ORIGINAL RESEARCH
An Evaluation of Agri-Environmental Indicators
through a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Tool
in Germany, France, the Netherlands,
and Turkey
Serkan Gürlük, Gokhan Uzel
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Uludağ University, Department of Agricultural Economics, Bursa, Turkey
Submission date: 2015-11-23
Final revision date: 2016-03-09
Acceptance date: 2016-03-09
Publication date: 2016-07-22
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2016;25(4):1523-1528
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ABSTRACT
Our study investigates the historical achievements of agri-environmental and economic policies in order
to ensure food security in the nations of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Various agroeconomic
and environmental indicators are tested, such as per capita cereals, per capita meat production,
per capita milk production, yield of cereals, gross agricultural production value, fertilizer and pesticide
use efficiency, and total agricultural emissions. The study attempts to rank the countries according to
sustainability criteria. In the studies of ranking, multi-criteria decision-making methods are best suited
for effectively dealing with a number of multifaceted evaluation criteria. The current study employs the
technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution method to rank the countries according to the
above-mentioned criteria. Results show that Turkey was the closest to an optimal solution in 1980, while the
Netherlands was farthest from an optimal solution the same year. In 2013 the country closest to an optimal
solution was France. We can infer that economic indicators have some effects on ideal solutions because the
Netherlands has less agricultural land, but its agri-economic value is higher than in other countries.