Does the Adoption of Environmental Contracts Affect Farms’ Productivity and Efficiency?

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) must meet increasingly ambitious environmental objectives while ensuring food supply and farmers' income.We assess the impact of two instruments implemented in the CAP, agri-environmental schemes (AES) and organic subsidies, on farms' productivity and efficiency.We apply a stochastic frontier model and a difference-in-differences estimator to data on French farms specialized in crop production.Our results suggest that the adoption of AES and organic farming has no effect on farms' productivity and efficiency regarding their own production frontier.When compared to the entire sector, results show a negative causal effect of the adoption of organic practices on farms' efficiency between 2014 and 2020.Organic farms operate under a lower production frontier than conventional and AES farms regarding the metafrontier.L'adoption de contrats environnementaux affecte-t-elle la productivité et l'efficacité des exploitations agricoles ?Un éclairage à travers l'adoption de mesures agro-environnementales et climatiques (MAEC) et de la certification biologique La Politique agricole commune (PAC) doit concilier objectifs environnementaux, approvisionnement alimentaire et revenu des agriculteurs.Nous évaluons l'effet des MAEC et de l'agriculture biologique (AB) sur la productivité et l'efficacité des exploitations.