Assessment of Pesticide and Fertilizer Consumption and Its Effects on Agricultural Output in Romanian Farms

The requirements of the European Green Deal on climate and environment have been included in the two strategies launched in 2020, namely, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Biodiversity Strategy. The aim is to design a healthy, fair, and environmentally friendly agri-food system by 2030. According to these strategies, the EU wants to reduce the dependence of agricultural production on pesticides, antibiotics and on the overuse of chemical fertilizers, in conjunction with the increase in organically cultivated areas and set aside areas. The aim of the study is to assess the pesticide and fertilizer consumption by Romanian farms and to analyse their effects on agricultural output. The study uses the FADN data from 2016, 2017 and 2018. The paper estimates a Cobb-Douglas production function for crop farms in Romania using the control function method with the capital as a state variable and labour as a free variable. Farms were divided into four groups according to size, and for each group, a production function was estimated. An analysis of the use of crop protection and fertilizers depending on the size of the farm showed that in Romania, the smallest farms are the ones that make the most intensive use of both fertilizers and crop protection and might be most affected by the requirements. The estimation of the production function showed that the small farms have the highest elasticity of fertilizers with respect to the output, more than double in comparison to the next farm group. The elasticity of crop protection is also largest for the small farms, but very large farms and medium farms have also large elasticities.