Uppsala 2022

Policy Roundtable : What room for economic experiments in agricultural policy evaluation? Needs, feasibility and acceptability

Laure Kuhfuss (chair), Researcher, James Hutton Institute, Scotland, UK

Maria de la Torre (online), Agricultural policy advisor, NatureScot, Scotland

Alice Devot, Branch office director, Oréade-Breche, France

Jens Rommel, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

In this roundtable we discussed the place of economic experiments in the evaluation of agricultural policies, bringing together three complementary perspectives. Alice Devot, from Oréades-Breche, a major consultancy in CAP Policies, Plans, Programs and Projects Evaluation, reflected on her experience of conducting agricultural policy evaluations, at the local, regional and national scales, to identify the challenges encountered by consultancies and to highlight key research needs that should be addresses by economic experiments. Maria de la Torre, from NatureScot, Scotland’s Nature Agency, provided insights on agricultural policy evaluation from an agency and program manager perspective. She built on her experience of agricultural policy advisor at NatureScot, which has been in charge of delivering the Agri-environment and Climate Scheme from the last Scottish Rural Development Programme in partnership with Scottish Government, and is now leading the pilots currently implemented in Scotland to inform the design of the Scottish post-CAP agricultural policy, to help identify where and how economic experiments could play a role. Finally, Jens Rommel presented the results of a recent project investigating farmers’ perception of economic experiments, and point towards factors that can support their acceptability. Finally, all panellists and the audience were encouraged to discuss and reflect on avenues to foster collaborations between research and program managers and evaluators on the way forward to integrate economic experiments in European agricultural policies’ evaluation processes.