We published a study in which our researchers assessed the impact of agricultural subsidies on the agricultural biodiversity, i.e. land-use and crop diversity in the Czech Republic between 2008 and 2020.
The results showed that between 2008 and 2020, there was an increase in agricultural biodiversity but also a significant increase in the volume of subsidies. The main conclusion of our study is that subsidies in total, as well as agro-environmental subsidies didn’t have a significant effect on the agricultural biodiversity. By using unique farm-level data, we show that subsidies supported the income of farmers rather than agricultural biodiversity.
The study conclusions are interesting for further discussion regarding agricultural policy and its impact on crop diversity. The farmers’ income support was one of the main objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy for the 2014 – 2020 period. However, the new direction of the Common Agricultural Policy for the 2023 – 2027 period already requires “higher targets” with regard to the environment and redistributes more money to eco-schemes and to agri-environmental and climate measures. In addition, the new Common Agricultural Policy introduces stronger conditionality for these payments, but it is up to each Member State how these conditions will be implemented.
The study is available here.
Text: Zuzana Rajchlová, Iva Zvěřinová
