Tracking carbon footprint in French vineyards: A DEA performance assessment

Abstract In recent years, companies have become increasingly concerned about environmental performance and the impact of their activity on the environment. Although the growing interest in sustainability, life-cycle assessment and carbon footprint analysis in literature is observed, there is still a lack of studies proposing evaluation methods to assess the performance efficiency of companies under these new constraints. Our article furthers our knowledge in the field by providing an in-depth investigation of the operational performance of wine estates in the presence of composite indicators of carbon footprint. The calculated carbon footprint is related to vineyard practices with a major focus on pesticides, fertilizers and fuel use. We suggest in this article for the first time how to track the active ingredients in fertilizers and pesticides that contribute to carbon footprint. The methodology is based on an application of a classic radial model for an input-oriented minimization problem using data envelopment analysis. The proposed approach is applied to 38 wine producing companies in the Bordeaux region of France to estimate technical efficiency in the presence of carbon footprint. Research results show the percentage of carbon footprint contribution in average terms, from pesticides, fertilizers and fuel. Our results confirm that the carbon footprint effect in vineyards caused by the use of fuel is more than double the impact of pesticides and fertilizers. This strong vulnerability on fuel could do matter to factors guiding farmers' choice of vineyard practices. Additionally, clear improvement targets for the firms, which are inefficient in terms of labor force, net-fixed assets, and carbon footprint, are provided for enhancing their performance. We discuss managerial implications to be put in practice, and outline the suggestions for future studies.

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