Publications

This study aims to shed light on the impact of the crop diversity criterion of green payments on farms’ economic and environmental performances, alongside land use practices. In order to provide causal evidence, we exploit the natural experiment from the 2013 Common Agri-cultural Policy reform, which established stronger crop diversity eligibility criteria for farmers with over 10 ha (and 30 ha) of arable land. More precisely, we use a difference-in-discontinuity design on a sample of French farms and compare those respectively above and below the two thresholds. Our findings suggest that farms around 10 ha experienced significant land reallocation and an increase in crop diversity, while farms around 30 ha increase their number of crops. Interestingly, we also found that the main effects were primarily driven by farms that already met the diversification requirements. This suggests that the crop diversity criterion did not result in much additional change. 

Keywords : Green Payments; Crop Diversification; Difference in discontinuity; Windfall Effect; France.

JEL Codes : Q12, Q15, Q18, Q57, C31.

The agricultural detrimental effects on the environment are a source of concern. Public measures, such as agri-environmental schemes (AES), have been designed to incentivize farmers to adopt more sound environmental practices on the farm. In this study, we examine the effects of past initial economic and environmental performances on AES adoption by focusing on crop farms. Using Firth’s logistic regression to address small sample bias with French FADN data from 1997 to 2007, we mainly find that technical efficiency has heterogeneous effects on AES adoption, depending on environmental indexes. This result suggests the presence of windfall effects. We also show complex interactions (antagonism or synergy) between economic and environmental performances in adoption decisions, and heterogeneous effects depending on the type of farming. 

Keywords : Technical Efficiency, Environmental Indexes, Agri-Environmental Schemes, Firth’s Penalization, Windfall Effects, France. 

JEL Codes : C25, D22, Q12, Q15, Q18, Q57