Entscheidungen bei der Ökologischen Vorrangfläche: Eine Experten-Befragung

Seit der Einführung des Greenings und der ökologischen Vorrangfläche (ÖVF) wurde vielfach gefragt, was die Entscheidung der Landwirte beeinflusst. Um diese Frage haben wir Experten-Interviews durchgeführt, in denen wir die Experten zu den Entscheidungsgründen bei der ÖVF befragt haben. Das Ziel der Studie ist es, ein abstraktes Bild von den Entscheidungsgründen zu bekommen und konkrete Handlungsempfehlungen für die Weiterentwicklung der ÖVF speziell und der Naturschutzpolitik im allgemeinen zu bekommen.

 

Supporting Greening with Agri-Environmental Measures: Improvement or rather a waste of money?

The concept of Greening of Direct Payments and more specifically the Ecological Focus Area (EFA) are going into their second year of implementation. I will discuss the pragmatic option to additionally support EFA by agri-environmental measures (AEM) in order to improve effectiveness of EFA. The experience in Germany do not deliver strong arguments for this option. The advantage of this option is the application within the existing CAP-framework.

One effective EFA-option: Flouring strip with phacelia in Lindau, South Lower Saxony

Greening 2015: First preliminary data show necessity for further reform

As one main element of the EU’s CAP-Reform 2013, the Greening of EU Direct Payments has been implemented for in 2015 the first year. In the last weeks some first data on the implementation of Greening and the Ecological Focus Area (EFA) were unofficially presented by the EU Commission. I want to share these data and do a bit of commenting on them.

Ploughing on the Island of Föhr, in 2016 in Northern Germany

Greening and Ecological Focus Area: First Data on Decisions in Germany

Some weeks ago, we asked on this blog how farmers would implement Greening 2015 and which options they would choose in order to comply with the criterion of the ‘ecological focus area (EFA)’. The main message was that farmers would probably prefer to use the options of catch crops, nitrogen-fixing crops and fallow land, since they provide cost-advantages against the classical biodiversity options such as buffer-strips and landscape elements. This expectation was also based on the fact, that the latter go alongside with legal insecurity. In addition, structural policies and the practise of direct-payments before 2013 lead to a situation, where farmers would rather exclude landscape elements from their registered farm land. Overall, the expectation was that landscape-elements and buffer-strips (as the most effective options to support biodiversity) would hardly be chosen by farmers.

EFA Fallow land in the region of Göttingen

Implementation of CAP-reform 2013: The single country overview

As already described in my last post, I did a detailed review on the decision of the EU-member on how to use the three flexibility elements of the CAP-reform 2013. I focused on 1.) the re-coupling of direct payments, 2.) the reallocation of funds between the pillars and 3.) the redistribution options. The EU-member-states have to report their final decision until August 1, 2014. There has been a discussion whether the flexibility elements improve or if they deteriorate the CAP-reform 2013. Therefore, it might be useful, to get an overview on how countries use this flexibility.

Here is the table overview on the CAP-reform-implementation in the single member-states.

These information were gathered by internet-search, Agra Europe (diff. Issues), and by the support of different experts and colleagues of mine. Therefore great thanks to: Alex Lotman (Estonia), Oana Tanasache (Romania), Sebastian Hess (Sweden), Ewa Rabinowicz (Sweden) Anne van Doorn (Netherlands), Marian Stuiver (Netherlands), Sergio Araujo Enciso (Spain), Tomás García Azcárate (Spain) and Thelma Brenes Muñoz (expert for Portugal!). Besides this, I received responses on my requests and support from the ministries of Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Finland and Hungary, thanks a lot for supporting this search!

This table is presented according my best knowledge, so no guarantee on the details. Any comments, questions, corrections or further information are welcomed: slakner@gwdg.de

A very interesting and detailed timeline for the implementation in United Kingdom from DEFRA can be found here: CAP-reform timeline UK.