David Treguer

• PhD
• Economist at World Bank

Concern over increasing water scarcity has led to the introduction of the concept of agricultural water productivity and an emphasis on interventions to achieve ‘more crop per drop’. Yet, a strong debate continues on how the concept is to be defined and used. Drawing largely from the irrigation literature, the origins of the concept and its methodo...

Digital technologies have significant potential to improve efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability in the food system. A range of digital technologies are already leading to: better informed and engaged consumers and producers, smarter farms, and improved public services. Adoption of digital technologies varies significantly across cou...

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easi...

The international community aims to eradicate extreme poverty, and to do so in a sustainable manner. This chapter suggests that climate change poses a major obstacle to this challenge. Climate-related shocks and stresses – from natural disasters, to agricultural impacts and health shocks – already prevent households from escaping poverty. Poor peop...

Expectations are that the agricultural sector will have to expand the use of water for irrigation to meet rising food demand, while at the same time the competition for water resources is growing in many regions. Increasing water productivity in agriculture is widely seen as a critical response to help address this challenge. Yet much of the public...

Green growth is about making growth processes resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient without necessarily slowing them. This paper aims at clarifying these concepts in an analytical framework and at proposing foundations for green growth. The green growth approach proposed here is based on (1) focusing on what needs to happen over the next 5...

Research efforts to allow large-scale conversion of cellulose into biofuels are being undertaken in the US and EU. These efforts are designed to increase logistic and conversion efficiencies, enhancing the economic competitiveness of cellulosic biofuels. However, not enough attention has been paid to the future market conditions for cellulosic biof...

The United States and the European Union have been implementing sizeable biofuel support programmes since the beginning of the decade. Supporting the biofuel industry raises the price of the agricultural feedstock, and hence increases the farmer revenue and reduces the need for direct income support. Thus, for a given objective of agricultural inco...

Many studies have investigated the net energy balance of biofuel products (in terms of savings on fossil fuels) and assessed the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from substituting biofuels for fossil fuel. These studies provide very different results, with net balance ranging from highly positive to negative. Our study analyses a large sample...

Ethanol production has recently surged in response to biofuel policies and increased fossil oil prices. We develop a partial equilibrium model focused on U.S. corn-based ethanol production with downside risk-averse farmers to assess the consequences of ethanol production on agricultural volatility. We report substantial effects on the distribution...

The strong biofuel expansion experienced in the European Union (EU) originates in the incentives set up by Member States (MSs) within a global framework provided by the EU. A significant part of the EU rapeseed production (more than half) is now channeled into the energy market. MSs support the development of biofuels through subsidies/tax exemptio...

Biofuels are being extensively developed around the world thanks to the support of states, which is a necessary condition for their production. Thus, the focus of this dissertation is to study the regulation of biofuel policies. More precisely, this work intends to enlighten the strong links between biofuel and agricultural policies. Policies direc...

Les biocarburants connaissent un développement rapide dans de nombreux pays grâce au soutien apporté par les Etats, qui est une condition nécessaire de leur production. Ainsi, cette thèse vise à étudier la régulation des politiques de soutien aux biocarburants. Plus précisément, ce travail a pour objectif d'éclairer les liens étroits tissés entre l...

En mars 2007, le Conseil européen a annoncé qu’à l’horizon 2020, une proportion minimale de 10 % de biocarburants devrait être incorporée dans les carburants utilisés pour le transport routier. Les pouvoirs publics communautaires mettent en avant trois facteurs principaux pour justifier une telle ambition : la réduction des émissions de gaz à effet...

The European Union has launched an ambitious policy aiming at increasing the use of biofuels in land transport “with a view to contributing to objectives such as meeting climate change commitments, environmentally friendly security of supply and promoting renewable energy sources”. Another motivation, at least for some member states, is that the de...

EU funded project n° 513666 TradeAG Working Paper ; 07/12

Given the current situation with the high price of oil (an average of $53 per barrel in 2005) and the risk of global warming, the European Union (EU) is reinforcing its objectives related to the production of biofuels: they should account for 5.75% of the overall fuel consumption by 2010 in France, as opposed to 1% in 2005. In keeping with the obje...

Abstract Following the EU directives which aim at developing biofuels up to 5.75% of the total fuels used for terrestrial transportation purposes, the French government has announced that a supplementary 800 000 t agreement of biofuels will be produced by 2007. Rapeseed methyl ester (mixed with diesel oil) will then be produced up to nearly 1 00...

Following the EU directives which aim at developing biofuels up to 5.75% of the total fuels used for terrestrial transportation purposes, the French government has announced that a supplementary 800 000 tons’ agreement of biofuels will be produced by 2007. Rapeseed Methyl Ester (RME, mixed with diesel oil) will then be produced up to nearly 1 Milli...

La réforme de la politique agricole, prévue au plus tôt pour 2005, a été marquée par trois grandes étapes, une première proposition de la commission en juillet 2002, puis une adaptation de cette proposition en janvier 2003 qui en atténuait déjà nettement les impacts économiques, enfin l'accord de Luxembourg entre Etats en juin 2003. Pour fournir de...

By the end of year 2010, each member state of the European Union (the EU) ought to incorporate 5.75% of bio-fuels in the total of fuels used for transportation purposes. In order to achieve such a target, tax incentives are implemented by the French government given that the production of bio-fuels still remains unprofitable, even if oil prices are...

D'une situation de faible importance dans la sole agricole française (324 000 hectares en 2004 dont 300 000 hectares de colza), les cultures énergétiques devraient connaître un rapide accroissement de leur surface afin de permettre d'atteindre un niveau d'incorporation de 5,75% de biocarburants dans les carburants fossiles à l'horizon 2010 (valeur...

This article aims at questioning the welfare consequences of the massive biofuel production plan that will be set up in France. These consequences are twofold. On the one hand, we will strive to measure the agricultural surplus generated by the production of energy crops, on the other hand, we will assess how these new crops can help to maintain so...

Many recent studies have investigated the net energy value (in terms of savings of fossil fuel) of biofuel products and have assessed how much greenhouse gases emissions was curtailed by substituting biofuels for fossil fuel. Many of these studies rely on life cycle analyses, but some of them include also a more systemic modeling approach, while a...

In the EU, the biofuels policy now has a significant impact on some sectors, such as the oilseeds, and future targets are likely to affect also the grains and sugar market. The paper provides a background information regarding the EU policy on biofuels. The purpose is to assess whether this policy may lead to an increase use of European agricultura...