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How Experts Explain Farmers' Choices in Germany

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How Experts Explain Farmers' Choices in Germany Land Use Policy 65 (2017) 93–108 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy j ournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol The EU’s ecological focus areas – How experts explain farmers’ choices in Germany a,b,∗ b,c a a b Yves Zinngrebe , Guy Pe’er , Stefan Schueler , Jonas Schmitt , Jenny Schmidt , a,∗ Sebastian Lakner a Department for Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Germany b Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental research (UFZ), Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany c German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) have recently been introduced as key element in the greening of the EU’s Received 22 July 2016 Common Agricultural Policy. In 2015, farmers across the EU have implemented EFAs for the first time. Data Received in revised form 16 March 2017 for German federal states indicate a strong variance in EFA decisions with an overall dominance of catch Accepted 21 March 2017 crops, nitrogen fixing crops and fallow land – two of which bear limited benefits for biodiversity conserva- Available online 10 April 2017 tion. This article explores how experts explain EFA choices. We conducted 35 qualitative, semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Ministry for Agriculture, farm advisory services, and farmers’ Keywords: associations in each federal state. Applying content analysis we clustered the factors mentioned as deter- Common agricultural policy Greening minants for farmers’ EFA choices into the categories administrative considerations, economic considerations, local factors, ecosystem considerations and policy incentives. According to the interviewed experts, farmers Biodiversity conservation Farmer decisions have primarily registered measures that already existed on their farms. Administrative considerations Administrative constraints dominate the identified determinants for farmers’ EFA decisions, and together with economic consid- Policy integration erations appear to function as a negative incentive for EFA options that are beneficial for biodiversity, such as landscape elements and buffer strips. We conclude that conditions for EFA implementation were found to not effectively incentivise a higher share of biodiversity supporting characteristics in German agricultural landscapes. Based on a detailed discussion we extract recommendations on how to improve EFA implementation. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction EU-28) means about D 12.6 billion/year for the period from 2015 to 2020 (see also Hart, 2015a). It is thus in the interest of EU citizens, The European Union (EU) reformed its Common Agricultural policy makers and tax-payers to see that these payments are spent Policy (CAP) in 2013 and introduced greening measures to help as cost-effectively as possible to produce their aspired ecological improving the ecological conditions of agricultural landscapes outcomes. under existing subsidies. The greening of the CAP focuses on the When establishing EFAs as a policy instrument, the Euro- direct payment scheme (pillar 1), and includes three measures: Per- pean Commission (EC) particularly highlighted its expectations on manent Pasture, Crop Diversification, and Ecological Focus Areas ecological impacts on farms: “Ecological focus areas should be estab- (EFAs). According to article 47 of EU-regulation 1307/2013, 30% of lished, in particular, in order to safeguard and improve biodiversity on the ‘national envelopes’ (i.e. pillar 1 payments) are now directly farms” (EC, 2013: recital 44). Farmers with >15 ha arable area are 1 linked to the greening obligations, which on average (across the now obliged to implement EFAs on 5% of their arable land. Among the various EFA options, EU member states approved two to 15 options as eligible for national implementation. Greening imple- ∗ mentation started in 2015, and member states were requested to Corresponding authors. report on farmers’ uptake decisions to the EC by December 2015. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Zinngrebe). 1 In contrast to other instruments of P1 like the ‘Flexibility between pillars’ (article Thus, it is now possible to assess farmers’ choices and understand 14 of EU-Regulation 1307/2013), ‘Redistributive payments’ (article 42), ‘Payment the factors affecting them. for areas with natural constraints’ (article 49), ‘Payment for young farmers’ (article Understanding EFA uptake is imperative given a range of con- 51) and ‘Voluntary coupled support’ (article 53) the 30% of P1 for greening is fixed cerns made about whether EFAs would fulfil their potential for without any choice of the EU member state in financial terms. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.03.027 0264-8377/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 94 Y. Zinngrebe et al. / Land Use Policy 65 (2017) 93–108 3 protecting farmland biodiversity (Pe’er et al., 2014; Dicks et al., ber of EFA options for farmers. Table A1 in Appendix A presents an 2014; Hart, 2015b). Additionally, some of the options offered as overview of the different EFA options offered in Germany, including EFAs, especially the ones without management specifications, fail a short description of the administrative requirements. Weight- to consider the available knowledge regarding effectiveness for bio- ing factors were applied to calculate the effective area that an EFA diversity (Pe’er et al., 2014; Dicks et al., 2014; Oppermann et al., receives when registered. For instance, one hectare (ha) of catch 2015; Sutherland et al., 2015). A particular concern was that farm- crop would be calculated as 0.3 ha EFA area, while 1 ha registered as ers may choose EFA options that are less effective for biodiversity. buffer strip (including strips along forest edges and running waters, A recent EU-wide assessment of EFAs in terms of ecological useful- and flower strips adjacent to arable land) is counted as 1.5 ha. ness versus uptake by farmers confirms the concern that farmers’ While EFAs and greening are part of the direct payments entailed choices do not meet ecological needs: while ecologists rated field in pillar 1 of the CAP, there are overlaps and a varying degree margins, buffer strips, fallow land, and landscape features as the of complementarity with the pillar 2’s agri-environment mea- beneficial options for biodiversity, farmers mostly implemented sures (AEMs) provided through the European Agricultural Fund ‘catch crops and green cover’, nitrogen-fixing crops, and fallow land for Rural Development (EAFRD). Depending on the EFA option (Pe’er et al., 2016). These circumstances require asking what factors and the federal state, farmers can voluntarily register conservation guide farmers’ decisions. Here, one must note that EFA implemen- activities on their farms as AEMs and receive financial compen- tation can collide with farming practices and goals (Schulz et al., sation for somewhat similar environmental services as provided 2014; Schmidt and Hauck, submitted) and can conflict with objec- by EFAs. In Germany, the federal (national) and federal state gov- tives of other policies, potentially resulting in incoherent incentives ernments finance AEMs within the framework of the joint task for to farmers (Huttunen, 2015). The provision of (different) ecosystem the “Improvement of Agricultural Structures and Coastal Protec- services varies strongly among the options eligible as EFAs, and tion” (German abbreviation: GAK) (BMEL, 2015a). This programme their relevance and significance for stakeholders strongly depend provides a general list of AEMs and defines to what extent they 2 on farmers’ perceptions and preferences (Hauck et al., 2014). can be financially supported while at the same time being regis- Analysing farmers’ motivations and other determinants of deci- tered as EFAs. According to those rules, nitrogen fixing crops, catch sions on EFAs is thus crucial for a more effective implementation crops, buffer strips and landscape elements can be supported, yet in terms of achieving the ecological aims set by the European Com- with a lower rate of support compared to AEM contracts. Further- mission. more, while the GAK defines rules for co-funding procedures with Our paper focuses its analysis on Germany. Beyond being one of federal programmes, the 13 territorial federal states design the pro- the largest countries in the EU, Germany is implementing EFAs on grammes themselves and can apply support rates deviating from the federal state (“Bundesland” in German) level. We collected and the general GAK-regulations. Table 1 presents the federal states structured information on the uptake of EFA options across fed- offering additional AEM support for EFA measures (see Table A2 in eral states, and presented the statistics to experts from all federal Appendix A for specific rates and details). states. We then conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews Overall, buffer strips and nitrogen fixing crops can receive addi- asking experts to explain the uptake of EFA options and related tional funding as AEMs in most states, whereas EFAs like fallow land motives for farmers’ decisions. Experts were identified within three and landscape elements can only
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