In modern conventional agriculture, increased productivity is achieved by implementing intensive crop techniques that require preliminary extractive and manufacturing activities that have a high impact on the environment. These impacts are triggered in the early stages of a farm’s productive activity when the inputs that are required are being produced and transported to the farm.The equivalent data for the organic farm describe the profile of a more environmentally friendly farming practice. Direct energy consumption on this farm was substantially lower than for any other group of rice producers in the sample. Its indirect energy consumption was more than 50% lower than its direct consumption. In contrast to conventional farms, it does not produce prior high-level environmental impacts. Its total energy consumption  was well below that of any other sub-sample , and its direct consumption was below the lowest rate of direct energy consumed by bomba rice producers .The organic farm not only consumed less energy in the final stage of agricultural production, but also in prior stages.

It is environmentally friendly in its dealings and requirements across the whole agribusiness cycle. As such, it provides a remarkable example that a sustainable, and at the same time highly profitable, farming system is feasible. However, according to results, it does not appear that a similar performance could be attained within the boundaries of conventional farming, where increased productivity requires increasing the use of chemical inputs and fossil fuels and, therefore, greater environmental damage.No economies of scope are to be found in this instance. On the contrary, there isan exponential relationship between productivity and environmental damage when we compare organic and conventional rice farms. These results are consistent with previous studies with other crops in terms of the increasing environmental damage caused by increasing the use of external inputs .GHG emissions per hectare were higher for the sub-sample of conventional farms with an above median economic performance, 7.17 and 5.61 tons of carbon dioxide per year per hectare  for gleva and bomba rice farms,respectively, than those with a lower economic performance , while they were substantially lower for the organicfarm.Therefore, our results suggest that the higher economic performance of rice farms is attained at the expense of greater air pollution.

Panel C provides data on the environmental impact needed to produce a physical unit of output and to obtain a monetary unit of income. As such, it relates the economic performance data in panel A to the environmental performance data in panel B.Overall, the data in panel C confirm previous results regarding the existence of a positive relationship between environmental performance and economic performance. While this relationship was strong with respect to energy consumption, it was weaker for GHG emissions.According to our results, the less productive gleva rice farms consumed 1.87MJ of total energy in producing one kilogram of rice, while the more productive farms required 2.03 MJ for one kilogram of output. The same increasing relationship is observed for bomba rice farms: the group of less productive farms needed 2.23 MJ, while the more upper productive required 2.77 MJ. Likewise,5.88 MJ was required to generate 1 € of income after wages in the less profitable group of gleva rice producers, while the more profitable group required 6.74 MJ.The same trend was found in conventional farms producing bomba rice .The results for GHG emissions are not conclusive. While gleva rice producers adhere to the aforementioned trend of increasing productivity resulting in a greater environmental impact: increasing emissions per kg of rice, as well as per€ of income, with increasing economic performance, the conventional bomba rice producers adhere to a declining trend: less productive farms require more emissions per kg of output , or per € of income  than their more productive counterparts .

It should perhaps be stressed that our results might be influenced by the fact that on rice farms the main emission is methane, which does not in factde pend so much on output as on the size and flooding cycles of the field. Emissionsof nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide were more closely related to productivity: high gleva economic performers released0.14 and 0.46 tCo2 per kg and per € of income after wages respectively compared to 0.10 and 0.32, respectively, in the case of low performers. The data in panel C also confirm our previous findings of panel A and B with respect to the organic farm. This farm required much less energy consumption per kilogram of output and per € of income than did their counterparts in the sample. Likewise, it produced lower field emissions than those of conventional farms per € of income . However, it produced more field emissions per kilogram of rice cropped,a fact that can be explained in terms of its lower productivity in physical units per UAA; nonetheless, it is more environmentally friendly when methane is excluded from the analysis.