Overview of the Implementation of the Farm Advisory System in Member States

By the beginning of 2007 Member States had to set up a system of advising farmers on land and farm management which should cover at least cross compliance requirements (the so-called Farm Advisory System). The report provides an overview on how Member States have set up the Farm Advisory System in the first year of its compulsory implementation. It describes and analyses the information acquired throughout a JRC questionnaire based survey in all Member States. The main topics presented are: the organisation of the system, the bodies that have been accredited to deliver advice, the funding support to farmers for the use of FAS, the way the advice is delivered, the priorities established for farmers and the number of holdings that may be concerned in the service. Finally the main concerns arisen in this first year of FAS implementation are discussed.JRC.G.3-Agricultur

Results of the GAEC workshop 2011

JRC-IES action GeoCap, together with Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management of Austria organised the 2011 Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) workshop. The event was held in Vienna (AT) on 3-5 October 2011 and was attended by 132 delegates coming from 24 EU Member States, two candidates countries (Croatia and Iceland) and the European Commission (DG AGRI, DG ENV and JRC). Technical presentations and discussion focussed on buffer strips, the JRC GAEC database, control issues related to the use of remote sensing and relations between the first and second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Implementing Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition in the EU - Results of the 2010 GAEC Workshop

JRC-IPSC action GeoCap, together with the Italian Ministry of Agricultural Food and Forestry Policies, the Italian National Rural Network and AGEA organised the 2010 Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) workshop. The event, held in Rome on 6-8 October, was attended by 124 delegates from 23 Member States, 2 accession countries and the European Commission. The technical presentations and discussion covered good practices for the minimum requirements defined by the Member States and their effects of the environmental, and the control of GAEC with remote sensing. The workshop included a field visit to observe the practical implementation of GAEC in Italy and a group exercise aimed at defining a common understanding among delegates of the GAEC framework. The workshop demonstrated that progress has been made on GAEC implementation since cross compliance has been introduced into the CAP. Results will be valuable for future research work on GAEC, mainly on the assessment of good practices implemented at national level.JRC.DG.G.3-Monitoring agricultural resource

The EFA calculator : A software tool to support farmers decisions on Ecological Focus Areas

Farming has a central role to play in the delivery of a number of desirable ecosystem services and the enhancement of biodiversity. However, despite the fact that that there has been significant emphasis placed on environment and biodiversity in policy over the years, it is generally accepted that there is still some way to go if the industry is to deliver what is expected of it in this regard. It is hoped that the introduction of Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) on the farm will aid in delivering tangible environmental improvements, but this is to some extent dependent on the EFA elements a farmer selects, and their appropriateness to the local environment. Consequently, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) funded and coordinated a project to develop a tool which will help farmers select EFA elements that can deliver the optimal environmental benefit. The aim of this project was to develop a software application for European farmers and advisory services. The software firstly helps farmers calculate the contribution of different EFA elements to their 5% target. Secondly, it takes into account the farms site specific characteristics and assesses the contribution of EFA elements to biodiversity and a range of ecosystem services. This will help ensure that the EFA elements selected by a farmer offer optimal benefits in terms of ecosystem services and biodiversity and are pragmatic in terms of farm management.Non peer reviewe

GAEC workshop 2012 technical report

The report describes the main technical findings and results of the Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) workshop 2012 organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC). The workshop was held at the JRC in Ispra from 8th-10th October 2012. 110 delegates attended the workshop representing 24 European Union Member States, two candidate countries (Croatia and Iceland) and Commission services. The workshop focussed on implementation and control issues related to the identification and measure of landscape features and buffer strips, as well as on scientific references for definition and mapping of soil related issues (e. g. soil erosion or soil organic matter). Participants also showed much interest on technical aspects related to the implementation of the future CAP with particular reference to landscape features in the framework of the so-called Ecological Focus Area. The workshop allows setting up and fine-tuning future main JRC activities taking into account DG AGRI and Member States inputs.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Cropland and grassland management data needs from existing IACS sources

This report analyses the use of IACS and other datasets for reporting and accounting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and removals in the land use sector. The land use sector comprises land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) as well as agriculture, jointly referred to as agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU). Decision 529/2013/EU of the European Council and the Parliament of 21 May 2013 brings the LULUCF sector in the EU emission accounting obligations. These new accounting obligations for EU member states are phased in over a period extending to 2022. This Report, as part of work performed by the JRC for DG Climate Action under an Administrative Arrangement (AA), aims at exploring the usefulness for cropland management (CM) and grazing land management (GM) accounting of the vast amount of data already regularly collected on the EU level in the context of environmental and agricultural policies. One of the most promising datasets to meet LULUCF reporting obligations is the “Integrated Administration and Control System” (IACS) that has been set up by all member states to manage the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy, and its GIS, “the Land Parcel Identification System” (LPIS). The data the LPIS holds are geo-referenced polygons of land parcels (units of management or production), and information on the type of land cover, as a minimum in terms of broad categories such as arable land, grassland, permanent crops, and broad families of crops, with their area (eligible hectares). The LPIS is a pan-EU database that provides very detailed and accurate information on the status of agricultural land cover at any given time since 2005. The potential of the LPIS to efficiently track land use changes is derived from its pan-European semantic definition of agricultural land cover types, and the mandatory adequate update cycle of the dataset. This study assessed other potential datasets, including Eurostat “Land Use/Cover Area Frame Survey” (LUCAS); the Farm Structure Surveys (FSS); the Farm Accountancy Data Network; CORINE Land Cover.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Final technical report: Certification of low carbon farming practices

In 2010, the European Parliament asked the European Commission to carry out a pilot project on the “certification of low-carbon farming practices in the European Union” to promote reductions of GHG emissions from farming. The overall aim of the project was to assess how efforts of European farmers to produce agricultural products with carbon-neutral or low-carbon-footprint farming practices might be incorporated into policy approaches (possibly via certification), so as to promote the reduction of GHG emissions from agriculture. The project included: i) a review of existing farm-level lifecycle-based climate-related certification and labelling schemes, ii) the development and testing of a user friendly open-source carbon calculator suitable for assessing the lifecycle GHG emissions from different types of farming systems across the whole EU, and iii) the design/assessment of policy options for promoting low-carbon farming practices.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on surgical neuro-oncology: A survey from the Italian society of neurosurgery (SINch)

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on hospitals' activity and organization has imposed a vast change in standard neurosurgical oncology practice to accommodate for shifting resources. Aims: This investigation aims to analyse the nationwide capability in reorganizing the surgical neuro-oncological activity during the COVID-19 pandemic to evaluate whether COVID-19-pandemic influenced the surgical management in these patients. Method: A web-based dataset model organized by the Italian Neurosurgical Society (SINCh) was sent to all the Italian neurosurgical departments in May 2021, requesting to report the types and numbers of surgical procedures performed in the pre-pandemic period (from March 9th 2019 to March 9th 2020) compared to the pandemic period (from March 10th 2020 to March 10th 2021). Results: This multicentre investigation included the surgical activity of 35 Italian Neurosurgical Departments in a pre-pandemic year versus a pandemic year. During the COVID period, 699 fewer neuro-oncological patients were operated on than in the pre-COVID period. We noted a slight increase in urgency and a more severe decrease in elective and benign pathology. None of these differences was statistically significant. Surgically treated patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were 36, of which 11 died. Death was found to be COVID-related only in 2 cases. Conclusion: The reorganization of the Italian Neurosurgical Departments was able to guarantee a redistribution of the CNS tumors during the inter-pandemic periods, demonstrating that patients even in the pandemic era could be treated without compromising the efficacy and safety of the surgical procedure

Assessing agriculture vulnerabilities for the design of effective measures for adaptation to climate change (AVEMAC project)

This final report of the AVEMAC study presents an assessment of the potential vulnerability of European agriculture to changing climatic conditions in the coming decades. The analysis is based on weather data generated from two contrasting realizations of the A1B emission scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the time horizons 2020 and 2030. These two realizations (obtained from two different general circulation models, downscaled using regional climate models and biascorrected) represent the warmest and coldest realizations of the A1B scenario over Europe as estimated by the ENSEMBLES project. The future weather data fed two types of analyses. The first analysis consisted in computing static agro-meteorological indicators as proxies of potential vulnerabilities of agricultural systems, expressed as changes in the classification of agricultural areas in Europe under climate constraints. The second analysis relied on biophysical modelling to characterize crop specific plant responses derived from crop growth simulations at different production levels (potential production, water-limited production, and production limited by diseases). Assessing the importance of vulnerability to climate change requires not only the localisation of relative yield changes, but also the analysis of the impact of the change on the acreage affected. Consequently, the simulation results of the impact assessment on crops were further processed to estimate the potential changes in production at sub-national (NUTS2) level. This was achieved by relating the simulation results to farm typologies in order to identify which types of systems are likely to be affected by reductions in production. The analyses of this study must be considered as a first step only, since they have neither included adaptation strategies that the farmer can take in response to changes in climate, nor a bio-economic evaluation of estimated vulnerabilities. Therefore, the main aspects and the requirements for a possible future integrated analysis at EU27 level to address climate change and agriculture with the target of providing policy support are also presented in this report. Eventually the results of this study shall help the formulation of appropriate policy options and the development of adequate policy instruments to support the adaptation to climate change of the EU agricultural sector.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Surgical management of Glioma Grade 4: technical update from the neuro-oncology section of the Italian Society of Neurosurgery (SINch®): a systematic review

Purpose: The extent of resection (EOR) is an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (OS) in adult patients with Glioma Grade 4 (GG4). The aim of the neuro-oncology section of the Italian Society of Neurosurgery (SINch®) was to provide a general overview of the current trends and technical tools to reach this goal. Methods: A systematic review was performed. The results were divided and ordered, by an expert team of surgeons, to assess the Class of Evidence (CE) and Strength of Recommendation (SR) of perioperative drugs management, imaging, surgery, intraoperative imaging, estimation of EOR, surgery at tumor progression and surgery in elderly patients. Results: A total of 352 studies were identified, including 299 retrospective studies and 53 reviews/meta-analysis. The use of Dexamethasone and the avoidance of prophylaxis with anti-seizure medications reached a CE I and SR A. A preoperative imaging standard protocol was defined with CE II and SR B and usefulness of an early postoperative MRI, with CE II and SR B. The EOR was defined the strongest independent risk factor for both OS and tumor recurrence with CE II and SR B. For intraoperative imaging only the use of 5-ALA reached a CE II and SR B. The estimation of EOR was established to be fundamental in planning postoperative adjuvant treatments with CE II and SR B and the stereotactic image-guided brain biopsy to be the procedure of choice when an extensive surgical resection is not feasible (CE II and SR B). Conclusions: A growing number of evidences evidence support the role of maximal safe resection as primary OS predictor in GG4 patients. The ongoing development of intraoperative techniques for a precise real-time identification of peritumoral functional pathways enables surgeons to maximize EOR minimizing the post-operative morbidity