Proceedings of the OECD/PACIOLI Workshop on Information Needs for the Analysis of Farm Household Income Issues

The assessment of agricultural policies depends more and more on micro-economic data sets. This is especially true for policies with an income objective in a situation where farm households have different income sources. Among others the OECD has stressed this point in recent years with analytical reports. The PACIOLI network yearly brings together data managers and researchers interested in the innovation of data collection in this area. In April 2004 a joint workshop was organised at the OECD in Paris to bring experts together to exchange best practices. This report contains the proceedings of that workshop.Farm Management,

Anticipating the Future: Scenarios for Resilient Institutions in Agricultural Research and Innovation

Over the last 20 years several countries have made changes in their Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS): institutes for applied research have been put on output-finance with reduced budgets or have been merged into larger structures (Finland, Italy), sometimes into universities (NL, Dk). Incentives to publish have been strengthened in universities. Private advise is now available all over Europe and competes with public extension. How will or should this develop in the future? The SCAR strategic working group AKIS did a foresight study and identified three scenario’s for AKIS: High Tech, Self-Organisation and Collapse. Recommendations are made to make AKIS more robust

Business Dynamics with Scenarios on Dutch Agriculture and its Institutional Arrangements

This paper investigates the development in the Durch Agri-Food innovation system.  Main components of the system are agriculture and agribusiness, the promotion of interests in the lobby system and the knowledge system. Each has its own dynamics but they are until now tied together by institutional arrangements. Based on a historical description we formulate a simple business dynamics model. The robustness of the system is investigated by a scenario analysis. Results have been checked by interviews with experts

Support for farmers' cooperatives: EU synthesis and comparative analysis report: policy measures

In order to foster the competitiveness of the food supply chain, the European Commission is committed to promote and facilitate the restructuring and consolidation of the agricultural sector by encouraging the creation of voluntary agricultural producer organisations. To support the policy making process DG Agriculture and Rural Development has launched a large study, “Support for Farmers’ Cooperatives (SFC)”, that will provide insights on successful cooperatives and producer organisations as well as on effective support measures for these organisations. These insights can be used by farmers themselves, in setting up and strengthening their collective organisation, and by the European Commission in its effort to encourage the creation of agricultural producer organisations in the EU. Within the framework of the SFC project this EU synthesis and comparative analysis report - Policy Measures has been written. Data collection for this report has been done in the summer of 2011. In addition to this report, the SFC-project has delivered 27 country reports, a report on policies for cooperatives in non-EU OECD countries, 8 sector reports, 5 other EU synthesis and comparative analysis reports, 33 case studies, a report on cluster analysis, and a final report

Hacking the CAP – Options to redesign the European Agricultural Policy

In 2020 the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has to be renewed. This raises the question which policy would be optimal for the 3rd decade of the century, seen the changes in agriculture (decline in the number of farmers, effect of ict and other new technologies, concentration in the food chain etc.) and public issues that ask for solutions (climate change, sustainability, need for jobs and growth in rural development, food policy etc.)The history of the CAP has shown that policy changes are often incremental. Some argue that especially in 2020 changes will be small as the term of the policy is out of sync with the budget cycle (important decisions on the CAP are not taken without a decision on the EU’s financial framework) and as the CAP decision will be at the moment that the current commissioners hand over their mandate to their successors. However this should not prevent scholars from coming up with fresh ideas on how the policy could be made more effective and efficient for a resilient agriculture and food and nutrition security in a sustainable environment.To do so, this paper takes the view that the CAP is a bundle of policy instruments to reach several policy objectives, that not necessarily are consistent or have synergies but where trade-offs exist. That means that Tinbergen’s rule applies: achieving the desired values of a certain number of policy targets requires the policy maker to control an equal number of instruments.In our analysis we re-interpret Article 33 of the Treaty of the European Union (that defines the CAP) in current policy objectives and specific targets. We then look for the most effective policy instruments for each of these targets. We discuss synergies between instruments in the execution of the policy. To test the robustness of these policy targets and instruments we stress-test them against three scenario’s for the future of agriculture and the food system: High Tech, Self-Organisation and Collapse. These three scenarios have been published by the EU’s Standing Committee on Agricultural Research’s strategic working group AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems).This leads to a redesigned CAP, fit for the 3rd decade of this century, as robust as possible for external scenario’s on agriculture. Finally we discuss the discrepancy between the current CAP and our suggestions for the redesigned CAP

Adjustment and differences in farm performance; A farm management perspective from the Netherlands

There are differences in performance between farmers. In the Netherlands this has been a major topic of research for at least 30 years. Research has shown that the managerial capacities of farmers play a major role in differences in economic and environmental performance. Management can be measured and the optimal level is not the maximum level. Farmers differ in their objectives, competences and local external situation and there-fore their strategies. These strategies can be identified. In recent years strategic management has become more important and this can be supported with consultancy. Farmers also differ in their adoption and innovation behaviour. These micro-economic results, which correlate with large differences in income and high prices of fixed assets with a limited supply, can be explained as being consistent with economic theory on perfect markets. Although these findings suggest that some farm households have attractive strategies that can cope with policy adjustments, the research supports the hypothesis but does not (yet) prove that a severe adjustment of agricultural policy e.g. towards a more market oriented policy, induces more innovation, and that due to this innovation the effects of adjusting the agricultural policy are less severe than estimated ex ante with current dynamic policy models.Farm Management,

The agricultural knowledge and innovation system of Jordan’s horticultural sector : Current state and suggestions for improvement

The horticultural sector in Jordan is undergoing a crisis, due to a decline in export. Innovation can improve the performance of the sector. To this end, the government of Jordan should pursue an innovation policy with the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) as object of the governance. Based on a review of the AKIS in Jordan it is proposed that a Living Lab setting be used to gain experience with the management of a number of innovation projects and capacity building projects

Collecting sustainability data in different organisational settings of the European Farm Accountancy Data Network

The European Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) collects detailed financial economic information on a sample of farms in Europe. These data are used intensively for the evaluation of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy. Owing to changes in policies, there is a need for a broader set of farm level data, especially on the sustainability performance of farms. This paper describes the different types of FADN systems in Europe and evaluates how these types affect the feasibility of collecting sustainability data. In addition to a theoretical evaluation, the practical experiences of collecting sustainability data on more than 1,000 farms in Europe are described. The paper concludes with a discussion on the advantages and challenges of extending the scope of FADN data collection with sustainability data

Design of a System for Information Transfer to Reduce Administrative Burdens in the Agrifood Sector

Agricultural policies are widening the scope to contribute to environmental objectives, such as the Green Deal, Paris Climate Agreement and sustainable development goals. This leads to new monitoring and data needs. To fulfil these data needs, it is crucial to explore the opportunities and limitations of new technologies. This paper analyses the information flows within the agricultural sector and its potential to contribute to future information needs.Farmers act within a network of commercial and governmental organisations. The information exchange with these organisations could increasingly occur through digital means, but in reality, there is still a lot of data transfer on paper or in PDF format. This implies information loss. Digital information flows provide a wealth of information for policy evaluation and monitoring and have the potential to reduce transaction costs. Combining data from different sources (open data like earth observation data, data from on-farm sensor networks, accountancy data like invoices and data from food chain platforms) concerning a single farm is an even bigger challenge than the transfer from paper to digital. Based on these observations a list of requirements for a future solution for information transfer is defined.Based on these requirements, this paper presents the design of a System for Information Transfer to Reduce Administrative burdens (SITRA) to combine data from different sources and give farmers control who can access these data. SITRA will address farmers’ needs to reduce the growing administrative burden placed on them by governments and the food chain sustainability and food safety schemes, especially if data would be stored in a digital farm locker and a farmer could voluntary give his consent through an authorisation mechanism to share specific data with his business partners, paying agency, statistical organisation and Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN, an EU monitoring system for the Common Agricultural Policy). A platform that provides such data lockers could also provide benchmark facilities and a tool for common (open source) maintenance of coding systems.The paper proposes some follow-up activities to test this design. As a pilot, organic farmers that participate in the Dutch Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) will be recruited to co-develop and test the design principles of the system. Given trust issues around data management, the design of the governance and business model of the system are key issues in the follow-up. This group is chosen as organic certification and FADN are the most data-intensive monitoring and evaluation tools in the CAP. The Farm to Fork communication proposes to enlarge the organic sector to 25% of the agricultural area. A new organic control regulation, based on a risk assessment approach is about to be implemented. The Farm to Fork communication also proposes to link the FADN much more with the Farm Advisory System and to extend it to a Farm Sustainability Data Network

FLINT – Farm-level Indicators for New Topics in policy evaluation: an introduction

Societal expectations about agricultural production are changing. There are increased demands on issues such as food safety, animal welfare and the impact of agriculture on the environment (land, water and air). These changes have been refl ected in the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but information on these issues is lacking and this complicates the required evaluation of policies. The EU Framework 7 project FLINT tries to close this gap by analysing the feasibility of collecting data on these new topics. FLINT has established a data infrastructure with up-to-date farm-level indicators for themonitoring and evaluation of the CAP. The project created a pilot network of more than 1,000 farms to collect a set of sustainability indicators at farm level. The pilot represents farm diversity at EU level, including the different administrative environments in the Member States. This paper sets out the context and the main contributions of the project