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

Amanda Sahrbacher, Jordan Hristov and Mark Brady

Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, 2017, vol. 98, issue 3, 111-144

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.

Keywords: Common; Agricultural; Policy; (CAP).EFA; measures.Biodiversity.Ecosystem; services.Stakeholder; interactions.Agent-based; modelling; (ABM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Journal Article: A combined approach to assess the impacts of Ecological Focus Areas on regional structural development and agricultural land use (2017)
Journal Article: A combined approach to assess the impacts of Ecological Focus Areas on regional structural development and agricultural land use (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rae:jouraf:v:98:y:2017:i:3:p:111-144

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