Marginal Trade-Offs for Improved Agro-Ecological Efficiency Using Data Envelopment Analysis

• Main Authors: Tong Guang Ji, Ali Raza, Usman Akbar, Masood Ahmed, József Popp, Judit Oláh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Agronomy
• Subjects: data envelopment analysis; ecological efficiency; marginal rate; trade-offs
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/2/365

Today's agricultural management decisions impact food security and sustainable ecosystems, even when operating with back-to-basic operations. In such endeavors, policymakers usually need a quantitative tool, such as trade-offs margins, to effectively adjust resource consumption or production. This paper applies the weighted slack-based measurement (SBM-DEA) program to 136 developing countries’ agricultural performance. First, it finds the current agricultural efficiency and then makes marginal trade-offs on desirable-output variables (such as crop yield and forest area) to see the effective changes in undesirable-output (such as methane and nitrous oxide emissions). The results show that choosing effective marginal trade-offs does not deteriorate the relative efficiency of the decision-making units (DMUs) below the efficient frontier line. Thus, such a method enables the decision-makers to determine the best marginal trade-off points to reach the optimal efficiencies and decide which output factor needs special brainstorming to design effective policy.