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Organic and Conventional Farming: a Comparison Analysis through the Italian FADN

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  • Cisilino, Federica
  • Madau, Fabio A.

Abstract

This paper shows some results arisen from a wider research on economic and environmental sustainability of organic farming. It focuses on organic and conventional farming comparison through an investigation of Italian FADN data. In order to identify some of the main differences between organic and conventional farms a “distance analysis” has been carried out. The study aims to highlight some of the main characteristics of those two groups of farms to better address differences (if any) in production technology, costs and revenues. Furthermore it shows the findings of a non-parametric efficiency analysis on the Italian olive-growing farms. The purpose is to estimate difference in efficiency and productivity between organic and conventional olive producers. Results reveal that looking at the average values on Invested Areas, conventional farms’ Gross Production is significantly higher than the organic ones, as the Net Margin, as the Net Product and Costs. The average values on Total Labour Force instead, shown that, even if conventional farms still have higher values than organic ones, the “distance” become shorter. That means that the two groups are quite similar and that, even if organic farms still produce a lower “economic value”, they better compensate productive factors, especially in terms of Labour Force. Regards to efficiency analysis, we found that organic olive-growing farms are more able in using their disposable resources (with reference to their own frontier), and the higher efficiency permits them to compensate the lower productivity with respect to the conventional farms.

Suggested Citation

  • Cisilino, Federica & Madau, Fabio A., 2007. "Organic and Conventional Farming: a Comparison Analysis through the Italian FADN," MPRA Paper 21786, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:21786
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Zein Kallas & Teresa Serra & José Maria Gil, 2010. "Farmers’ objectives as determinants of organic farming adoption: the case of Catalonian vineyard production," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(5), pages 409-423, September.
    2. Rebecca Buttinelli & Raffaele Cortignani & Gabriele Dono, 2021. "Financial sustainability in Italian Organic Farms: An analysis of the FADN Sample," Economia agro-alimentare, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 23(3), pages 1-32.
    3. Kostlivý, V. & Fuksová, Z. & Dubec, J., 2017. "Farms Productivity Developments Based on Malmquist Production Indices," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 9(2), June.
    4. Cisilino, Federica & Bodini, Antonella & Zanoli, Agostina, 2019. "Rural development programs’ impact on environment: An ex-post evaluation of organic faming," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 454-462.
    5. Madau, Fabio A., 2011. "Parametric Estimation of Technical and Scale Efficiencies in Italian Citrus Farming," Agricultural Economics Review, Greek Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 12(1).
    6. Madau, Fabio A., 2012. "Technical and scale efficiency in the Italian Citrus Farming: A comparison between Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis(DEA) Models," MPRA Paper 41403, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Gabriela Trnková & Zdeňka Malá, 2013. "Analysis of inequality of gross added value of conventional and organic farms in selected EU countries," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 61(7), pages 2883-2891.
    8. Djokoto, Justice G., 2015. "Technical efficiency of organic agriculture: a quantitative review," Studies in Agricultural Economics, Research Institute for Agricultural Economics, vol. 117(2), pages 1-11, August.
    9. Bonfiglio, Andrea & Henke, Roberto & Pierangeli, Fabio & D’Andrea, Maria Rosaria Pupo, 2018. "Direct payments and competitiveness. Assessing redistributive effects of internal convergence in Italy," 162nd Seminar, April 26-27, 2018, Budapest, Hungary 271955, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Francesco Vidoli & Giancarlo Ferrara, 2015. "Analyzing Italian citrus sector by semi-nonparametric frontier efficiency models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 641-658, September.
    11. Galluzzo, Nicola, 2014. "Analysis of efficiency in organic wine and olive farms in the Italian FADN dataset," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182978, European Association of Agricultural Economists.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    FADN Sampling Organic Farming Distance Efficiency Analysis;

    JEL classification:

    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

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