A harmonized and spatially explicit dataset from 16 million payments from the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy for 2015

Kimberly A Nicholas,Frida Villemoes,Edmund Aristid Lehsten,Mark V Brady,Murray W Scown

doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100236

Kimberly A Nicholas, Frida Villemoes + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100236

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Abstract

SummaryThe Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the largest budget item in the European Union, but varied data reporting hampers holistic analysis. Here we have assembled the first dataset to our knowledge to report individual CAP payments by standardized CAP funding measures and geolocation. We created this dataset by translating, geolocating to the county or province (NUTS3) level, and consistently harmonizing payment measures for over 16 million payments from 2015, originally reported by EU member states and compiled by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. This dataset and code allow in-depth analysis of over €60 billion in public spending by purpose and location for the first time, which enables both individual payment tracing and analysis by aggregation. These data are representative of the distribution of annual CAP payments from 2014 to 2020 and are of interest to researchers, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, and journalists for evaluating the distribution and impacts of CAP spending.

Highlights

The translated version included additional columns appended to assign each row to a standardized measure name by using the Rosetta Stone we created as a lookup table, amount of spending in euros, and a NUTS3 region for spatial analysis
We aggregated all of the translated country files to produce the ‘‘condensed year’’ file, which contains the total amount of spending for each Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) measure and NUTS3 region in the European Union (EU), suitable for broader-scale analyses and aggregation
We report total funding received during the 7-year CAP period rather were able to identify only a handful of payments made under than by year; the failure to consistently distinguish between EU measures from national as opposed to EU funding (Table S10), sible data showing payments by measure or by location finer than which could partly explain the difference between our total and member state

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture provides essential food and livelihoods for people, but land-use change, primarily driven by agriculture, causes the majority of global biodiversity loss[1] and 23% of climate heating.[2]. The current food system is criticized for harming both planetary and personal health, recognizing the urgent need to transform to healthy and sustainable food systems.[3,4]. Agricultural subsidies globally total over $700 billion (V640 billion),[5] with many reinforcing harmful practices. The European Union (EU) has pledged to be a global leader in sustainable agriculture, including making the ‘‘farm to fork’’ sustainable agriculture strategy a cornerstone of the European Green Deal.[6]. The principal policy for European agriculture is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the largest budget item in the EU. The CAP consists of two pillars: Pillar I comprises

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