Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTHER RESEARCH
In this application, energy and energy based intensities are estimated
separately for each of the EU countries, and further aggregated in a natural
way that highlights variations in structure and intensity. The evolution of
energy and energy based intensities for EU agriculture is of variable signs
and magnitude. The decomposition of input intensities show that, in
general, price effects have a very limited contribution to changes in energy
intensity, and even less in energy-based input intensity, relative to quasi-
fixed inputs and technical change effects. The results suggest the
difficulties involving general directions of policy opportunities for
agricultural developments concerning energy as each country effects are
very different from the average.
Thus, a very usual pattern in the evolution is towards decreases in
energy intensity and, more pronounced, energy-based inputs intensity. The
larger decline in energy-based input intensity is a consequence of the
different signs of the trend effects: intensity decreasing for energy based
inputs and intensity increasing for energy, in general. However, the
particular composition of price, capital and labour effects is very variable.
With regard to energy intensity, if the evolution after the current
oil crisis mimics the evolution in the early 80s, then the effect will be a
decrease in energy intensity, with minor adjustments due to short-run
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