AN IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE FUTURE CAP REFORM ON THE ITALIAN TOMATO SECTOR

The Health Check (HC) document traces the path for a new revision of the CAP. The communication content can be summarised in the following points: decoupling at regional and not at historical level, a more intensive modulation mechanism differentiated according to the total volume of subsidy received by the farm and a new implementation of the art. 69. The aim of this paper is to assess the effect of the HC on the farms producing fruits and vegetables in Italy, with a particular emphasis on the processed tomato production. The model based on the PMP approach simulates the regionalisation mechanism and the new modulation per brackets. The analysis carried out on a FADN sample of farms located in Emilia-Romagna region highlights as the HC new measures affect the farm economic performances but not the input allocation choice. The flat rate doesn’t produce perturbation in the relative convenience of the crops maintaining unchanged the degree of substitution among activities. Only when the CAP mechanism moves from a coupling scenario to a total decoupling one and in the case of a variation in price levels the modifications inside the production plan are evident.Future CAP reforms, Tomato sector, CAP assessment, Agricultural and Food Policy, Political Economy, Q10, Q18,

Point Centred Variography to Assess the Spatial Representativeness of Air Quality Monitoring Sites: Application to the Datasets of the FAIRMODE Intercomparison Exercise of Spatial Representativeness

Common definitions for the spatial representativeness of air quality monitoring sites are based on the evaluation of the similarity of pollutant concentrations, in which the representativeness area of a monitoring site is basically described by the set of all locations where the concentration of a pollutant does not differ from the measurements at the central point by more than a certain threshold. Classical geostatistical analysis describes the spatial correlation structure of a concentration field in terms of the variogram. In contrary, the point centred variography is based on the average of squared concentration differences observed in pairs formed between a particular central point and the set of all other points in the domain. It thereby places a monitoring station in the context of the local or regional air quality pattern. In this report we demonstrate how a mathematical inversion of the point centred variogram can provide information about the extent of the spatial representativeness area of a monitoring site. The application of this approach is tested on a set of modelling data from the city of Antwerp. This dataset contains information at a very high spatial (street level) and temporal resolution for three main pollutants (PM10, NO2 and Ozone), over the whole city. Furthermore, FAIRMODE (Forum for Air Quality Modeling in Europe) is currently concluding an intercomparison exercise on spatial representativeness methods, which is also based on sharing this same dataset.JRC.C.5-Air and Climat

Impact assessment of greening and the issue of nitrogen-fixing crops: Evidence from northern Italy

In the CAP reform 2014–2020, the 'green' component of direct payments remunerates environmental services and includes three greening requirements: crop diversification, maintenance of permanent grassland and establishment of an ecological focus area (EFA). This paper evaluates the effect of 'greening' and payment redistribution on farm incomes and land use, considering two different hypotheses of the EFA weighting factor (Ewf) for nitrogen-fixing crops. The evaluation is developed at farm level by a positive mathematical programming (PMP) model and applied to more than 2,000 farms in northern Italy. The results show that crop diversification will mainly affect the cereal area, with significant reductions in maize and wheat, while the EFA requirement, especially with the lower Ewf, will boost the spread of protein crops. Nevertheless, 'greening' does not significantly affect farm income, while greater economic effects are mainly due to the redistribution of direct payments

Student Success Is Impacted by Not Attending Gateway Quantitative Classes: A Pilot Study

Universities are charged with equipping the next generation of graduates with the skills and knowledge to benefit both the businesses they will work in. Analytics are the skills needed by both for profit and non-profit operating businesses. For example, in August of 2013, Forbes printed a post on the Forbes Insights blog by Daniel Keherer titled ‘Analysis Shows Jump in Marketing Analytics Jobs.’ The Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics (Dholakia, 2015) has been freely made available by Marketo. Harvard Business School Press has also published a book titled ‘Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning,’ by Harris and Davenport (2007). The question is, are our university graduates prepared for a world of analytics? This research shows universities need to have courses and faculty ready to develop the next generation of graduates who will have to deal with analytics in the workplace