European agri-environmental policy has diverse and competing objectives. The Common Agricultural Policy has been the main policy framework guiding the European Union (EU) and its member states in the ...design and implementation of both mandatory and voluntary agri-environmental policy instruments. Voluntary agri-environmental schemes, which were introduced in the 1990s, continue to play a central role in meeting the EU’s environmental and climate objectives. We find that in achieving their objectives these schemes have faced problems including limited environmental impact, low adoption by farmers, and conflicts between their environmental and income support objectives. The article also finds scant empirical evidence concerning the environmental and economic impacts of the agri-environmental schemes. The article concludes with a discussion of the lessons from past experiences and potential future research and policy directions aimed at increasing the EU’s achievement of agri-environmental and climate objectives.
The Income Stabilisation Tool (IST), which was recently added to the European Common Agricultural Policy's risk management toolkit, is a mutual fund that aims at stabilising farmers' income. We ...investigate the drivers of farmers' participation in an IST for the apple sector in the Autonomous Province of Trento in Italy, which is the only region that has operationalised the IST in the European Union. Our analysis is based on a theoretical framework based on the Unified Theory of Use and Acceptance of Technology. Using a three‐year panel dataset of 3268 farm households, we estimated a logit model with the Mundlak–Chamberlain procedure. Our results show that higher crop production specialisation, associated with greater risk exposure, favours participation in the IST. Similarly, previous experience with mutual funds increases the acceptance of the IST. The analysis also provides evidence of how the new tool interacts with existing on‐farm protection strategies, leading to a discussion of the presence of adverse and advantageous selection effects. Our paper sheds light on farmers' acceptance of newly implemented sector‐specific ISTs and generates better knowledge and understanding of lock‐ins and levers that influence participation in such schemes, which are relevant to other EU regions or member states that are considering the introduction of ISTs.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Agricultural intensification and landscape homogenisation are major drivers of biodiversity loss in European agricultural landscapes. Improvements require changes in farming practices, but empirical ...evidence on farmers’ motivations underlying their on-farm biodiversity management remains fragmented. To date, there is no aggregated overview of behavioural determinants that influence European farmers’ decisions to implement biodiversity-friendly farming practices. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by conducting a systematic literature review of 150 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2022. We identified 108 potential determinants of farmers’ behaviour, which were integrated into a multilevel framework. The results show that the farmers’ decisions are complex and often non-directional processes, shaped by numerous external (at a society, landscape, community, and farm level) and internal factors. These factors are embedded in regional and cultural contexts. However, the analysis of study sites indicates that the spatial coverage of scientific evidence on biodiversity-friendly farming measures is uneven across Europe. Given the diversity of local and socio-cultural conditions, there is a need for public policies, including the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, to address more specifically determinants encouraging biodiversity-friendly farm management. This entails reflecting culture-specific perspectives and incorporating experiential knowledge into multilevel policy design processes, as well as offering regionally adapted advice on measure implementation and biodiversity impacts.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
As a multi‐objective policy, the EU Common Agricultural Policy continues to secure significant income support for farmers as one of the nine specific objectives. We estimate the income transfer ...efficiency of a broad set of pivotal policy measures, focusing on the effects of farm structure on income transfer efficiency. We use dynamic modelling, based on a micro‐data panel of Italian farms for the period 2008–2014, allowing for endogeneity, simultaneity bias, and omitted variables. In line with previous studies and economic expectations, we find that decoupled direct payments provide the highest contribution to agricultural incomes, followed by agri‐environmental payments and on‐farm investment subsidies. Coupled payments have no significant impacts on farmers’ income. Generally, for all analysed Common Agricultural Policy measures, large farms benefit from greater transfer efficiency levels compared with medium and small farms. These differences among instruments and across farms suggest that policy‐participation costs may play a pivotal role, together with the economic structure of farms, in determining the income transfer efficiency of CAP policies.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Throughout British membership of the European Union (EU), agricultural policy was largely determined by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This was viewed by the UK as a dysfunctional policy and ...while periodic reforms meant that the EU moved slowly in the direction advocated by the UK, many of the main policy elements remained in place. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have always enjoyed a measure of policy freedom in agriculture and have diverged from England in some areas. This article explores the extent of de-Europeanisation in the agricultural sectors in the UK and the patterns of divergence between them, focusing primarily on the development of policies for agricultural support that will replace those in place under the CAP. Overall, there has been substantial divergence in policy, but also areas of continuity, which means that processes of de-Europeanisation in the UK agricultural sectors has been uneven.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
16.
The State of Family Farms in the World Graeub, Benjamin E.; Chappell, M. Jahi; Wittman, Hannah ...
World development,
11/2016, Volume:
87
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
•Development of a methodological approach to characterize global Family farm sector.•Family farms constitute over 98% of all farms.•Family farms manage 53% of agricultural land.•Family farms meet ...36–114% of the domestic caloric requirements.•Case studies of Brazil and Malawi demonstrate diverse range of policy approaches, in relation to policy best practice.
2014 was the United Nations’ International Year of Family Farming, yet the importance of family farming for global food security is still surprisingly poorly documented. In a review of agricultural census data, we find that globally family farms constitute over 98% of all farms, and work on 53% of agricultural land. Across distinct contexts, family farming plays a critical role for global food production. We present two examples of policy approaches toward family farmers—Brazil and Malawi—to provide insight into some of the complexities and challenges behind the global numbers.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
This paper investigates the relationship between EU agricultural subsidies and agricultural labor productivity growth by estimating a conditional convergence growth model. We use more representative ...subsidy indicators and a wider coverage (panel data from 213 EU regions over the period 2004–2014) than have been used before. We find that, on average, EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies increase agricultural labor productivity growth, but this aggregate effect hides important heterogeneity of effects of different types of subsidies. The positive effect on productivity comes from decoupled subsidies, that is, Pillar I decoupled payments and some Pillar II payments. Coupled Pillar I subsidies have the opposite effect: they slow down productivity growth.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The increased availability of systematically acquired high spatial and temporal resolution optical imagery improves the characterization of dynamic land surface processes such as agriculture. The use ...of time series phenology can help overcome limitations of conventional classification-based mapping approaches encountered when, for example, attempting to characterize grassland use intensity. In Europe, permanent grasslands account for more than one third of all agricultural land and a considerable share of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget is devoted to grasslands. The frequency and timing of mowing events is an important proxy for grassland use intensity and methods that allow characterizing grassland use intensity at the parcel level and over large areas are urgently needed. Here we present a novel algorithm that allows detecting and quantifying the number and timing of mowing events in central European grasslands. The algorithm utilizes all imagery acquired by Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat-8 OLI for one entire year as available from the NASA Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel dataset. Cloud-free observations from both sensors are first synthesized through compositing at 10-day interval. Machine learning algorithms are then used to derive a grassland stratum. The intra-annual growing season profiles of NDVI values are subsequently assessed and compared to an idealized growing season trajectory. Residuals between the idealized trajectory and a polynomial model fit to the observed NDVI values are then evaluated to detect potential mowing events. We demonstrate and evaluate the performance of our algorithm and utilize its large area analysis capabilities by mapping the frequency and timing of grassland mowing events in 2016 on the national-scale across Germany. Our results suggest that 25% of the grassland area is not used for mowing. Validation results however suggest a relatively high omission error of the algorithm for areas that only experienced a single mowing event. The date ranges of detected mowing events compare overall well to a sample of interpreted time series points and to farm level reports on mowing dates. The mapped mowing patterns depict typical management regimes across Germany. Overall, our results exemplify the value of multi-sensor time series applications for characterizing land use intensity across large areas.
•Current EO data sources provide unprecedented temporal data at parcel level detail.•Opportunity for improved characterization of large-area grassland management•Novel approach exploits phenology signal from integrated S2 & L8 time series.•Algorithm presented and first national scale assessment for Germany performed.•Approach is sensitive to parcel level mowing regimes, regional insights provided.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A new 5-year Common Agricultural Policy has been in place since January 2023. Like its predecessors, this new policy will fail to deliver significant climatic and environmental benefits. We show how ...the Green Architecture of the policy relying on the three instruments of conditionality, eco-schemes, and agri-environment and climate measures could have been used more consistently and effectively. Our proposals are based on core principles of public economics and fiscal federalism as well as on research results in agronomy and ecology. Conditionality criteria are the minimal requirements that every agricultural producer must meet. Farmers should be rewarded for efforts that go beyond these basic requirements through eco-schemes for global public goods complemented by agri-environment and climate measures centred on local public goods. Eco-schemes should cover the whole agricultural area by targeting permanent grasslands, crop diversification, and green cover and non-productive agro-ecological infrastructures. We discuss trade-offs that our proposals could generate.
This paper looks at the European Union as a laboratory to study how ‘spatially targeted’ policies (i.e. the European Union Cohesion and Rural Development Policies) interact with sectoral ‘spatially ...blind’ policies (i.e. the Common Agricultural Policy), jointly shaping regional growth dynamics. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the European Union Cohesion Policy has a positive influence on economic growth in all regions. However, its impact is stronger in the most socio-economically advanced areas and is maximised when its expenditure is complemented by Rural Development and Common Agricultural Policy funds. The top-down funding of the Common Agricultural Policy seems to be able to concentrate some benefits in the most deprived areas of the Union. This suggests that bottom-up policies are not always the best approach to territorial cohesion. Top-down policies may – in some cases – be effective in order to channel resources to the most socio-economically deprived areas. Territorial cohesion requires the flexible integration and coordination of both bottom-up and top-down approaches.
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