Superior project Greening: Accompanying ecological research on the ecological effectiveness of the Common Agricultural Policy

Background and Objective

Significant species decline in agricultural landscapes, continuing high nutrient inputs in soils and waters as well as European and global stipulations for biodiversity protection require an agriculture that focuses more on ecological aspects. To address these needs the European Commission introduced a “greening” through the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that should strengthen the ecological sustainability of agriculture.

Since 1 January 2015, a part of the direct payments of the first pillar is linked to farming practices promoting climate and environmental protection with three measures:

• Crop diversification: Most farms with more than 30ha arable land have to cultivate at least three crops. The major crop must not exceed 75% of the area and the share of the other two crops must cover at least 5% of area each. Farms with 10 to 30ha arable land must cultivate at least two crops, whereas the major crop must not cover more than 75% of the area.
• Preservation of permanent grassland: Permanent grassland reported as a flora-fauna habitat (FFH) area is labeled as environmentally sensitive grassland and is subject to a prohibition of conversion and ploughing. Permanent grassland that is not declared as environmentally sensitive can be converted exclusively with authorization. Normally, an authorization is only given when permanent grassland is newly established to the same extent at another place in the same region and when the share of permanent grassland of the region declined by no more than 5% between 2012 and 2015.
• Declaration of ecological focus areas on arable land: Farms with more than 15ha arable land must declare 5% of their cropland as an ecological focus area. Different EFA types can be chosen, some of them allowing agricultural usage (e.g., short rotation coppice, catch crops) and some do not (e.g., fallow land, landscape elements).

Under certain conditions farms are excluded from greening, for example organic farms. Currently, there is a controversial discussion on the ecological effectiveness of EFA. It is also disputed whether the high administration and monitoring effort of those measures is proportionate.

For the funding period from 2022 onwards, the member states have been granted additional competence. The envisaged funding instruments, such as the eco-schemes of the 1st pillar, can be designed individually by each member state in the so-called strategic plan. This is intended to strengthen the ecological sustainability of agriculture through targeted measures. There are different options for shaping the funding structure. Either the measures are to be implemented over an area on a broadscale level. This means that for many farms the rewards of participation must outweigh the costs of participation. Or the measures should have the highest possible additional environmental effect per unit of land. This leads to a preference for demanding environmental measures that can only be implemented on a few areas and often have high specific implementation costs.

For a targeted funding strategy, it must be decided whether low environmental impact measures should be implemented across the entire agricultural area, thus giving many farms the opportunity to implement agri-environmental measures, or whether the budget should be used to address specific locations (hot spots) with very ambitious measures. In order to achieve an environmental effect, an ambition level must be set on the basis of these considerations.

Target Group

Ministries of agriculture and environment, farmers, consultants, official nature conservation, agricultural administration, European Commission

Approach

At the Thünen Institute of Rural Studies, there are several projects dealing with the effects of the greening on nature protection (see Links and Downloads). Their results are used to generate practical recommendations for the evaluation and design of the CAP.

Data and Methods

In the projects we especially analyze operational data from the federal states to find out more about the selection, implementation and ecological effects of the greening measures. The different focuses of the projects cover all three fields of the greening measures, supporting a greater contribution to ecology through agriculture in the future.

In addition, within a PhD-procject expert workshops and expert surveys on the desired ecological ambition level of the CAP at EU level were carried out.

Our Research Questions

How are the new greening regulation implemented by farmers and what influences their decisions?

What is the additional conservation value of the greening measures implemented under the current conditions?

How could the benefit of the greening be enhanced?

How could economically favourable options for farmers look that create benefits for nature protection at the same time?

What preferences do experts have for setting the level of remuneration for agri-environmental measures, including eco-schemes? What role does the effectiveness of the measures play?

Which policy support instrument in the view of experts is suitable for tackling the agri-environmental problems in the EU Member States? How should the spatial distribution of measures be managed?

Preliminary Results

The project show how, in addition to political guidelines, operation- and region-specific factors influence the choice and implementation of EFA and their ecological effectiveness. 

Links and Downloads

Further projects are related to this roof project:

• Nature conservation in ecological focus areas (OEVForsch; BfN, 06/2015-12/2016)
• Evaluation of the CAP from an environmental protection point of view (GAPEval; UBA, 09/2015-08/2017)
• Effects of the new GAP framework on the grassland related biodiversity (GAPGRÜN; BfN, 11/2015-03/2018)
• Evaluation of the CAP reform from the point of view of environmental protection by means of a adatabase analysis of IACS data of the federal staets (GAPEval2; UBA, 12/2017-12/2019)
• Nature conservation development in Ecological Focus Areas - Effects on biodiversity and agricultural practice (OEVFORSCH2; BfN; 08/2017 - 06/ 2020)
• An Evaluation of the Common Agricultural Policy from the Perspective of Environmental Protection III (GAPEVAL III, 07/2020 - 06/2023)