Sustainability of greening measures by Common Agricultural Policy 2014-2020 in new climate scenarios in a Mediterranean area

Sustainable management of natural resources and climate action together form one of the three objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2014–2020. They are addressed by replacing the existing direct payments under Pillar 1 with a basic payment topped up by an additional payment conditional on farmers undertaking “agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment”, under a policy referred to as greening. In this study, the impact of greening was assessed using a Discrete Stochastic Programming model that describes the farm production in a Mediterranean agricultural area in different climate scenarios. The results show that greening is not beneficial throughout the study area. Some farm types are particularly affected because of the recent price increase for maize silage for biogas. However, greening appears to have a positive impact on chemical use, particularly nitrogen. The application of the measures greening in the current climate scenario seems to have a more significant impact respect to the future climate scenario