Towards a safe and just operating
space for EU agriculture

New Open access Article from BrightSpace in Ecological Economics

Did crop diversity criterion from CAP green payments affect both economic and environmental farm performances? Quasi-experimental evidence from France

Authors: Thierno Bocar Diop, Lionel Védrine

Published: Ecological Economics. Vol. 277. January 2025, 108405 / Available online 2 October 2024

Abstract

This study aims to shed light on the impact of the crop diversity criterion of green payments on farms’ economic and environmental performances, alongside land use practices. In order to provide causal evidence, we exploit the natural experiment from the 2013 Common Agricultural Policy reform, which established stronger crop diversity eligibility criteria for farmers with over 10 ha (and 30 ha) of arable land. More precisely, we use a difference-in-discontinuity design on a sample of French farms and compare those respectively above and below the two thresholds. Our findings suggest that farms around 10 ha experienced significant land reallocation and an increase in crop diversity, while farms around 30 ha increase their number of crops. Interestingly, we also found that the main effects were primarily driven by farms that already met the diversification requirements. This suggests that the crop diversity criterion did not result in much additional change.

Keywords: Green payments, Crop diversification, Difference in discontinuity, Windfall effect, France

Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108405

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Stéphane Blancard, Laure Latruffe, Aude Ridier, Elodie Letort, Elsa Martin, Legrand Saint-Cyr, Quentin Frère and Alexandre Sauquet alongside the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. This work is part of the Horizon Europe 101060075 BRIGHTSPACE project (Designing a Roadmap for Effective and Sustainable Strategies for Assessing and Addressing the Challenges of EU Agriculture to Navigate within a Safe and Just Operating Space) (https://brightspace-project.eu/) and LIFT (‘Low-Input Farming and Territories – Integrating knowledge for improving ecosystem-based farming’) project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 770747.

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