Improving the Resilience‐enabling Capacity of the Common Agricultural Policy: Policy Recommendations for More Resilient EU Farming Systems

Abstract

Summary One of the aims of the post‐2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to improve the resilience of Europe's farming systems. The CAP of the budget period 2014–2020, however, has insufficiently supported the resilience of farming systems. The ongoing CAP reform process offers an appropriate opportunity to integrate a broader perspective on resilience in the CAP. We therefore propose a set of policy recommendations on how to improve the capability of the CAP to support more fully the resilience (i.e. robustness, adaptability and transformability) of farming systems in the EU. The policy recommendations are based on a comparative analysis of six national co‐design workshops with stakeholders and a final EU‐level workshop with Brussels‐based experts. We concluded three key lessons about the CAP's influence on resilience: (1) resilience challenges, needs and policy effects are context‐specific; (2) resilience capacities are complementary, but trade‐offs between robustness, adaptability and transformability occur at the level of policies and due to budget competition; (3) there is a need for a coordinated long‐term vision for Europe's agriculture, which is difficult to achieve through the bargaining processes associated with a CAP reform. We propose specific policy recommendations that could contribute to a better balance between policies that support robustness, adaptability and transformability of Europe's farming systems.

Impacts of Erosion on the Sustainability of Organic Olive Groves: A Case Study (Estepa Region, Southwestern Spain)

“…The study area corresponds to the PDO Estepa, in Seville (Andalusia, Southern Spain) (Figure 1). bility 2021, 13,7983 3 of 21 development on a regional scale, placing value on the contribution of non-productive ES of the olive grove, with the organic model being an environmentally friendly management aimed at promoting the sustainability of these systems [8,33,34]. On the other hand, this agricultural model can respond to farmers' demands, based on obtaining economic stability, and to the existing social demands towards agriculture, where the main focus is on obtaining quality products based on food security [32,35].…”

“…These higher costs are due to the greater need to implement energy inputs (i.e., irrigation, fertilisers) to keep production constant for scenarios where erosion leads to a decrease in soil fertility and agricultural productivity [8,10,19]. Finally, landowners showed a high satisfaction with certified organic olive groves, with no willingness to modify the management of their plots in the shortmedium term, to benefit from the European subsidies granted by Pillar I and II of the current CAP (i.e., 2014-2020) towards agricultural managements that promote soil fertility together with rural development, objectives that will become more important in the post-2020 CAP, where a greater demand for agricultural multifunctionality rather than productivity will predominate [33,34,84].…”

“…Thus, organic farming is a model that balances the environmental, productive and socio-economic dimensions of the crop, minimising the environmental impacts of erosion through the implementation of edaphic plant covers [24,29,36,56]. From this local perspective, organic farming in the Estepa region makes a high contribution to satisfying existing demands for agriculture, being an alternative agricultural management that meets the multifunctional objectives set out by the CAP and the sustainable development goals (SDGs), contributing especially to the goals related to zero hunger, due to its stable production over time; responsible production and consumption, guaranteeing sustainable crops; action against climate change, by using only organic fertilisers and avoiding land and atmospheric pollution; and the conservation of terrestrial ecosystems, promoting the agro-biodiversity of olive groves and introduc-ing measures to mitigate erosion processes (i.e., plant covers) that minimise the risk of desertification [33,34,90,91].…”

“…The observed expansion of organic olive groves is mainly due to changes in the common agricultural policy (CAP), together with farmers' and society's demands [31,32]. On the one hand, the current CAP (i.e., 2014-2020) and its future prospects (i.e., CAP post-2020) no longer shape a policy based on subsidies directly proportional to production, instead encouraging the adoption of agricultural practices aimed at maximising crop sustainability and rural development on a regional scale, placing value on the contribution of non-productive ES of the olive grove, with the organic model being an environmentally friendly management aimed at promoting the sustainability of these systems [8,33,34]. On the other hand, this agricultural model can respond to farmers' demands, based on obtaining economic stability, and to the existing social demands towards agriculture, where the main focus is on obtaining quality products based on food security [32,35].…”

A Resilience-Enabling Environment for Farming Systems

“…An important policy implication is that to address the resilience issues of FSs, it is not enough to transfer a constant stream of transfer payments to compensate for the lack of resilience of these systems, as is the approach taken in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) where most resources are devoted to income support through direct payments. Rather, policy but also private agrifood actors should assist FS actors to build resilience capacities, starting with coping capacity (robustness) (see Chapter 1)which can, amongst others, be enhanced through some kind of safety net but could be done through other approaches as wellbut extending to responsive capacities (adaptability and transformability) through creating an enabling environment that supports adaptations and transformations (Buitenhuis et al, 2020).…”