SUMMARY
Successive CAP reforms have increased the exposure of European agriculture to market forces.As a result, farmers have become preoccupied with their competitiveness and have progressively adopted bestpractices. However, these long-run technological adjustments could be slowed down by eventual short-runfinancial constraints. This contribution measures the role of these financial constraints on the catching-upcomponent of total factor productivity for a panel of French farmers in Nord-Pas-de-Calais region during 1994-2001.For TFP estimates based on non-parametric distance functions, the second stage econometric resultsindicate that the technological adaptation is significantly conditioned by financial constraints.