Greening and legume-supported crop rotations: An impacts assessment on Italian arable farms

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the European Union has progressively and structurally reformed the Common Agricultural Policy with a gradual integration of environmental objectives. For the period post-2020, one of the most relevant changes could be the upgrading of the crops diversification, imposing it as an obligation to rotate crops by introducing legumes in the cropping patterns. This paper proposes an assessment of the possible effects of such obligation on the arable crops sector in Italy. The analysis uses a mathematical programming model calibrated and validated by way positive approach and is conducted on data of about 2800 Italian farms of the Farm Accountancy Data Network. Moreover, the analysis is structured by geographical area and altimetric level in order to consider typical specificities of Italian farms according to their localization. Our results show the legume-supported crop rotations reduce the general environmental pressure of agricultural activities and affect a large part of the arable land, against reduced economic impacts. In the majority of farms the lost income per hectare is lower than the national average value of the decoupled payments. Yet, the legumesupported crop rotations determine a reduction in the production of main crops and, especially in some areas, negative economic and social impacts. All this suggests that the legume-supported crop rotations are an opportunity to adopting sustainable agricultural practices and that Member States could implement the agronomic practice differently for areas and use additional instruments to meet the EU's objectives. Especially the decoupled and coupled payments are needed to limit economic losses and incentivize farmers towards virtuous behaviour.

Farm‐level impacts of the CAP post‐2020 reform: A scenario‐based analysis

“…In modeling terms, it means that an arable crop cannot be grown on more than 66% of the farm arable area for a 3‐year rotation, and on 50% of the arable area for a 4‐year rotation. This interpretation is similar to the “continuous cropping—2 years” and “biennial” rotations examined by Cortignani and Dono (2020).…”

“…An important advantage of IFM‐CAP, compared to other models used for CAP ex‐ante impact analysis, is its EU‐wide coverage. In contrast, individual farm models used in the literature usually cover only selected MS/regions or specific agricultural sectors (Cortignani & Dono, 2020; Vosough‐Ahmadi et al, 2015). On the other hand, most studies that provided EU‐wide impacts of previous CAP reforms—except for those based on IFM‐CAP (Espinosa et al, 2020; Louhichi et al, 2017; Louhichi, Ciaian, et al, 2018)—relied on the representative (average) farm, or regional models.…”

Regional Analysis of the Impact of the 2020 Health Crisis on the Private-Sector Wage Bill: Structural and Local Effects

“…These authors find that, while the introduction of legumes led to significant reductions in nitrous oxide emissions and nitrogen fertiliser use, it also led to a decrease in gross margins in three out of five regions. More recently, Cortignani & Dono (2020) show that the expansion of legume crops promoted by the greening measures of the CAP improved the environmental balance of Italian farms as expected, but to the detriment of economic (income) and social (salaried and non-salaried work) impacts. Lastly, using a micro-econometric model that takes into account the heterogeneity of French agricultural holdings, Koutchadé et al (2021) quantify the impact of coupled subsidies on extensive margins, i.e.…”

COVID-19: The Challenges and Opportunities for Water, Air, Agriculture and Energy Sectors

“…New policies should be formulated to protect the farming systems from similar shocks in the future. Conservation agriculture practices and legume-based cropping systems may be promoted to reduce the overall degradation of the soil and environmental health and improve the resilience of farming systems (Cortignani and Dono 2020). The urban agriculture and home gardening can help improve the food and nutritional security during and after the COVD-19 pandemic (Lal 2020).…”