7. Analysis of the Efficiency of Farming Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean Considering Environmental Issues

This paper provides a survey about environmental efficiency(EE) measure issue. The paper mainly focuses on nonparametricalmethods, particularly on DEA (Data EnvelopmentAnalysis) methods. First, the necessity of assessing the EE isconsidered due to its being required for sustainable systems,especially because this sustainability is threatened by negativefactors from the technological progress. On the other hand, theassessment of environmental efficiency is also related to productivity.Afterwards, the paper deals with different ways for includingenvironmental variables, which offer several perspectivesfor measuring efficiency with frontier methods. Finally,some studies, wherein the described methods are applied, arereported in regard to both, the exclusive scope of Latin Americaand the Caribbean Sea, and also to the contrast of these countrieswith other countries around the world. As conclusion, moreattention to the environmental aspects is highly recommendedin the efficiency analysis studies. It will provide an importantsupport for the mitigation of the damaging expected effects ofthe climate change.