Do Field Crop Farms and Mixed Farms of Old and New EU Members Improve Productivity at the Same Rate? A Regional Level Approach

data contained in the Farm Accounting Data Network (FADN). Analyses covered the first four years following the extension of the European Union in 2004. The adopted units comprised average farms representing 80 regions belonging to eleven countries of EU-15 and four new EU member states. Estimation of the Malmquist total factor productivity (TFP) and its components was conducted using data envelopment analysis, separately for each of the two types of farms taking into consideration their economic size. The main findings concerning the pure technical efficiency change indicate that in the units from the old regions there was a slight improvement for field crop farms and stagnation for mixed farms, and a decrease in the units from the new regions, being bigger for mixed farms and smaller for field crop farms. The biggest effect was observed for the technical change index, with a bigger increase for crop farms from old regions than those from the new member states. The estimated Malmquist index confirms a conjecture that the more specialized farms more effectively improve overall productivity than mixed farms, where modernization efforts are more scattered. At the same time the average growth rate of TFP in crop farms from the EU-15 regions in the analyzed period was much faster that in analogous farms from the new regions. For mixed farms the difference in the rate of change was similar, but at a much lower level.