Comparing Technical and Economic Efficiency among Organic and Conventional Italian Olive Farms

In many European states such as Spain and Italy there has been a significant growth of organic utilizable surface as a consequence of both a change in the model of agricultural production and also in order to satisfy arising demand of organic food. The purpose of this research was to investigate the level of technical, allocative and economic efficiency in Italian olive farms with two different system of farming as organic versus conventional using the dataset FADN (acronym of Farm Accountancy Data Network), which is a standardized database set up by the European Union to evaluate the impact of some actions correlated to the Common Agricultural Policy on farmers. The efficiency was investigated using a non parametric quantitative methodology called Data Envelopment Analysis or DEA. The results pointed out as organic olive farmers are more efficiently than conventional farmers even if allocative efficiency was lower in many of analyzed farms due to some pivotal variables such as land, agrarian capital and labor capital, which directly with the independent variable farm net income.