IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rae/jouraf/v98y2017i3p111-144.html

A combined approach to assess the impacts of EcologicalFocus Areas on regional structural developmentand agricultural land use

Author

Listed:
  • Amanda Sahrbacher

    (Department of Structural Development of Farms and Rural Areas, Leibniz Institute of AgriculturalDevelopment in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, 06120 Halle (Saale),Germany)

  • Jordan Hristov

    (Department of Structural Development of Farms and Rural Areas, Leibniz Institute of AgriculturalDevelopment in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, 06120 Halle (Saale),Germany)

  • Mark V. Brady

    (Department of Economics, SLU and Centre for Environmental and Climate Research (CEC),Scheelevägen 15 D, 220 07 Lund, Sweden)

Abstract

The 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introducedcompulsory‘greening’measures with the goal to mitigate environmental degradationcaused by intensive agriculture. This paper aims to investigate how the implementationof the Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) obligation will affect regional agricultural devel-opment, the economic performance of farms and land use (including choices of EFAmeasures) in two representative EU regions. The research approach combines agent-based modelling (ABM) with stakeholder interactions to evaluate how farmers arelikely to adapt to the new policy framework and the implications for their behaviour ofthe different components of the EFA obligation. Our results show that structuralimpacts 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 farmersrather than being effective for improving the environment. However, general concernsby farmers for biodiversity and the potential benefits for developing sustainable agriculture were revealed during the stakeholder workshops. We conclude that the largeflexibility in choice of measures, watering down of the EFA regulations, implementa-tion at the farm scale and lack of spatial targeting will all but eliminate any potentialenvironmental benefits of the greening measures and subsequently, undermine farmers’and citizens’confidence in the CAP and its makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Amanda Sahrbacher & Jordan Hristov & Mark V. Brady, 2017. "A combined approach to assess the impacts of EcologicalFocus Areas on regional structural developmentand agricultural land use," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 98(3), pages 111-144.
    • Handle: RePEc:rae:jouraf:v:98:y:2017:i:3:p:111-144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs41130-017-0051-8.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:rae:jouraf:v:98:y:2017:i:3:p:111-144. 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: Nathalie Saux-Nogues (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.