Common Agricultural Policy Reform Research Articles

Features and Implications of the 2013 EU Common Agricultural Policy Reform

Features and Implications of the 2013 EU Common Agricultural Policy Reform

Changes in the pastoral sheep systems of semi-arid Mediterranean areas: association with common agricultural policy reform and implications for sustainability

The dynamics of sheep systems the Mediterranean region have been influenced by reforms coming from the Common Agricultural Policy, and the general economic evolution of markets. The aim of this study was the analysis of the structural changes that occurred between 1999 and 2009, and the identification of future implications for the sheep systems in Andalusia region, Spain. Analysis of the structural changes allowed the generation of strategic information, identified trends that should suggest new rural policies and changes that are likely to have social and environmental impacts, and lastly, prioritize future research. The application of multivariate methodology allowed clustering the farm population into four groups. The typology of these systems was determined by variables related to the sheep subsystem, by the set of agricultural activities, and by changes in swine husbandry, within a context of changes in land tenure and the drive for agricultural intensification. Major modifications of extant systems included a 42% reduction in the number of farms, a decrease in sheep numbers, replacement of native rangelands with improved pastures, olive trees and orchards, a reduction of traditional extensive pastoral activities, and increases in hog production in Dehesa grasslands. Given the historical economic and social importance of the sheep-cereal system, the observed substantial modifications of land use suggest a need to assess their consequences in terms of social and environmental impacts, as well as their implications for climate change.

Legitimating the CAP: The European Commission's Discursive Strategies for Regaining Support for Direct Payments

In its public discourse, the European Commission presented the EU’s most recent Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a paradigm change. Many observers of the CAP reform process, however, describe the recent agreement as a lost opportunity for change. This article describes and analyses the Commission’s discursive strategies in response to the legitimacy challenges regarding the CAP’s direct payments. We draw on the work of Mark Suchman (1995) to analyse these responses. The analysis reveals a progression of legitimation strategies that can be linked to the broader institutional environment, the setting of the ongoing policy process and the (critical) reaction of civil society organisations to these strategies. Besides shedding light on the progression of legitimation strategies, this article contributes to the literature on the Commission’s legitimation strategies more generally by linking the Commission’s public discourse to its public consultation regime.

Reflecting the Global? The Common Agricultural Policy and Its Perception in Public Media Discourse

The paradigm shift in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is an instructive case to study the Europeanization of national media discourses. Yet, the symbolic influence of CAP reform cannot be sufficiently understood without considering its embeddedness in global policy frameworks. Hence, by means of content analysis, this paper aims to elucidate the impact of both global and EU farm-policy ideas on domestic debates. In particular, it seeks to reveal to what extent the multiple authorship behind the reform is reflected in discussion. Thus, the focus is on the institutional entrepreneurs with a say in the media, the ideas promoted and discursive interrelations.

The Impact of the CAP on Agriculture and Rural Areas of EU Member States

The article presents the main aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) while also exploring the contextual parameters and impact on agriculture and rural areas of the European Union (EU) member states. CAP is one of the most important policies of the EU, having for decades occupied the major share of the region’s budget and had profound effects on farm structures, agricultural employment and rural areas, as well as wider economic, social, political, environmental and cultural implications, for old and new member states. The article is organized in five sections. The introductory section offers a brief account of the basic dimensions of the newly reformed CAP, which suggest how the CAP is destined to evolve in the near future. The next section is dedicated to the analysis of farm structures, agricultural and regional employment, agricultural incomes and regional development. The third section deals with the evolution of the CAP objectives, as well as the drivers connected to the recent CAP reforms. Next, there is a comprehensive presentation of the CAP impact on agriculture and rural areas of the member states. Finally, a number of conclusions are drawn regarding the path dependency of the CAP and its continued inefficiency on lowering social and spatial inequalities in rural areas.

Animal welfare in the reformed Common Agricultural Policy

Against the backdrop of the recently reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), this article considers the potential for improved standards of farm animal welfare within the Treaty objectives of the European Union. CAP Reform presents the first real opportunity to assess the impact of the animal welfare Treaty provision emanating from the Lisbon amendments and the extent to which animal welfare has been integrated into the CAP. By linking the projected added value of enhanced farm animal welfare practices with the CAP’s broader priorities, its greening initiative and, essentially, the Europe 2020 strategy, an evaluation is undertaken of the potential of raised animal welfare standards in agriculture to contribute towards attaining the CAP instruments' specified objectives in the period 2014–2020. The reformed CAP instruments are disappointing in that they do not aim explicitly and directly to improve farm animal welfare. Acknowledging that the CAP reform process will continue, the improvement of farm animal welfare should be stated expressly to be a priority of the CAP beyond 2020. ‘In effect, a new social contract is needed between farmers and society which sees the delivery of public goods as part of a modern approach to agriculture where food, fibre and fuel are supplied in ways that are resource efficient, help address climate change and deliver high levels of biodiversity and farm animal welfare, within the context of diverse and vibrant rural areas.’1

An ex-ante impact assessment of the Common Agricultural Policy reform in the North-Western Romania

Th e paper aims to assess the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy reform (post 2014) in the environmental vulnerable areas from Romania. It proposes a bio-economic dynamic farm model calibrated with the positive mathematical programming (PMP). Th e standard PMP approach was extended to simulate the mixed farming systems through the intro- duction of a livestock production activity in the fi rst calibration step. It allows incorporating activities not available in the base year, but that can be performed by the farmers after the future policy reforms. Th e model provides supply-responses for both the crop and livestock farms according to the agricultural and fi nancial policy shifts. It maximizes the farm net fi nancial fl ows subject to the resource, livestock, fi nancial and agricultural policy constraints. Th e initialisation data were obtained from a face-to-face stratifi ed survey applied on the mixed-sheep farms that have used grassland areas under the Agri-Environment Schemes (AES) in the North-Western Romania (Transylvania). Th e results show that the most vulne- rable group to the policy changes is represented by the small-size farms, to which the AES are very important economic drivers. Th us, the diversifi cation and the off -farm employments possibilities should be integrated into the future rural deve- lopment plans as a premise for their survival.

Impacts of the CAP 2014–2020 on the Agroenergy Sector in Tuscany, Italy

The agricultural sectors’ contribution to the provision of energy is a central issue in Horizon 2020 strategies and has shaped the public and research debates on the future of the bioeconomy. The common agricultural policy (CAP) has been one of the main drivers of farmers’ behavioural changes and represents the main agricultural policy instrument to address viability of rural areas and maintaining the profitability of the agricultural sector. To contribute to the ongoing policy debate towards CAP reform, this paper will provide an empirical model to simulate the impact of an alternative CAP mechanism on the provision of renewable energy. By applying a dynamic mathematical programming model, the paper tests the impact new policy measures will have on the provision of a second-generation of bio fuel crops that represent a relevant option for Tuscan farmers. Results show that CAP reform positively impacts the supply of energy crops mainly due to the introduction of greening payments, which allows an enlarging of crop diversification. Model results stress also the income stabilisation effects of energy production introduction at farm level, due to reduction of farm exposure to market prices fluctuations.

Trends in family labour, hired labour and contract work on French field crop farms: The role of the Common Agricultural Policy

This paper investigates French field crop farms’ use of various types of labour during the period 1990–2007. We explore the determinants of the three types of labour used on farm (family labour, hired labour and contract labour), with a particular emphasis on the impact of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms and subsidies on the three labour types. We estimate a system of three equations, including a censored model, using the French Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) database.We find that hired labour and contract labour are substitutes as expected, but that hired labour and family labour are complements. This may reveal complementarities between management tasks (which are specifically for the farm head and family labour) and technical operations (the only operations performed by hired labour). In addition, we find that, in general, crop area payments and Single Farm Payments (SFP) have reduced farm labour, while agri-environmental payments, Less Favoured Area (LFA) payments and investment subsidies have increased it. Our results agree with most of the literature that coupled and decoupled area payments reduce labour use on farms.

‘Greening the CAP’ – Just a fashionable justification? A discourse analysis of the 2014–2020 CAP reform documents

Existing studies have employed discourse analysis to examine the reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) but have only partially studied the implementation of the discourse in the context of CAP measures and budgetary distribution. The present study tries to fill this gap. By conducting a discourse analysis of the latest CAP reform (2014–2020) documents, we attempted to determine which discourses and discourse strategies predominated in the reform’s documentation and how they were implemented into measures and budgetary distributions. The findings show that in the process of CAP reform decision-making, European institutions justified the CAP with a transformation of key discourses (productivist, multi-functional and neo-liberal) by emphasising the hugely popular environmental element while, at the same time, employing a strong productivist discourse at the level of measures and the budgetary distribution between the EU member states and farmers’ groups. In order to retain a strong CAP as well as the current distribution of financial resources, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council employed greening as a justification strategy as well as a productivist discourse as a major component in determining CAP measures.

Impacts of greening measures and flat rate regional payments of the Common Agricultural Policy on Scottish beef and sheep farms

SUMMARYThe latest Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms could bring substantial changes to Scottish farming communities. Two major components of this reform package, an introduction of environmental measures into the Pillar 1 payments and a move away from historical farm payments towards regionalized area payments, would have a significant effect on altering existing support structures for Scottish farmers, as it would for similar farm types elsewhere in Europe where historic payments are used. An optimizing farm-level model was developed to explore how Scottish beef and sheep farms might be affected by the greening and flat rate payments under the current CAP reforms. Nine different types of beef and sheep farms were identified and detailed biophysical and financial farm-level data for these farm types were used to parameterize the model. Results showed that the greening measures of the CAP did not have much impact on net margins of most of the beef and sheep farm businesses, except for ‘Beef Finisher’ farm types where the net margins decreased by 3%. However, all farm types were better off adopting the greening measures than not qualifying for the greening payments through non-compliance with the measures. The move to regionalized farm payments increased the negative financial impact of greening on most of the farms but it was still substantially lower than the financial sacrifice of not adopting greening measures. Results of maximizing farm net margin, under a hypothetical assumption of excluding farm payments, showed that in most of the mixed (sheep and cattle) and beef suckler cattle farms the optimum stock numbers predicted by the model were lower than actual figures on farm. When the regionalized support payments were allocated to each farm, the proportion of the mixed farms that would increase their stock numbers increased whereas this proportion decreased for beef suckler farms and no impact was predicted in sheep farms. Also under the regionalized support payments, improvements in profitability were found in mixed farms and sheep farms. Some of the specialized beef suckler farms also returned a profit when CAP support was added.

Wpływ procedury współdecydowania na wyniki reformy wspólnej polityki rolnej Unii Europejskiej 2014-2020

Impact of Codecision on the 2014‑2020 Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy The article attempts to assess the impact of co‑decision procedure (ordinary legislative procedure) on the shape of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform for the period 2014‑2020. First, procedural models used in the analysis of decision‑making in the European Union are discussed. The second part of the article highlights the process and the results of recent reforms of the CAP. Legislative proposals of the European Commission and the negotiations between the EU Council, the European Parliament and the Commission concerning the CAP after 2013 are analyzed. The final part of the article evaluates the CAP reform from the perspective of procedural models. The analysis indicates that the new decision‑making procedure has not fundamentally affected the results of the reform. The European Parliament’s role in the process of reforming the CAP has been limited both due to inadequate institutional preparation and insufficient expertise in agricultural policy matters. In some areas, the results achieved under the co‑decision procedure were closer to the status quo point than the results predicted by the model of consultation procedure. The inclusion of the European Parliament to the decision‑making process has not broadened the range of represented interests. On the contrary, one could observe an increased dominance of agricultural interest groups in the decision‑making process. In conclusion, the introduction of co‑decision procedure has not increased the chances for a fundamental reform in the CAP. Also, it has not strengthened the democratic legitimacy of the policy.

Common Agricultural Policy Reforms and their Impact on the Structure of CAP Expenditure

Common Agricultural Policy Reforms and their Impact on the Structure of CAP Expenditure

A reforma da PAC para o período 2014-2020: uma aposta no desenvolvimento territorial

Este artigo visa analisar as principais mudanças introduzidas pela Reforma da Política Agrária Comum (PAC) da União Europeia, aprovada no final de 2013, pelo Parlamento Europeu, para o período de 2014 a 2020. De acordo com o texto aprovado, a PAC terá um orçamento menor que o dos sete anos anteriores e três países a mais (agora, depois do ingresso da Bulgária, Romênia e Croácia, são 28 países membros). Ademais, de um orçamento 12% menor em valores nominais, há que se observar uma mudança significativa na orientação geral da política: de uma prioridade setorial para a territorial. Na verdade, nossa hipótese é de que estamos diante de uma reforma que representa um trânsito do protagonismo de uma política de tipo setorial, dirigida à gestão da dimensão produtiva do setor agrário com as ajudas diretas, para a qual se dirigem as críticas mais contundentes, a uma outra, territorial, orientada à gestão de territórios rurais, que busca viabilizar processos de desenvolvimento rural e remunerar os agricultores pela produção de bens públicos. Portanto, além de avaliar a importância para a Europa em ter uma PAC, ainda que não satisfaça mais a maioria dos agricultores, mas que atenda, em parte, às demandas de outros segmentos sociais, e mesmo da pressão internacional, pretende-se analisar os elementos da reforma numa perspectiva que vai além dos aspectos pontuais, ou seja, pretende-se traçar as linhas por onde se produz o trânsito de um política menos orientada ao setor e mais orientada ao território.

Understanding linkages between common agricultural policy and High Nature Value (HNV) farmland provision: an empirical analysis in Tuscany Region

The connection between agriculture and environment is a central topic to the agricultural policy agenda and it has been the core of policy reforms. These linkages have been strengthened by the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Reform that has introduced a set of environmental rules as a condition to receive Single Farm Payments (SFP). Consequently, the provision of environmental goods is addressed by both CAP pillars I and II, respectively, with cross-compliance belonging to pillar I while the second axis Rural Development Program (RDP) measures belong to the pillar II.The aim of this paper is to analyse the provision of environmental goods provided by agricultural activities and the impact the Common Agricultural Policy has on such provision. This aim is pursued firstly by quantifying an environmental quality indicator based on the concept of High Nature Value (HNV) farmland and, secondly by testing Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) techniques and spatial econometric models as means to identify provision determinants that improve causality in spatially non-stationary data. The analysis highlights the relevance of spatial models in improving the quality of the estimation, while model results show that rural development program measures and income support payments have opposite effects. Results confirm the relevance of productive factor use and entrepreneurship in explaining differences on environmental quality provision.

Interest groups and political parties in Italian agricultural policy: powerful farmers with and without parties

This article is about the transformation of party–group relationships in Italian agricultural policy. The political context and the policy dynamics have given rise to varying relations between farmers’ organisations and parties at different points of Italian political history. The close link between the largest organisations (Coldiretti and Confagricoltura) and the Christian Democratic Party initially structured party–group relationships; the supremacy of the former was a central feature of the wider system of relations among parties, groups and other policymaking actors. These relations lasted a long time, but the effective dynamics changed. Increasingly, the governing parties gave less attention to agricultural issues: farmers’ groups and the ministry of agriculture could be left to develop policy, and this situation was consolidated, thanks to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from the 1960s. The institutionalisation of a distributive policy paradigm, both at the national and at the European levels, strengthened farmer organisations and other agricultural interest groups later on. Following the Italian political crisis of the early 1990s and CAP reform in the 1990s and 2000s, the political and policy contexts changed substantially: the main political parties disappeared, but interest groups were able to maintain relations with governments of the day and to develop temporary links with different parties in the legislative arena, thus enabling them to play a central role in agricultural policymaking.

Evaluating acceptability of groundwater protection measures under different agricultural policies

Water resources management is often characterized by conflicts in many arid and semi-arid regions, where agriculture is the main user of groundwater (GW). Conflicts could arise among different decision-makers and stakeholders. Moreover, different policies can interact each other hampering or facilitating their implementation and effectiveness. This contribution describes a new implementation of GeSAP, an integrated modelling tool for enabling local GW management by combining the need for GW protection with socio-economic and behavioural determinants of GW use. GeSAP is based on the involvement of multiple stakeholders and the use of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to simulate and explore their attitude relative to GW exploitation and their responses to the introduction of new protection and agricultural policies. In this work, GeSAP was implemented in the area of the Capitanata Irrigation Users Organization, located in the Apulia region (southern Italy). It was used to simulate the reactions of the main stakeholders involved in GW protection policy implementation and to assess the policy's effectiveness in terms of actual reduction of GW exploitation. Furthermore, the interactions between the GW protection policy and the coming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was investigated. The results of the application proved the capability of the GeSAP tool to assess the actual effectiveness of GW protection policy by investigating how far this policy could be considered acceptable by farmers. In addition, this study demonstrates how the effectiveness of the GW protection policy could be affected by the interaction with the CAP reform. The latter could strongly impact the balance between water demand and availability with the effect of nullifying the positive synergy between CAP and GW protection policy. Although water management issues are not explicitly mentioned among the main scopes of the CAP, this work clearly demonstrates the impact that such policy could have on farmers’ decisions on water use.

Integrated modelling for agricultural policies and water resources planning coordination

Pressures due to agricultural activities play a major role in the status of water resources systems. The evaluation of the effects of agricultural policies is therefore a key problem in water resource planning and management. The work presented in this paper is an attempt to include the predictable effects of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) in the process of water resources planning at the basin scale prescribed by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). The approach is based on the combined use of three models: (i) an economic model used to predict the likely land use scenarios at the basin scale following CAP reform; (ii) a spatially distributed hydrological model for the assessment of the related irrigation water requirements; and (iii) a decision model supporting stakeholders and decision makers in the process of water resources planning. The paper presents an application to a pilot study area in Northern Italy. The results highlight how the CAP may produce an adjustment in the agricultural sector, with a shift towards more extensive land use and to a greater diversification of production. The predicted changes in land use type and distribution are shown to have significant influence on water requirements, with a generalised decrease of their amount, which may exceed 10% in some areas. In turn, the decrease of irrigation demand can be exploited to achieve a higher degree of satisfaction of other water users in the basin and can improve the attainment of the WFD objectives.

The Impact of the 2013 Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on Land Capitalization in the European Union

Decoupled direct payments to farmers were introduced in the European Union (EU) in the form of the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) in 2005. The 2013 Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) reform changed both the implementation of the SPS and its budget. We assess the possible effects of the 2013 CAP reform on EU land markets, particularly the capitalization of the SPS in land rental values. Our analyses suggest that the implementation details of the 2013 CAP reform will largely determine the impact of the SPS on land markets. The key considerations are the reference period for entitlement allocation, regionalization, payment differentiation, and budgetary changes. Our analysis also implies that a number of relatively minor policy changes could have substantial impacts on land markets.

Farmers in a deregulated dairy regime: Insights from Ireland's New Entrants Scheme

While the impending review of the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is set to have an impact on all farming sectors across Europe, particularly transformative change is sought by policies relating to dairy farmers. EU milk quota abolition in 2015 will fundamentally revise the terms of dairy production, transitioning from policies of subsidy and protection to a scenario where farmers will produce milk on the open market. Dairy quota abolition essentially represents an economic but also socio-cultural disruption for a sizeable cohort of farmers, requiring adaptation to more market-driven production strategies. Agricultural policy-makers in EU member states are demonstrably preparing for this imminent change and dairy farmers are considering and strategising their responses at farm-level. Our focus in this paper is the interplay between quota abolition and farm-level decision-making in the pre-abolition period. Drawing from a broader mixed-methodological and multi-disciplinary research project, this paper uses qualitative narrative analysis to identify the key determinants arising in dairy farmers’ decision-making processes. How are farmers currently strategising their responses to dairy quota deregulation? Using the qualitative Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM), we examine the range of factors determining how a particular group of dairy farmers are strategising their positions on the impending open dairy market. Our analysis highlights how, in the advent of a deregulated dairy production regime, dairy farmers are carefully deliberating their responses at farm level, drawing from policy and market related information, their own personal speculations, and conventional wisdom shared with other members of the farming community. We find that the dairy farmers are influenced not only by motivations to increase productivity and scale but by a tenacious approach to farm sustainability and resilience that is informed by past experiences of farming and seeks to preserve and promote socio-cultural farming values. The paper is of particular interest to policy makers and academics interested in the interchange between policy and farmer behaviour, particularly in the context of current CAP reform.