Resource use in lithuanian agricultural sector

Abstract

Resource use efficiency is a critical issue for a competitive and sustainable economic activity. Indeed, resource use efficiency implies both economic and environmental consequences. Therefore, a sustainable rural development policy is required to promote resource use efficiency. In order to identify the prospective directions for strategic management of the resource in Lithuanian agricultural sector, the trends of the resource use therein are to be identified. The aim of the present paper is to analyse the trends of the resource use in Lithuanian agricultural sector and thus identify the most problematic areas. The concept of decoupling is used to describe the underlying changes in the resource use. The World Input-Output Database (WIOD) is applied for the analysis. The research focuses on energy use, land use, material extraction and carbon emission from the agricultural sector. The results show that the period of 1995–2009 was specific with weak (relative) decoupling of the material extraction from the economic activity and expansive negative decoupling of the use of water resources from the economic activity.