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

Abstract

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.

Spatial analysis of the participation in agri-environment measures for organic farming

“…This can induce farmers to participate in organic farming measures due to the lower costs of compliance with organic production methods. These results confirm the existence of second-order effects of diversification activity on the creation of areas with higher environment quality (Bartolini and Brunori, 2014).…”

“…Inclusion of those variables in covariates may be done for different reasons. First, a fixed cost of participation may reduce the likelihood of observing participation among small farms (Ducos et al, 2009), while the plots’ fragmentation increases operative costs and may have positive effects in explaining participation (Bartolini and Brunori, 2014). The involvement in cooperatives or networking may produce differences in the quality of information held by farmers and may reduce the transactions costs (Defrancesco et al, 2008).…”

Integrating agricultural sustainability into policy planning: A geo-referenced framework based on Rough Set theory

“…AGROENV also refers to the CAP commitments. In fact, another compulsory practice for the Greening Payment is the establishment of Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) on arable land (EU Council Regulation 1307/2013, article 46; Bartolini and Brunori, 2014). The list of AES was obtained by overlapping the list of EFA with the Census land use categories.…”

Ecological Intensification of Natural Resources for Sustainable Agriculture

“…Modern agri-production methods, which have increased its efficiency and volume, deplete agro-ecosystems at different scales (from local to global) (Mishenin and Koblianska 2016;Spiess 2016;Müller et al 2016;FAO 2017;Yatsuk 2018;Pingali et al 2019;Koblianska and Kalachevska 2019;World Bank 2020). This leads to a search for improved methods of agricultural management (Bartolini and Brunori 2014;Pangaribowo and Gerber 2016;Delzeit et al 2017;Zilberman et al 2018;Asfaw and Branca 2018;Ickowitz et al 2019).…”