Assessing the use of chemical inputs in UK agriculture and its impact on farm productivity and labour requirements

Agricultural policy is shifting in England to a model based on public money for public goods. Chapter 2 assesses the broader socio-economic effects at the territorial level of farms adopting ecological approaches to farming. These ecological approaches are growing in popularity and include low-input, organic, regenerative, conservation and agroecological farming. This chapter explores their potential growth over the next decade in two heterogeneous regions of South East England, namely North Kent and the High Weald. Q-methodology and Delphi Exercise are two stakeholder based approaches used to investigate the perspectives of different groups of farming related stakeholders. Results emphasise that there will need to be an increase in the skill level of the farm workforce in order to facilitate changes in farm practices. Therefore, policy may want to address the provision of education and experience as well as sourcing migrant labour depending on the farming context.

Chapter 3 estimates Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in a Cobb-Douglas production function framework. The estimation strategy applies generalised method of moments accounting for the use of chemical inputs which is absent in previous GMM estimations of TFP in the literature. Data is used from the Farm Accountancy Data Network for cereal crop farms from 2004-2018. As agricultural policy in the United Kingdom is heading towards the Environmental Land Management Scheme, some farmers might be encouraged to farm with a lower chemical intensity thereby making estimations adjusting for this variable more important within production function estimations.

Chapter 4 examines the farmer's return to education differentiating between organic and conventional farming. By using the 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age as a quasi-experiment with a Regression Discontinuity Design, we identify a causal relationship for the farmer's return to education on farm economic performance. Using data from a sample of English farms between 2011 and 2018 from the Farm Business Survey, we show: (i) a positive return to education on farm performance (ii) a higher education return in organic farming in comparison with conventional farming.