Assessment of the Environmental Sustainability of Family Farming: The Case of Cereal Sector in Tunisia

Family farming (FF) plays a key role in local economies that contribute to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) worlwilde and especially in developing countries. Since 2014, the international agenda of the united nations has paid more attention to promote FF at the core of agricultural, environmental and social policies. Accordingly, many efforts at the national, regional and global levels have been made to support FF. In this context, it is so relevant to define tools that help monitor farmers’ performance and assist in better targeting policy measures. The objective of this study is to assess to what extent Tunisian farms, specialized in cereals production, are technically and environmentally efficient. To do so, we use a methodological approach that integrates pollution considerations based on state contingent techniques. Our results indicate that technical efficiency of family farms is slightly lower in bad (59%) than in good (64%) growing conditions while environmental efficiency can be improved more under good (65%) than bad (70%) growing conditions.