Determining agricultural impact on environment: Evidence for EU

As part of Serbia’s strategic goal of accession to the European Union (EU), harmonization with the agro-environmental policy is an important issue for the creators of Serbia’s agricultural and rural policy. The main goal of this study was to define a model of agro-environmental performance in Serbia and the countries of the EU to determine Serbia’s position in relation to other countries (EU-28). In this article, factor analysis was applied, with four factors extracted within the model: the degree of agricultural modernization that indirectly affects the environment, the degree of intensification of agricultural production with a direct effect on the environment, air pollution from agriculture, and energy use. The factor scores were used as variables within the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation method to rank countries according to the impact of agriculture on the environment