"Agri-environmental schemes (AES) have had a limited effect on European agriculture due to farmers' reluctance to participate. Information on how farmers react when AES characteristics are modified can be an important input to the design of such policies. This article investigates farmers' preferences for different design options in a specific AES aimed at encouraging nitrogen fixing crops in marginal dry-land areas in Spain. We use a choice experiment survey conducted in two regions (Aragón and Andalusia). The analysis employs an error component random parameter logit model allowing for preference heterogeneity and correlation amongst the non-status quo alternatives. Farmers show a strong preference for maintaining their current management strategies; however, significant savings in cost or increased participation can be obtained by modifying some AES attributes." Copyright (c) 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2010 The Agricultural Economics Society.

Since the 1950s, intensification and scale enlargement of agriculture have changed agricultural landscapes across Europe. The intensification and scale enlargement of farming was initially driven by the large-scale application of synthetic fertilizers, mechanization and subsidies of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Then, after the 1990s, a further intensification and scale enlargement, and land abandonment in less favored areas was caused by globalization of commodity markets and CAP reforms. The landscape changes during the past six decades have changed the flows and values of ecosystem services. Here, we have reviewed the literature on agricultural policies and management, landscape structure and composition, and the contribution of ecosystem services to regional competitiveness. The objective was to define an analytical framework to determine and assess ecosystem services at the landscape scale. In contrast to natural ecosystems, ecosystem service flows and values in agricultural landscapes are often a result of interactions between agricultural management and ecological structures. We describe how land management by farmers and other land managers relates to landscape structure and composition. We also examine the influence of commodity markets and policies on the behavior of land managers. Additionally, we studied the influence of consumer demand on flows and values of the ecosystem services that originate from the agricultural landscape.

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Agri-environmental schemes (AES) are the main policy instrument currently available in the EU to promote environmentally-friendly farming practices. However, the rate of adoption of these measures is still relatively low in southern Europe, and understanding how these rates can be increased is still an open issue. The goal of this paper is to increase that understanding by testing whether the factors which determine AES sign-up decisions are influenced by the intensity of change in farming practices that are brought about by adopting the scheme. A micro-economic model reflecting farmer AES sign-up decisions is proposed and applied to two schemes in Spain respectively requiring major or minor intensity of change in practices by surveying farmers eligible for both schemes. The results show that farm structural factors play a role when major practice change is required by the scheme, yet when dealing with minor change, individual farmer characteristics play a more determining role. Social capital and farmer attitude are important factors in both the AES surveyed. Therefore, it may be concluded that improving agronomic design would be an important tool to improve farmer participation in AES where major change is involved, whereas improved targeting and extension would help uptake for AES involving a lesser degree of change.agri-environmental schemes, adoption models, measure intensity, Spain,

During the last 50 years, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has impacted the evolution of European agricultural landscapes by driving changes in land use and farming practices. We propose a typology characterising the scales relevant for agricultural landscapes management and argue that action is required on three scales:(1) a landscape oriented management at the farm level; (2) the coordination of land managers' actions at the landscape level; and (3) the conservation of the diversity of agricultural landscapes in the EU. We provide evidence that until now the CAP has mainly focused on the first scale. We also illustrate how agricultural policy could encourage coordinated actions at the landscape-and EU-scales. In particular, we propose policy instruments to coordinate actions of individual land owners (e.g. collective bonus in agro-environmental contracts or support to environmental cooperatives (scale 2)). We also analyse how the recognition and transposition of the European Landscape Convention could promote trans-frontier landscape cooperation in order, not only to conserve high-quality rural landscapes, but also to ensure the conservation of the diversity of EU landscapes (scale 3). This paper provides a knowledge base to support an integrated CAP design in the direction of improved landscape management, as an important component of the EU project towards more sustainable agriculture.

This paper presents the first EU-wide individual farm level model (IFM-CAP-Individual Farm Model for CAP Analysis) to assess the impacts of the crop diversification measure introduced by the 2013 CAP reform as part of CAP 'greening'. Based on Positive Mathematical Programming, IFM-CAP simulates the behaviour of each individual farmer in the EU-FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network) database, under the policy constraint of crop diversification and provides distributional impacts over the entire EU farm population. Simulation results show that the effects of the crop diversification measure on the EU farming sector are rather small. At the aggregate EU level, the proportion of the reallocated area due to the diversification measure represents less than 1 % of the total agricultural area and the crop production and income decline by less than 0.5 %. At the individual farm level, the impacts could be more pronounced (more than-25 %), although the number of affected farms by the measure remains small (around 5 % of the total farm population). The most constraining component of the diversification measure appears to be the 75 % threshold imposed for the main cultivated crop.

We assess the effects of the 2013 CAP reform on the capitalisation of decoupled payments in land rental values. Our estimates suggest that the reform leads to an increase in the capitalisation of decoupled payments by an additional 18 cents for each Euro of decoupled payments relative to the pre-reform situation. However, there is an important variation in the reform effects between Member States (MS) particularly between Old Member States (OMS) and New MS (NMS). In NMS, the capitalisation rate slightly reduces from 83% in the pre-reform period to 79% in the post-reform period. Although, the rate is significantly lower in OMS, it doubles (from 21% to 43%) due to the reform. The main sources of the post-reform capitalisation in the European Union (EU) are the pre-reform capitalisation accounting for 69% of the total postreform capitalisation, followed by the entitlement stock change with 19%, by the internal convergence of payments with 18%, the budget change (including external convergence) with 1%, and the differentiation of payments (redistributive payment) with À7%. Overall, our estimates suggest that on average in the EU, the non-farming landowners' policy gains are 27% of the total decoupled payments in the post-reform period compared to 18% in the pre-reform period.

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