Abstract

The impact of organic farming on greenhouse gas emissions is a much debated issue, which has been predominantly investigated by case studies. This paper seeks to provide empirical evidence at an aggregate level, considering a sample of OECD countries, in the period 1990-2010, and applying both parametric and non-parametric approaches. According to the results obtained, organic agriculture seems negatively associated to per capita emissions. However, it does not appear robustly associated with improvements in environmental efficiency in the agricultural sector. These findings, conditioned to some extent by the availability of unbalanced panel data, suggest the need for further research to assess the role that organic agriculture could play in mitigating climate change.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.