Indicators for agricultural policy impact assessment the case of multifunctional beef production

Abstract

Since the 1960s, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union has had a considerable influence on the types of products produced and on the methods of production. The CAP has been reformed several times. Currently it takes into account the agri-environment and rural development, as well as market and income support. In 2004 the MEA-Scope project¹ started. The objective of the MEA-Scope project is to analyse the impacts of future CAP reforms on social, economic, environmental, and landscape aspects of beef production. To do this, a list of indicators was needed to quantify the impact of future CAP reforms. ECNC’s² task was to develop this indicator list by extracting the relevant information from existing indicator lists. In the MEA-Scope project, impact assessments will be conducted on both farm scale and landscape scale in seven case study regions. These case study regions are situated in Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Only those indicators will be used for the analyses that have already proven their European applicability and for which a sufficient database can be generated. The focus of developing the indicator list was on policy relevant Non Commodity Outputs (NCOs) with respect to beef production. cooperation with end users and regional experts.

Research conducted for the MEA-Scope project

MEA-Scope is the Acronym for ‘Micro-economic instruments for impact assessment of multifunctional agriculture to implement the Model of European Agriculture, a Policy Oriented Research Project of the Sixth Framework Programme launched by the European Commission in 2004, coordinated by the Leibniz-Centre of Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg. See http://www.mea-scope.org/

ECNC: European Centre for Nature Conservation, see http://www.ecnc.org/