Decreasing Environmental Burden by improving efficiency of sugar beet production using data envelopment analysis approach

Environmental impact assessment is an important approach to achieve sustainable development. This study has investigated the environmental impact of sugar beet production. In addition data envelopment analysis was applied for detecting efficient units and decrease environmental impacts. In this study final environmental index of impact category consist of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, depletion of fossil resources and water resources were 0.138, 2.359, 2.055, 0.191 and 2.970, respectively. Based on these results, depletion of water resources had the greatest environmental impact. Global warming among other groups had minimal environmental impact. Data envelopment analysis can decrease burden of these impacts by converting present farms to target units. Results demonstrated CCR model decrease impact categories more than BCC model.