Evaluation of CAP 2015-2020 and taking action

The CAPtion project is for a period of two years but Agropolis fondation is only financing the second year with 20 k€.
CAPTION is a project aimed at evaluating the economic and environmental effects exerted by the CAP 2015-2020 and providing evidence-based recommendations to policy makers. It also provides an analysis of the contributions of the small farm sector to CAP objetives and whether and how small farms should be supported by CAP.
The research project is articulated in two distinct Work Packages (WP).
WP1 envisages the implementation of a series of impact assessments of the economic and environmental effects of the current 2015-2020 CAP, in support of drafting scenarios and simulations for the post-2020 CAP. The evaluation concerns the CAP instruments both of the 1st and 2nd Pillar. In particular, we try to identify the effect of direct payments and rural development funds on various farm level parameters related to farm income, the level of farm investments and farm employment. The evaluation is carried out for all types of farms at national level in Italy. With regards to the greening payment, which represents one of the main innovations of the CAP 2015-2020, the Italian team provides an environmental and economic evaluation of the effects of this instrument, also by exploiting spatial analysis techniques. The French team conducts a statistical analysis of the crop diversification of the greening in France.
WP2 focuses on a specific category of farms not or partly covered by CAP support : the small farms, which are those classified by the EU as having less than 25,000 EUR of annual standard output. Small farms, despite their limited contribution in economic terms may play an important role both from the social and environmental point of view, especially in marginal mountain area and periurban contexts. WP2 intends therefore to describe the small farm sectors in Italy (Lombardy) and in France and to measure, with data available in agricultural census, what can be their contributions to employment and environment. WP2 also draws a typology of small farms, and analyses their trajectories over a ten year period, in order to distinguish those small farms which are likely to expand and modernize, and those which are deemed to disappear because they are less economically efficient or managed by elderly farmers. From this perspective WP2 leads to a package of recommendations shared by the French and Italian team on why and how the future CAP should support small farms.

The Caption project is composed of two workpackages: the first one is coordinated by the University of Milan (D. Bertoni) and measures the net impacts of some CAP2014 measures in France and in Lombardy. The second is coordinated by CEE-M (Sophie Thoyer and Pauline Lécole for year 2) and concerns the description and typology of small farms in France and Italy, as well as an analysis of the needs and forms of support that the CAP should provide to this sector. The two WPs are worked on by both the CEE-M and UNIMI teams over two years.
The budget for the first year financed by Cariplo was 120 464€ (of which 23279€ for CEE-M and 97 186€ for Unimi)
The budget for the second year is 113 281€ of which 83 300€ financed by Cariplo for Unimi and 29 980€ for CEE-M (of which 19 967€ financed by Agropolis Fondation and 10 013€ by Cariplo).