PR - Impacts Of Cap Designs On Rural Territories And Their Viability: Simulation Experiments On A Small German Region And Distributive Effects

We investigate in this paper the participation of farms in the agri-environmental measure “extensive grassland” and the consequences on land use in the case study area Ostprignitz-Ruppin in the federal state of Brandenburg in Germany. We first vary the level of agri-environmental payments (AEP) per hectare in the framework of Agenda 2000. Then we investigate the impacts of the actual decoupling policy which includes the possibility of keeping the land in good agricultural and environmental conditions. For this purpose we use the agent-based model AgriPoliS whose dynamic nature offers an original way to understand farmers’ individual decisions to participate or not in this agri-environmental measure. The simulations show that AEP can avoid land abandonment to some extent. However regional decoupled payments put the relevance of this measure into question, as farmers reduced their participation after the reform of the policy.

Keywords: CAP, agri-environmental payments, decoupling, multifunctionality.