Effects of cap green payments in Lombardy : a comparison of proposed and approved measures based on census data

The paper aims to estimate potential impacts of compliance to CAP greening measures, in terms of crop mix, crop regional supply and income change, using 2010 Agricultural Census survey microdata on 54.333 Lombardy farms. Estimated impacts of greening practices as contained in Commission proposal, Parliament amendments and Reg. 1307/2013 are compared. Changes on greening during the EU decision-making process have notably reduced its negative impacts. Farms subject to greening would decrease from 59% to 33% while hectares fall from 95% to 72%. Crop diversification would impact significantly on 4.000 farms, while EFAs adoption will probably induce a crop mix change on 13.500 hectares only. The crop mix change would affect 30.000 arable land hectares, with an increase of nitrogen-fixing crops area (soy and alfalfa) to the detriment of cereals (con in particular). In farm income terms we estimate a gross margin loss of 9,2 millions of Euros, extremely lower than those estimated for greening Commission proposal (78 million of Euros).