Do European Agri-environment Measures Help Reduce Herbicide Use? Evidence From Viticulture in France

Abstract

Agri-environmental Schemes (AES) are a central component of the European environmental policy, but few of these schemes have been carefully evaluated and doubts are often expressed about their effectiveness. We use original data collected from winegrowers who participated in an AES targeting non-point source pollution from herbicides in 2011 and 2012 in the South region of France. Using the variation in the implementation of the scheme across time and space and a matching approach, we show that the quantity of herbicides used by participants in the scheme in 2011 ranges from 38 to 53 percent below what they would have used without the scheme and this percentage is between 42 to 50 percent in 2012. Further, our results suggest that least demanding AES options are effective in avoiding pollution peaks when weed pressure is high, whereas more demanding AES options guarantee an overall reduction in herbicide use, even during relatively easy farming years in which less weed pressure is experienced.

Challenges of achieving biodiversity offset outcomes through agri-environmental schemes: Evidence from an empirical study in Southern France

“…Additionality means that farmers are not only adopting land uses or agricultural practices that contribute to the targeted biodiversity outcomes, but that these would not have been adopted in the absence of ABOS (Wunder et al, 2008). If farmers adopt practices that they already implemented or would have adopted anyway, there is a "windfall effect" (Kuhfuss and Subervie, 2015;Chabé-Ferret and Subervie, 2013). In the case of NNL policies, the risk is to not achieve the expected ecological gains required to offset the ecological losses, making additionality a key requirement for BO (Maron et al 2018;Bull et al, 2013a).…”

“…According to CAP objectives, AES are supposed to help farmers to sustainably adopt proenvironmental practices. Many farmers, however, do not maintain their practices when contracts end (Kuhfuss et al, 2015). This is also a key challenge for ABOS where irreversible losses caused by development projects have to be offset by long-term ecological gains.…”

Reviewing Counterfactual Analyses to Assess Impacts of EU Rural Development Programmes: What Lessons Can Be Learned from the 2007–2013 Ex-Post Evaluations?

“…This method deals with selection bias on unobservables and allows for assessment of the policy causal effects under certain conditions [24]. Kuhfuss and Subervie [44] exploited a delay in the implementation of agri-environmental schemes to assess the impacts of these instruments in the use of herbicides in two regions in France.…”

Are Grassland Conservation Programs a Cost-Effective Way to Fight Climate Change? Evidence from France

“…For a more complete accounting of permanent grassland benefits, we further include the values proposed in the literature to quantify some of the different ecosystem services rendered by the French permanent grasslands. Therefore, we retain the average values given by Puydarrieux and Devaux (2013) related to the water quality (44 euros/ha/year), pollination (60 euros/ha/year), hunting (4 euros/ha/year) 21 and landscape amenities (60 euros/ha/year). Adding up all these values, we arrive at an estimate of the benefits of the French Grassland Conservation Program of 1,571±3,081 euro, or a total benefit-cost ratio of 0.31±0.62, 22 which on average is still below one.…”

“…1 USD = 0.77 EUR), the SCC equals approximately 24 euro. 21 Here we consider the hunting as a supply activity and not as a leisure activity. Thus we value it at the market price of the prey.…”