A Scenario-Wise Analysis of Economic and Environmental Impacts in the MEA-Scope Case Study Regions

This chapter summarises economic and environmental impacts of five CAP scenarios in seven European case study regions located in Germany,Denmark, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and France. The spatially explicit MEA-Scope modelling approach based on three farm-level models AgriPoliS (agent-based), MODAM (bio-economic), FASSET (bio-physical) is used to dynamically simulate the behaviour of single farms. At regional level, the change in a range of economic (i.a. number of farms, farm size, farm income) and environmental indicators (related to soil, water and habitat quality) is analysed to compare the scenarios. The scenario results differ widely reflecting the heterogeneity of the regions. In the EU-15 regions, for example, payment decoupling achieved the best results in conserving the structure of the farming sector, while Agenda 2000 conditions were more effective in maintaining extensive grassland areas. The New-Member-State regions showed the best overall performance in a special accession scenario.