benchmark for those countries that show a low performance in agricultural activity, so that they can adopt those practices that can contribute to improving their levels of efficiency.