Transition to Sustainability: A DEA Evaluation of Agricultural Systems in EU Candidate and Neighbouring Countries

For the EU candidate countries, sustainable agriculture is a transition to developing a systemic concept that will allow them to identify the conditions and opportunities for a new orientation and creation of a socio-ecological development model. Based on this objective, we evaluated the sustainable agriculture of three EU accession candidate countries - Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine, and two neighboring countries from the EU - Poland and Romania. For this purpose, we have applied a non-parametric DEA econometric method to evaluate the efficiency of homogeneous decision-making units based on constructing a general frontier of production possibilities based on actual data (inputs - outputs). As a result of the specificity of the complex concept of sustainable agriculture, two DEA models were chosen (basic radial model and radial super efficiency model): the VRS hypothesis and the input-oriented approach. As a result of applying the DEA basic radial model, the sustainable agriculture systems included in the model obtained a technical efficiency score equal to one, meaning they are all equally efficient. To classify the efficient DMUs, Andersen and Petersen’s super efficiency model was used, and thus, the sustainable agriculture systems of Georgia and Romania were highlighted. In conclusion, the DEA method has generated information that allows further analysis of sustainable agriculture systems for groups of countries chosen according to different criteria.