Farmers’ Attitudes toward the Future of Direct Payments: An Empirical Study from Germany

The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform has met with large-scale protests from farmers throughout Europe, intending to change one of the most controversial components: direct payments. We analyze German farmers' attitudes and understanding of direct payments. The study employs a sur-vey of 435 farmers collected from January to Febru-ary 2021. Using cluster analysis and quantitative content analysis, we identified three distinct groups: (1) The “Independents” (43.7%) are entrepreneurs and have a competitive mindset. They would prefer to abolish direct payments associated with more freedom from policy conditions. (2) The “Conservatives” (27.0%) advocate an income policy based on direct payments, and they reject higher environmental standards. (3) The “Environmentalists” (30.3%) em-phasize a pronounced environmental awareness, fa-voring an environmentally performance-based ap-proach. The results show that policies are often per-ceived differently than they are intentionally designed. Improving the effectiveness of the policy measure requires sufficient information about the CAP's objec-tives for farmers, focusing on more transparent com-munication strategies. From a policy perspective, a more differentiated design of policy instruments and longer transformation periods are needed to engage farmers in policy change

Farmers’ Attitudes toward the Future of Direct Payments: An Empirical Study from Germany

The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform has met with large-scale protests from farmers throughout Europe, intending to change one of the most controversial components: direct payments. We analyze German farmers' attitudes and understanding of direct payments. The study employs a sur-vey of 435 farmers collected from January to Febru-ary 2021. Using cluster analysis and quantitative content analysis, we identified three distinct groups: (1) The “Independents” (43.7%) are entrepreneurs and have a competitive mindset. They would prefer to abolish direct payments associated with more freedom from policy conditions. (2) The “Conservatives” (27.0%) advocate an income policy based on direct payments, and they reject higher environmental standards. (3) The “Environmentalists” (30.3%) em-phasize a pronounced environmental awareness, fa-voring an environmentally performance-based ap-proach. The results show that policies are often per-ceived differently than they are intentionally designed. Improving the effectiveness of the policy measure requires sufficient information about the CAP's objec-tives for farmers, focusing on more transparent com-munication strategies. From a policy perspective, a more differentiated design of policy instruments and longer transformation periods are needed to engage farmers in policy change

The Economic Well-being of Farm Households in Germany

In this study, we explore the economic well-being of farm and nonfarm households in Germany. We ap-plied an indicator that combines households' disposa-ble income and net wealth consisting of financial as-sets and real estate to data from the Income and Con-sumption Survey (EVS) 2018. We found that the in-come available to farm households can support a standard of living equal to that of nonfarm (employed) households. Wealth affects households' economic well-being in both directions: farm households and workers/employees would be better off if their house-hold income would assess their economic status. The opposite trend occurs for unem-ployed and pension-ers/retirees. However, the analysis of farmers' well-being requires income data of multiple years regard-ing the income volatility of self-employment in agri-culture. Consid-ering wealth to assess farm house-holds' economic well-being means paying attention to their farm assets because they are highly intertwined with the household. The EVS misses farm char-acteristics and a reliable number of farmers' observa-tions to assess their economic well-being over time to derive agricultural policy implications. Hence, there is currently a lack of statistical data and evidence to achieve the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 's second objective to pro-vide income support in a tar-geted manner

High Mortality of COVID-19 Early after Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Retrospective Multicenter Analysis on Behalf of the German Cooperative Transplant Study Group

Recipients of allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) are at high risk for contracting infectious diseases with high morbidity and mortality. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral respiratory disease that can lead to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, with a potentially fatal outcome. In this retrospective study conducted on behalf of the German Cooperative Transplant Study Group, we aimed to analyze risk factors, disease course, and outcomes of COVID-19 in patients who underwent alloSCT. AlloSCT recipients who became infected with SARS-CoV-2 at German and Austrian transplant centers between February 2020 and July 2021 were included. Classification of COVID-19 severity into mild, moderate-severe, or critical disease and division of the course of the pandemic into 4 phases were done according to the German Robert Koch Institute. The main endpoint was overall mortality at the end of follow-up. We further analyzed the need for treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU) and the severity of disease. Risk factors were evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses, and survival analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier method. The study cohort comprised 130 patients from 14 transplant centers, with a median age at diagnosis of COVID-19 of 59 years (range, 20 to 81 years) and a median interval between alloSCT and COVID-19 of 787 days (range, 19 to 8138 days). The most common underlying diseases were acute myeloid leukemia (45.4%) and lymphoma (10.8%). The majority of patients (84.9%) were infected in the later phases of the pandemic; 20.8% had moderate-severe disease, 12.3% had critical disease, and 19.2% were treated in an ICU. After a median follow-up of 127 days, overall mortality was 16.2%, 52.0% among patients treated in an ICU. Risk factors for mortality in multivariate analysis were active disease (odds ratio [OR], 4.46), infection with SARS-CoV-2 60 years (OR, 5.39), and ongoing immunosuppression with cyclosporine (OR, 8.55). Risk factors for developing moderate-severe or critical disease were concurrent immunosuppression (OR, 4.06) and age >40 years (OR, 4.08). Patients after alloSCT exhibit a substantially increased mortality risk after COVID-19 infection compared with the normal population, without considerable improvement over the course of the pandemic. Risk factors include age, early infection post-alloSCT, and active immunosuppression. Further studies are needed to improve prevention and treatment in this high-risk patient group. (c) 2022 The American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

High Mortality of COVID-19 Early after Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Retrospective Multicenter Analysis on Behalf of the German Cooperative Transplant Study Group

Recipients of allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) are at high risk for contracting infectious diseases with high morbidity and mortality. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a viral respiratory disease that can lead to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, with a potentially fatal outcome. In this retrospective study conducted on behalf of the German Cooperative Transplant Study Group, we aimed to analyze risk factors, disease course, and outcomes of COVID-19 in patients who underwent alloSCT. AlloSCT recipients who became infected with SARS-CoV-2 at German and Austrian transplant centers between February 2020 and July 2021 were included. Classification of COVID-19 severity into mild, moderate-severe, or critical disease and division of the course of the pandemic into 4 phases were done according to the German Robert Koch Institute. The main endpoint was overall mortality at the end of follow-up. We further analyzed the need for treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU) and the severity of disease. Risk factors were evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses, and survival analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier method. The study cohort comprised 130 patients from 14 transplant centers, with a median age at diagnosis of COVID-19 of 59 years (range, 20 to 81 years) and a median interval between alloSCT and COVID-19 of 787 days (range, 19 to 8138 days). The most common underlying diseases were acute myeloid leukemia (45.4%) and lymphoma (10.8%). The majority of patients (84.9%) were infected in the later phases of the pandemic; 20.8% had moderate-severe disease, 12.3% had critical disease, and 19.2% were treated in an ICU. After a median follow-up of 127 days, overall mortality was 16.2%, 52.0% among patients treated in an ICU. Risk factors for mortality in multivariate analysis were active disease (odds ratio [OR], 4.46), infection with SARS-CoV-2 60 years (OR, 5.39), and ongoing immunosuppression with cyclosporine (OR, 8.55). Risk factors for developing moderate-severe or critical disease were concurrent immunosuppression (OR, 4.06) and age >40 years (OR, 4.08). Patients after alloSCT exhibit a substantially increased mortality risk after COVID-19 infection compared with the normal population, without considerable improvement over the course of the pandemic. Risk factors include age, early infection post-alloSCT, and active immunosuppression. Further studies are needed to improve prevention and treatment in this high-risk patient group. (c) 2022 The American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/