Abstract
In this chapter we explore whether the economic and environmental performance of farms is affected by regional characteristics. We use farm intensity - measured as agricultural output per hectare - as an indicator for the economic and environmental performance of farms. Regional characteristics are captured by designing three regional typologies, based on rurality, the stage of economic development and the presence of Less Favoured Areas. Our analysis covers 100 regions in the EU15 and is based on 2 years: 1990 and 2003.
Our findings suggest that there is a tendency that two of our examined regional characteristics, i.e. the stage of economic development and the presence of Less Favoured Areas affect farming intensity, whereas farming intensity is less affected by an urban or rural territorial context. The studied regional characteristics do, however, not affect farming intensity in Finland and Sweden. Obviously, farming intensity in the Nordic agriculture in these countries is more dependent on other factors, likely related to a short growing season due to climatological conditions. Considering these results, it could be recommended to include regional characteristics into integrated assessments of farms’ performance and agricultural policy as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Leased land ready for sowing, receipts from occasional letting of fodder areas, agistment, forestry products, contract work for others, hiring out of equipment, etc. (FADN code SE256).
- 2.
NUTS = Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques.
- 3.
For linking FADN data with data from other harmonized European regional data sources, such as Eurostat REGIO and the Farm Structure Survey (FSS), we have to take account of the use of different borders of regions. In order to harmonize the regional levels used in FADN, REGIO and FSS, we have designed a so-called HARM1 regional division. For most EU15 Member States, FADN regions coincide with HARM1 regions. However, in some countries the number of FADN regions exceeds that of HARM1 regions: Germany (16 FADN regions and 14 HARM1 regions), Italy (21 FADN regions and 20 HARM1 regions) and Portugal (five FADN regions and four HARM1 regions). In our calculations, we use the HARM1 regional division. As the differences with FADN regions are relatively small, and as the FADN regions are more known than the HARM1 regions, we use for convenience sake the term FADN regions in the rest of the text.
- 4.
Finland, Sweden and Austria entered the EU in 1995; for Eastern-Germany no data for 1990 were available. As the share of LFA farms in the total number of farms is rather stable over time, the typology is rather independent from the year on which it is based.
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Terluin, I.J., Verhoog, D., Godeschalk, F.E. (2010). The Use of Regional Typologies in the Assessment of Farms’ Performance. In: Brouwer, F., Ittersum, M. (eds) Environmental and Agricultural Modelling. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3619-3_8
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