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Regional impacts of abolishing direct payments: An integrated analysis in four European regions

Uthes, Sandra; Piorr, Annette; Zander, Peter; Bienkowski, Jerzy; Ungaro, Fabrizio; Dalgaard, Tommy; Stolze, Matthias; Moschitz, Heidrun; Schader, Christian; Happe, Kathrin; Sahrbacher, Amanda; Damgaard, Martin; Toussaint, Verena; Sattler, Claudia; Reinhard, Franz-Josef; Kjeldsen, Chris; Casini, Leonardo and Müller, Klaus (2011) Regional impacts of abolishing direct payments: An integrated analysis in four European regions. Agricultural Systems, 104, pp. 110-121.

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Document available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X10000946


Summary in the original language of the document

The direct payment system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income transfers to European farmers. Recently, several countries including England and Sweden have advocated the elimination of direct payments after 2013. The extent to which an elimination of direct payments would affect the land use dynamics in Europe including impacts on structural change and the environment has not been addressed in the existing literature. In this paper, we combine participatory methods, to analyze regional preferences for functions and effects of agriculture, and farm-level modeling, to assess the impacts of such a policy change on farm structures and land use intensities in four European regions located in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Poland, each with different socio-economic and biophysical characteristics. In each region, the entire farm population consisting of different farm types with different production orientations and land management types was modeled under the presence and absence of direct payments using a combination of agent-based and bio-economic modeling. We found that the initial characteristics of the regions, such as the historical farm structure and regional site conditions, greatly influence the impact of direct support elimination and cause regionally different development trends. The results for the four regions were summarized in four specific storylines that emphasize how much the diversity of European regions matters for future policy decisions. An explicitly regional focus is, therefore, argued to be crucial to complement future policy analysis.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:Policy impact assessment, Farm modeling, Participatory methods, MEA-Scope, Sozio-Ökonomie, Landwirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Direktzahlungen, Abacus, FiBL35006
Subjects: Farming Systems
Food systems > Policy environments and social economy
Research affiliation: Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Sustainability
Germany > Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research - ZALF
Denmark > AU - Aarhus University > Faculty of Science and Technology > Department of Agroecology
Denmark > KU - University of Copenhagen
Italy > CNR - National Research Council
Italy > Univ. Firenze
Poland
Related Links:https://www.fibl.org/en/locations/switzerland/departments/socio-economics.html, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X10000946
Deposited By: Schader, Dr. Christian
ID Code:21184
Deposited On:20 Feb 2013 21:34
Last Modified:04 Mar 2024 11:08
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

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