Crop Production and Crop Diversity in France: A Spatial Analysis

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence of the effect of crop diversity on crop production and spillover effect. Based on the estimation of production functions with spatial concerns on an original and rich dataset, results of the study suggest that crop diversity has a positive and significant effect on crop production. Its marginal contribution is substantial when rainfall is low in the agroecosystem. Furthermore, spatial dependence is a major issue and could be explained by topographic, climatic and agronomic constraints. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.