Exploring green agricultural policy scenarios with a spatially explicit agent-based model

This report presents an analysis of the impact of environmental cooperative decision-making for the European Commission’s legislative proposals for the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2014-2020. The analysis is based on scenarios with a spatially explicit rural agent-based model (SERA) that explicitly models farmers, their socio-economic decision-making, their land use, and the landscape of which they are part. The first part of the analysis focuses on the effects of environmental cooperative collective decision-making for implementation of the ‘greening measure’ Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs). The second part of the analysis focuses on the interest of collective agri-environment measures. Results show that ways through which EFAs are allocated are crucial for effectiveness of cooperative approaches. Relying on simple market oriented governance structures will not by definition result in a better allocation of EFAs in a region. Results show that when the environmental cooperative is a key player in the designation and allocation of Pillar II agri-environment schemes, farmland biodiversity potentially increases because local expert knowledge on favorable ecological sites can be used for optimal allocation of the scheme