Rural development and sustainable agriculture in advanced economies: socioeconomic realities—environmental efficiency nexus

Land management practices sometimes fail to reflect natural resource scarcity and real constraints in water availability and soil quality, possibly determining social, economic, and environmental consequences. In this context, managing land resources to maintain human and ecological needs remains a major global challenge. Improving resource use efficiency in agricultural production is therefore expected to play an important role in ensuring global food and water security. Based on this perspective, the present study introduces regional-based modeling approaches to resource use efficiency in crop production—focusing on olive groves—on the base of official statistics and other information sources. More specifically, an exploratory analysis of the substitutability of ecological, social, and economic targets is proposed, and the complementarity, coherence, and contradictions of these results with the national contexts and continental policy framework are discussed.