Adam Was

Measuring Biodiversity of Cropping Structure with the Use of FADN Data

Greening of the Common Agricultural Policy as proposed by the European Commission for the 2014–2020, CAP reform raised interest in measuring crop diversity. Based on a sample of the 12,258 farms recorded in the Polish 2009 FADN (FADN—Farm Accountancy Data Network—an instrument for evaluating the income of agricultural holdings and the impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy. For details see http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rica/ (FADN 2013)), the authors verify the suitability of the most popular biodiversity indices for measuring the level of diversification of cropping structure for assessing fulfillment of CAP greening criteria. None of the most known biodiversity indicators provided a possibility of a proper delimiting of “green” farms based on FADN data. Modification of the Simpson index was proposed to allow proper distinguishing of “not-green” farms within FADN records. Using biodiversity indices for measuring crop diversification on large areas is related to spatial aggregation. Different indices have been calculated for Polish NUTS 2 (Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics—geocode standard for referencing the subdivisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard is developed and regulated by the European Union, and thus only covers the member states of the EU in detail. Poland consists of 16 NUTS 2 regions called voivodeships.) regions, based on FADN single-farm records as well as official statistical data on cropping structure for NUTS 2 regions. Results show that there is a very small correlation between regional indices calculated based on aggregated crop structure data and the share of “not-green” farm area in the regions. This suggests that biodiversity indices calculated using regional data are strongly biased and should not be used for verification of fulfilling the EC crop diversification criteria.