Result-based agri-environment measures: Market-based instruments, incentives or rewards? The case of Baden-Württemberg (original) (raw)
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Indicator-based frameworks for assessing farms’ environmental performance have become a resource for environmental knowledge regarding the impacts of agricultural practices. The present study explores whether a novel indicator-based direct payment system, which focuses on the farms’ environmental impact, could better target Swiss agricultural policy and help achieve its environmental goals. The system covers the environmental topics of biodiversity, nutrients and climate, plant protection products, and soil. Despite high direct payments, simulations with an agent-based agricultural sector model show that such indicator-based payments have a limited impact. For example, the decrease in the animal population is only moderate. Though direct payments alone can hardly lead to the desired reduction in Switzerland's environmental pollution, they could help make important contributions to a more targeted distribution of environmentally oriented direct payments and steer agricultural pro...
Agri-environmental schemes in the European Union: the role of ex ante costs
Ecosystems, 2008
The purpose of this paper is to analyse land allocation between competing agri-environmental contracts taking into account institutional issues and farm household and farm characteristics. We consider a Biodiversity Protection Contract, Landscape Management Contract and a Restriction on Intensive Practises Contract. The paper shows that it is important to study the choice for an agrienvironmental contract in combination with the
Grasslands are the main agricultural land use in less favoured areas (LFAs) in Wales and receive considerable financial support through standard action-based agri-environmental schemes (AES). However, the ecological success of the action-based approach has been repeatedly criticised for not delivering ‗value for money'. Emerging evidence from Europe suggests that grassland Payment by Result (PBR) approaches both improve environmental outcomes and are more cost-effective than action-based schemes. Successful PBR approaches have built on existing action-based schemes, engage farmers in scheme construction, develop easily measurable indicators, and involve extensive trial periods. A PBR approach was rejected for the Glastir AES in Wales but, we argue, it would be possible to implement a PBR approach here modelled on European successes. In particular, the relative simplicity of adding PBR components would encourage buy-in to the PBR approach and foster acceptance by farmers and administrators.
Farmers' participation in European agri-environmental policies
2002
This paper examines the factors influencing farmers' participation in several agri-environmental schemes. A multinominal logit model is used to separate between participating and nonparticipating farmers. In addition this model allows to predict farmers participation in one measure as well as in different measures simultaneously. Data stems from a survey conducted in eight European countries and includes a description of both farmer and farm characteristics. Three categories of schemes have been analysed: landscape maintenance, biodiversity protection and restriction of intensive farming practices. The combination of these three types of schemes provides eight possible packages which can be selected by eligible farmers. The multinominal logit model shows the importance of both farm and farmer as well as attitudinal characteristics on the participation in different combinations of schemes. For instance, the environmental concern favours landscape maintenance and biodiversity protection as well as their combinations with schemes requiring restrictions of intensive practices. However, it has a negative effect on the single participation in schemes requiring restrictions of intensive practices only. Our analysis confirms a number of previous findings. In addition, it shows the importance for policy makers to take into account that farmers have the opportunity to enter several schemes simultaneously. Indeed, due to cost complementarities, joint participation provides both private and public benefits.
This paper investigates the personal and property characteristics of landowners who use EU Rural Development agri-environmental schemes (AES), as well as their motives for participation or non-participation in such schemes. The study is based on a questionnaire survey with landowners, in selected study areas in the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Italy and Greece. Our principal findings show that AES tend to attract more the owners of larger farms, who are frequently full-time, younger, post-primary school educated and agriculturally-trained farmers. The latter findings are contingent on local geographical particulari-ties and on subjective factors, farmers' individualities, different rural cultures, landscape types, EU and national policies and special needs of the study areas—all areas where agricultural production is increasingly marginalized, for different reasons. Subsidy scheme participation motives did not seem to be strictly economic; they also regarded personal satisfaction. They are all together generally appeared to be place specific, since the respondents from peri-urban Northern European areas were more motivated to participate in AES than respondents from Central and Southern European areas with marginal potential for agriculture. Motives for non-participation were also found to be dependent on the level of farming engagement and on case-area landscape types.
Landscape ecology, 2000
In Europe most conservation values, from biodiversity to scenic sites, are integral parts of agricultural landscapes. When these landscapes change as a result of agricultural policies, natural values-species, habitats, landscapesare usually affected. Until recently however, these values have not been part of agricultural policies. The impacts of such new policies are difficult to evaluate because landscapes are complex and diverse, and the effects of policy are rarely immediate or causal. This paper evaluates the potential effects of Agri-environmental Regulation EC 2078/92 on European agricultural landscapes through the use of agri-environmental indicators (AEIs) on policy effects. After discussing the general framework of the evaluation methodology through the use of AEIs, we distinguish two types of agri-environmental policy (AEP) effects: policy performances and policy outcomes. The impediments to direct measurement of policy outcomes are stated. The potential for measuring policy performances are checked in two case study areas, one in Spain and one in Denmark, characterized by extensive agricultural land-uses and by the dual process of intensification/abandonment that is threatening their natural values. Both study areas are currently targeted by agri-environmental schemes under Reg. 2078/92. The realisability or availability of suitable statistical data to construct and report each AEI is stated for both types of effects. A problem of scale and content is found in most of the available statistics for assessing policy outcomes and the need for data at farm level is concluded to be indispensable if policy performances are to be measured. Effects of policy performance are measured for key selected AEIs in each study area on the basis of the results of a field survey based on questionnaires of participating and non-participating farmers in the AEP schemes. The main effects may be catalogued as improvement effects or protection effects since they represent a change in participant over non-participant farmers' decisions. Finally, the importance of this type of policy evaluation approach is discussed in the light of the likely future development of AEP in the European Union.
Land Use Policy, 2021
The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has failed to achieve its aim of preserving European farmland biodiversity, despite massive investment in subsidies to incentivise environmentally-beneficial farming practices. This failure calls into question the design of the subsidy schemes, which are intended to either function as a safety net and make farming profitable or compensate farmers for costs and loss of income while undertaking environmental management. In this study, we assess whether the design of environmental payments in the CAP reflects current knowledge about farmers' decision-making as found in the research literature. We do so on the basis of a comprehensive literature review on farmers' uptake of agri-environmental management practices over the past 10 years and interviews specifically focused on Ecological Focus Areas with policy-makers, advisors and farmers in seven European countries. We find that economic and structural factors are the most commonly-identified determinants of farmers' adoption of environmental management practices in the literature and in interviews. However, the literature suggests that these are complemented byand partially dependent ona broad range of social, attitudinal and other contextual factors that are not recognised in interview responses or, potentially, in policy design. The relatively simplistic conceptualisation of farmer behaviour that underlies some aspects of policy design may hamper the effectiveness of environmental payments in the CAP by over-emphasising economic considerations, potentially corroding farmer attitudes to policy and environmental objectives. We conclude that an urgent redesign of agricultural subsidies is needed to better align them with the economic, social and environmental factors affecting farmer decision-making in a complex production climate, and therefore to maximise potential environmental benefits.
A Joint Framework for Analysis of Agri‐Environmental Payment Programs
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2003
This paper presents an approach for simultaneously estimating farmers' decisions to accept incentive payments in return for adopting a bundle of environmentally benign management practices. Using the results of a multinomial probit analysis of surveys of over 1,000 farmers facing ten adoption decisions in an EQIP-type program, we show how the farmers' perceptions of the desirability of various bundles changes with the offer amounts and with which practices are offered in the program.