Assessment of sustainability of the European Union and Turkish agricultural sectors

The main aim of this paper is to analyze the efficiency of the Turkish agricultural sector in comparison with the European Union (EU) countries with respect to sustainability for the 1995-2005 periods. For this comparison, Malmquist index technique is used. The main findings of the current study indicate that total factor productivity increases during the 1995-2005 period mainly originating from the technological improvements for all the European countries. Furthermore, while the European Union countries total factor productivity show a 1.8 percent rise on average, the Turkish factor productivity declines nearly 2.0 per cent in the same period. As a result, one can argue that the gap between European Union countries and Turkey has widened from the sustainability perspective in the recent decade.