Until now, organic farming in Austria saw its largest growth in the period between 1994 and 1998. The following factors all contributed to Austria achieving the highest percentage of organic farms in Europe: the early addition of guidelines for organic crop production and animal husbandry to the...

Direct payments are a controversial issue in the accession negotiations. While the EU proposes reduced payments the accession countries claim that they should be equally treated as the present EU members. The present study, based on micro-simulations on the farm level, shows impacts of various...

The aim of the paper is to examine impacts of different rates of direct payments on production structures and farm incomes of Polish family farms after the accession to the EU. Analyses have been made for 2004, the assumed year of accession, with the use of a linear programming farm optimisation...

The Agenda 2000 and the Mid-Term Review introduced a complex combination of policy changes for beef and dairy. It is not clear to what extent the package will influence production decisions. This study proposes a simple method for incorporating the effect of direct payments into the analysis of...

The system of direct payments in the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is being criticised with respect to the level, unequal distribution and allocation effects on production. Besides the decoupling of direct payments a modulation and a partial transmission to the second...

Decoupling of direct payments can be expected to have complex effects and the net effect on crop and fodder acreage is unclear. A literature review reveals that various simulation models uniformly project a decline of the cereal and silage maize acreage as well as ruminant production in the...

The paper analyses various forms of direct payments using the agent-based model AgriPoliS. The model is fitted to the agricultural region 'Hohenlohe' in Baden-Württemberg which is characterised by intensive livestock farming. The policy simulations show that decoupled payments which are...