Trade-offs between economic, environmental and social sustainability on farms using a latent class frontier efficiency model: Evidence for Spanish crop farms

PLoS One. 2022 Jan 10;17(1):e0261190. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261190. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

This article studies trade-offs of farms in terms of economic sustainability (proxied here by technical efficiency), environmental sustainability (proxied here by farmers' commitment towards the environment) and social sustainability (proxied here by farmers' contribution to on farm well-being and communities' well-being). We use the latent class stochastic frontier model and create classes based on three separating variables, representing farms' environmental sustainability and social sustainability. The application to a sample of Spanish crop farms shows that more environmentally sustainable farms are likely to have lower levels of technical efficiency. However, improvements in social concerns, both towards own farm and the larger community, may lead to improved technical efficiency levels. In general, our study provides evidence of trade-offs for farms between economic sustainability and environmental sustainability, but also between environmental sustainability and social sustainability.

MeSH terms

  • Crop Production / economics*
  • Crop Production / methods
  • Environment*
  • Farmers / psychology*
  • Humans
  • Interviews as Topic
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Social Welfare
  • Spain

Grants and funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support for data collection from Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrícolas (INIA) in Spain and from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica (I + D + i), Project Reference Number RTA2012−00002-00-00. This work is also supported by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in the framework of the Open Access Publishing Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.