The geographic distribution and characterization of EU arable land affected by the “greening” of the Common Agricultural Policy

The reformed Common Agricultural Policy includes a mandatory "greening" component for direct payments, implementation of which will start in 2015. Two of the three measures introduced (crop diversification and ecological focus area) will not be applied in holdings with arable land below specific thresholds (10, 15 and 30 ha). This paper uses statistical data of different territories and agricultural systems in order to assess the possible impacts of these exclusions. It investigates if and in which regions this exemption may generate a theoretical loss of environmental effectiveness, depending on farming systems and current level of semi-natural vegetation. The analysis sketches a complex picture and highlights the regions where the exclusion from these two measures may generate greater issues. Noticeably, in all regions where there is a major prevalence of specialist cereals farming systems, these greening measures concern over half of all arable land. Regions with current low values of semi-natural vegetation where more than half of arable land are exempted from greening are relatively few. Member states may consider adopting specific targeted policy in these regions Applying a set of decision thresholds to fine-tune the analysis, the GIS created could be used as a decision support tool by national authorities.JRC.D.5-Food Securit