Climate change mitigation and agricultural development models: Primary commodity exports or local consumption production?

•Agricultural productivity search is constrained by environmental preoccupations•What agricultural models to be adopted to improve productivity while limiting environmental effects?•The role of market orientation is examined by assessing the effect of agricultural exports on greenhouse gas emissions•It is found that the proportion of primary commodity exports in agricultural production increases greenhouse gas emissions.•The results are robust to different data sources, and to the inclusion of additional controls.

The increasing demand for agricultural products partly due to the high population growth requires agriculture to struggle for productivity improvement. However, productivity search is constrained by environmental preoccupations, raising the question of agricultural development models to be adopted to increase productivity while limiting environmental consequences. This paper examines the role of market orientation by assessing the effect of agricultural commodity export on greenhouse gas emissions relatively to local market oriented agricultural production model. Using panel data from 1986 to 2010 for 136 countries around the world, and accurate instrumental variables technique, the findings suggest that the proportion of primary commodity export in agricultural production increases greenhouse gas emissions. These results are robust to different sources of agricultural export and environmental data, and to the inclusion of additional control variables.