Do rural development measures have an impact on farm nature value indicators in France?

In: 2014; 8. Journées de recherches en sciences sociales (JRSS), Grenoble, FRA, 2014-12-11-2014-12-12

Abstract

This paper proposes an approach for assessing the effectiveness of those agri-environmental schemes and rural development measures aimed at enhancing the natural value of farmland and, more generally, aimed at releasing the pressure on the environment due to agriculture. Using regional and local data, an indicator derived from the High Nature Value (HNV) concept is elaborated at a LAU1 spatial resolution, for both France as a whole as well as for Midi-Pyrénées NUTS2 region. The effect of rural development measures on the evolution of this indicator in France, between 2007 and 2010, is explored. Given that the indicator is built from three different indices (addressing crop diversity, grassland share, and wooded and afforested farmland) the effect of rural development measures on each of these individual indices is also explored. Results indicate that measures from both 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 rural development programming periods affect the changes in the indicator and indices, and the spatial scale of the analyses matters. Indeed, trends observed at the national scale do not necessarily apply at the regional scale (e.g. impacts of conversion to organic farming, the grassland premium, payments for water and biodiversity protection) underlining the importance of multi-scale assessments. This enables the main structure and the magnitude of policy impacts to be captured and helps with the understanding of why certain objectives were not met. Key findings are relevant in the context of policy monitoring and evaluation, while the methodology proposed, that incorporates spatial effects, is an important contribution to the implementation of the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework by Member States to account for national, regional or local characteristics.