Inputs use in the agriculture of Emilia-Romagna: Farm comparison through the total factor productivity approach

In order to measure agriculture sustainability, the efficient use of inputs becomes a crucial issue. In this perspective, the analysts concentrate their attention on the total factor productivity index (TFP). In this view, Lynam and Herdt proposed the TFP as a suitable assessment of the sustainability of single crops, of cropping systems or of farming systems. Even if the TFP does not take into account the non-market output (social and environmental aspects), it is possible to argue that a negative trend of TFP represents a resource degradation if related to the generated outputs. On the other hand, the nonnegative trend of TFP represents a fitting measure of a sustainable agricultural system and of an efficient use of the resources. The aim of the paper is to analyze the productivity in the use of external factors in different types of farming at the Emilia-Romagna Region level, that is specialist field crops, specialist permanent crops and specialist milk production farms. A significant number of indexing procedures is accessible to evaluate the efficiency in converting inputs into outputs. In this paper, the TFP is estimated through an indirect evaluation of the quantity index of outputs and inputs of each farming system taken into account in the analysis. Purposely, the amount of the total sales is considered as a measure of the output, whereas intermediate consumption are considered as a measure of the inputs to evaluate the productivity of external factors (PEF). The value of chemicals and the value of fodders and supplements was considered in order to compute the productivity of these specifics inputs. Data, referring to the period 20002009, are collected from the farm accountancy data network of the Emilia-Romagna Region DG Agriculture. The study highlights how the PEF measured through the TFP approach seems to be an effective way to evaluate the sustainability of the use of agricultural resources. Even if the limit of this approach comes from the complexity in understanding the real in depth causes of the productivity changing (e.g. technical efficiency, scale efficiency), the use of number index to evaluate the TFP seems to be simple and fitting for a first exploratory investigation.