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Abstract
The improvement of the sustainable
performance of the agricultural sector is a priority of
the Swiss agricultural policy. The sustainability of Swiss
dairy farms located in the mountainous area might be
critical as many of them show a weak performance in
the use of their economic and/or social resources, and
sometimes also of their environmental resources. An
improvement of the sustainability of these farms
prerequisites to better know on a large scale their
sustainable performance and its determinants. For a
representative sample of 480 dairy farms, we perform
an assessment of their sustainable efficiency with the
“sustainable value”, an approach to assess corporate
sustainability based on the capital and opportunity cost
theories. Using a linear regression, we analyze the
determinants of the sustainable efficiency. The results
show a tight positive relationship between sustainable
performance and pure economic performance. The
intensity of the use of intermediate consumptions is
found to be the most important determinant of the
sustainable efficiency. Farms with a high sustainable
efficiency are those that use their intermediate
consumptions in the most efficient way. The part of
direct payments in the gross profit is shown to
negatively affect the sustainable efficiency. The
structural characteristics of the farms and the sociologic
characteristics of the farmer managers are shown to
hardly influence the sustainable efficiency.