Quantity and monetary value of agrochemical pollution from intensive farming in Indonesia

Purpose This study aims to measure the environmental performance of intensive farming and to estimate agrochemical waste in physical and monetary terms. The intensive farming provides adverse impacts including health and environmental quality associated with the use of agrochemicals. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a theory of environmental efficiency that measures how efficient the farm uses agrochemical inputs. The efficiency was estimated using a set of farm level data of intensive farming that use agrochemicals. Data were compiled from a survey of randomly selected 240 farmers who operated intensive farming in three regions of Java in 2014. Findings The results show that the performance of intensive farming was low. This condition caused agrochemical waste leading to the externality. Taking the external costs into account resulted in improvement in efficiency of agrochemicals. The actual level of agrochemicals was about a hundred times higher than the most efficient level. Research limitat...