Land cover, use of arable land - outlook from EEA (Outlook 009) - Assessment published Jun 2007

Indicator definition

Definition: This outlook indicator presents information on use of arable land by crop types: fodder; cereals; permanent crops and paddy; oilseeds and pulses; other arable crops areas and set aside and fallow land.

Model used: CASPIM

Ownership: European Environment Agency

Temporal coverage:  2020

Geographical coverage: EU-23: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, Czech republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia

Units

Total arable land is measured in hectares (ha) or square kilometers (km²).
The shares of arable land used for different crops are presented as per cent of total arable land.

Policy context and targets

Context description

Pan-European Level
There are no international conventions or other policy documents at the Pan-European level efficiency of implementations of which can be measured by this indicator. Chapter 10 of Agenda 21 emphasizes importance of Integrated Approach to the Planning and Management of Land Resources and stimulates countries to use land resources in amore sustainable way.

EU policy context
However, there no directly related policy documents which regulate size and use of arable land for environmental reasons, the EU 6^th Environmental Action Programme promotes the integration of biodiversity considerations in agricultural policies and encourages more environmentally responsible farming, including, where appropriate, extensive production methods, integrated farming practices, organic farming. Achievement of this objective can indirectly be measured by this indicator. If the indicators would include information about the organic farming by crops it can also reflect achievability goald related to Organic farming. Organic farming is an environmentally sustainable form of agricultural production.Its legal framework is defined by Council Regulation 2092/91 and amendments. The adoption of organic farming methods by individual farmers is supported through agri-environment scheme payments and other rural development measures at Member State level. In 2004 the EU Commission published a 'European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming' (COM(2004) 415 final) to further promote this farming system.

EECCA policy

Not available

Targets

Pan-European Level
There are no international targets for this indicator does not exist.

EU level
There are no specific targets at the European and Pan-European level, although different documents reflect the need for better arable land planning. No specific EU target on the share of organic farming area in arable land. A number of EU Member States have already set targets for area under organic farming, often 10-20 % in 2010.

EECCA level
Not available

Related policy documents

• COM (1998) 42
  Communication of the European Commission to the Council and to the European Parliament on a European Community Biodiversity Strategy. COM (1998) 42
• Sixth Environment Action Programme
  DECISION No 1600/2002/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 22 July 2002 laying down the Sixth Community Environment Action Programme

Methodology

Methodology for indicator calculation

Projections of the indicator are calculated using the CAPSIM modelling tool which has been developed by EuroCARE GBmv (Bonn, Germany). The indicator's calculations are used as an intermediate result in the model

Overview of CAPSIM model

CAPSIM is a European partial equilibrium modelling tool with behavioural functions for activity levels, input demand, consumer demand and processing. It is designed for policy-relevant analysis of the CAP and consequently covers the whole of agriculture of EU Member States in the concepts of the Economic Accounts (EAA) at a high level of disaggregation, both in the list of included items (cropping and livestock patterns and animal products per country) and in policy coverage. Technological, structural and preference changes combine with changes in exogenous inputs (e.g. population, prices or household expenditure) to determine the future development of agriculture.

The modell allows combining different projections, for example from modelling tools, expert panels or trends forecasts, and finds a compromise between these under a set of economic (e.g. market balances), spatial (e.g. used vs. available areas) and technical (e.g. balancing of feed contents and animal requirements) constraints. The projections from the following organisations have been taken into account: European Comission (2004a); FAPRI, (2004); FAO (Bruinsma, 2003); and IFPRI (Rosenrant et al., 2001a and 2001b).

CAPSIM is augmented by a calculation of nutrient balances (N,P,K) and gaseous emissions.

For more information see: http://www.uni-mannheim.de/edz/pdf/eurostat/05/KS-AZ-05-001-EN.pdf or http://scenarios.ewindows.eu.org/reports/fol949029/fol040583/Agriculture_final_report.pdf

Use of Scenarios and Key model assumptions

Baseline scenario

The baseline scenario follows a conventional definition and expands on current expectations regarding macro-economic, sectoral, technological and societal developments, as well as including those policies that have been implemented and/or adopted, which typically refer to pieces of legislation such as EU directives or political agreements.

EEA's outlooks across the various sectors and themes use a common reference set of assumptions for the key driving forces to ensure consistency across the board and facilitate cross-cutting analysis. This reference set builds on the socio-economic assumptions developed for the DG TREN baseline projections 'European energy and transport trends to 2030', which are also being used within the Clean Air forEurope (CAFE, DG ENV) programme. Within this framework, assumptions have been developed as a consistent set and cover the following key driving forces:

• population
• macro and macro-economic activity
• household expenditure
• number of households
• average household size
• energy flows.

Population
The European population is expected to stabilize, but gradually to become an ageing society. Main demographical trends are presented in the Table 1. below

Table 1. Demography - population development 1990 - 2030

The age distribution in the EU is a growing concern, particularly in connection with pension and health expenditure and working life-time. While the accession of the 10 new Member States in 2004 has somewhat rejuvenated the EU population, it failed toreserve the trend of increasing old age dependency from 30% in the 1960s to 39% today in the EU-25.

This trend is expected t continue over the 2000-2030 period, with the share of people of 65 years and older in the total population increasing from 15% to 25% in the EU-15, and from 10% to 22% in the New-10.

The macro-economic assumptions
The macro-economic assumptions for Europe are moderately optimistic and entail challenging trade-offs in light of achieving sustainable economic development.

Average annual economic growth in the EU is expected to be 2.4% and 3.5% in the New-10. GDP assumptions are presented in the table 2.
Table 2. Income - GDP growth 2000 - 2030

Technological developments
Technological progress is moderate but essential in key areas such as energy, agriculture and water, but no technological breakthroughs are assumed.

More detailed information concerning technology can be found in the European Environment Outlook N4/2005 (pp. 22-23)

Sectoral developments
The service sector is expected to retain its predominance in the European economy and be instrumental in sustaining economic growth. The base line scenario uses specific technological assumptions at the sctoral level, which directly affect most of European environmental concerns. The explanations of such assumptions are available in the European Environment Outlook N4/2005 (pp. 23-24)

Extended CAP reform - liberalisation of animal product markets scenario

The current CAP, assumed to be continued to 2020 in the baseline scenario, increases prices for animal products, both by border protection and market interventions, beyond the level which woul prevail in the abcence of common market organisations. This scenarion assesses the impact of an extended CAP reform on selected environmental indicators by assuming a continued liberalisation in the context of WTO negotiations for animal products market.

Best practice scenario for fertiliser handling

The effect of significant improvements in management practices for handling fertiliser has been assessed in this scenario, which therefore depics a more environmental-friendly prospective for the European agriculture sectors. Some sets of parameters have benn changed from the base year onwards:

• N, P and K from organic fertiliser available  for crop application are increased significantly respectively to 80%, 95% and 95% of the nitrogen.
• The overall efficiency of farms when balancing crop nutrient needs and fertiliser applications: the overfertilisation rate is decreased (5%) and the New-8 converge towards EU-15 practices.

A stronger Euro scenario

The exchange rate in the baseline  scenario is fixed at 0.9EUR/USD from 2001 onwards, in line with the latest European Commission assumptions, thus the Euro is weaker than current market conditions. This scenario assesses  the possible effect of a stronger Euro of 0.75 EUR/USD.  This would imply lower terms of trade for agricultural goods, but import tariffs and the level of administrative prices and quota regimes would dampen price transmissions between global and EU markets and stabiilse prices.

Methodology for gap filling

The gap filling for modelling purposes includes nessesity for 'completeness and consistency'. It is currently included in the COCO module.

Because the population data of CAPSIM differ from Eurostat population data which provide the bulk of the CAPSIM database, the projections have been expressed in index form (relative 2000) and smoothed with a Hodrick-Prescott filter to give a continuous series of projections of population growth. The same approach is used for (real) household expenditure.

Methodology references

• CAPSIM model documentation 2005 edition

Uncertainties

Methodology uncertainty

Any outlook exercise involves a number of uncertainties and shortcomings, related for example to the methodological approaches used or the scope of the study. These information gaps and limitations are inherent in any assessment of possible futures, and this outlook would certainly have benefited from additional information covering some issues.

The main limiting factor in developing a comprehensive environmental outlook has been the lack of data, information or models covering some environmental issues.

At the time of filling of this specification the uncertainties related to the CAPSIM model were not found in the reference literature (additional research or consultation with the EEA expert is needed). The uncertainties related to the data sets used as model input are presented in the next section.

Data sets uncertainty

Rationale uncertainty

The indicator by itself does not identify the causes or pressures leading to the change in land use.