Productivity and Emissions in Italian Agriculture: A Farm-Level Efficiency Analysis

Achieving the European Union climate-neutrality objectives requires metrics that jointly assess farm productivity and greenhouse gas emissions at a granular level. However, harmonized evidence for benchmarking the productivity–emissions nexus of Italian farms remains limited. This study quantifies undesirable outputs, measured as CO2-equivalent emissions, generated by Italian farms and derives attainable eco-efficiency benchmarks. We apply a farm-level, nonseparable undesirable-output Data Envelopment Analysis to Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network microdata (approximately 61,000 observations) over the period 2014–2021, treating value added and emissions as jointly produced. Two complementary efficiency measures are computed: an output-oriented efficiency score for value added and a bad-output-oriented efficiency score for emissions abatement. These are combined into a farm-size–resolved synthetic indicator capturing attainable improvements in both economic and environmental performance. The results reveal a clear divergence between economic and environmental performance, along with substantial heterogeneity across territories and farm-size classes. The proposed indicator supports policy targeting, benchmarking, and performance monitoring by identifying where the largest attainable emissions reductions can be achieved for a given level of value added.