The synergistic and trade-off effects of economic-environmental-health improvement in agriculture sector: evidence from China

Typical non-parametric frontier analysis based on material balance principle (MBP) is superior for measuring agricultural economic-environmental trade-offs when considering the flow of materials, but fails to incorporate the serious health effects caused by excessive use of pesticides. Here, using MBP-based data envelopment analysis, we measure the economic-environmental-health performances and trade-offs of agricultural production in China during 2006–2016. Evaluation results indicate that (i) the average agricultural sector would be able to produce current output with 16.3% fewer inputs; (ii) 17 million tons CO₂ reduction potentials (9.6% of total emissions in 2016) could be realized through technical efficiency promotion without damaging environmental, health, and economic performances; (iii) synergistic effects on agricultural performance promotion exist in 12 regions indicating that the improvement of technical efficiency and the adjustment of input mix would simultaneously lead to 0.2–74.3% reductions on costs and pollutions; and (iv) improving cost efficiency in 18 regions and improving pollution efficiency in another 11 regions would be the most beneficial strategies for their agricultural sectors which would lead to additional reductions on total (economic, environmental, and health) costs by 10.3–22.5%.