IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/frrfes/281221.html

A combined approach to assess the impacts of Ecological Focus Areas on regional structural development and agricultural land use

Author

Listed:
  • Sahrbacher, Amanda
  • Jordan Hristov, Jordan
  • Brady, Mark V.

Abstract

The 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introduced compulsory ‘greening’ measures with the goal to mitigate environmental degradation caused by intensive agriculture. This paper aims to investigate how the implementation of the Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) obligation will affect regional agricultural development, the economic performance of farms and land use (including choices of EFA measures) in two representative EU regions. The research approach combines agentbased modelling (ABM) with stakeholder interactions to evaluate how farmers are likely to adapt to the new policy framework and the implications for their behaviour of the different components of the EFA obligation. Our results show that structural impacts of EFA measures are minor in both regions. The most preferred alternatives (fallow land in Sweden and catch crops in Germany) are income preserving for farmers rather than being effective for improving the environment. However, general concerns by farmers for biodiversity and the potential benefits for developing sustainable agriculture were revealed during the stakeholder workshops.We conclude that the large flexibility in choice of measures, watering down of the EFA regulations, implementation at the farm scale and lack of spatial targeting will all but eliminate any potential environmental benefits of the greening measures and subsequently, undermine farmers’ and citizens’ confidence in the CAP and its makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Sahrbacher, Amanda & Jordan Hristov, Jordan & Brady, Mark V., . "A combined approach to assess the impacts of Ecological Focus Areas on regional structural development and agricultural land use," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 98(3).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:frrfes:281221
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.281221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/281221/files/Sahrbacher2017_Article_ACombinedApproachToAssessTheIm.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.281221?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jordan Hristov & Yann Clough & Ullrika Sahlin & Henrik G. Smith & Martin Stjernman & Ola Olsson & Amanda Sahrbacher & Mark V. Brady, 2020. "Impacts of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy “Greening” Reform on Agricultural Development, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Services," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(4), pages 716-738, December.
    2. Stéphanie Barral & Cecile Detang-Dessendre, 2023. "Reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (2023–2027): multidisciplinary views," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Springer, vol. 104(1), pages 47-50, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:frrfes:281221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inrapfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.