Public Awareness on Environmental Degradation.
Before discussing/investigatingdiscussing or investigating the possibility of having the condition of achieving both the highest economic and ecological efficiency, it'sit is necessary to clarify the relationship between the two types of efficiencies and their determinants. Although there are rather numerous studies estimating the economic and ecological efficiencyefficiencies of different agricultural products, a little effort has been made to assess the actual relationship andbetween the two efficiencies, or to make deep comparisons between the two efficienciesthem. In this study, the economic and ecological efficiencyefficiencies were estimated for the rice paddies of Kordkooye, Iran. The Economiceconomic efficiency considered the benefits and costs of the paddy farms. The ecological efficiency investigated the environmental impacts of using agricultural inputs. Then, the statistical relationship between the two efficiencies and their determinants werewas examined.
In order to estimate ecological efficiency, the environmental impacts of using agricultural inputs were initially estimated. Then, using estimates of the environmental impacts as bad outputs, ecological efficiency for each farm werewas calculated. Correlations between economic and ecological efficiency waswere examined by Pearson tests, and by separate empirical investigation of determinants of the efficiencies, separately. The three processing sections are explained below.
The life cycle assessment is the most common and widely used procedure to assess environmental impacts caused by agricultural production.