The EU-Wide Individual Farm Model for Common Agricultural Policy Analysis (IFM-CAP v.1): Economic Impacts of CAP Greening

Abstract

This report presents the first EU-wide individual farm level model (IFM-CAP) aiming to assess the impacts of CAP towards 2020 on farm economics and environmental effects. The rationale for such a farm-level model is based on the increasing demand for a micro simulation tool capable to model farm-specific policies and to capture farm heterogeneity across the EU in terms of policy representation and impacts. Based on Positive Mathematical Programming, IFM-CAP seeks to improve the quality of policy assessment upon existing aggregate and aggregated farm-group models and to provide assessment of distributional effects over the EU farm population. To guarantee the highest representativeness of the EU agricultural sector, the model is applied to every EU-FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network) individual farm (83292 farms). The report provides a detailed description of the first IFM-CAP model version (IFM-CAP V.1) in terms of design, mathematical structure, data preparation, modelling livestock activities, allocation of input costs, modelling of the CAP post-2013 and calibration process. The theoretical background, the technical specification and the outputs that can be generated from this model are also briefly presented and discussed. Model capability is illustrated in this study with an analysis of the EU farmers' responses to the greening requirements introduced by the 2013 CAP reform.