Heinz Peter Witzke

Agricultural GHG emissions in the EU: an exploratory economic assessment of mitigation policy options

The main objective of this report is to assess the GHG emission reduction potential of a selected number of policy options and to quantify related production and economic impacts for the agricultural sector in the EU. Therefore the possible future evolution of agricultural GHG emissions in the EU are assessed through the simulation of scenarios including expected macro- and micro-economic changes. The proposed mitigation policy scenarios are all exploratory, i.e. it is intended to explore what could happen if policies would be implemented that explicitly force farmers in the EU-27 to reach certain GHG emission reduction targets. It has to be stressed that all policy scenarios are rather theoretical and hypothetical and do not necessarily reflect mitigation policies that are already agreed on, or are under formal discussion.

Regional Economic Analysis of Milk Quota Reform in the EU

This report is based on the outcome of a study carried out by the European Commissions Joint Research Centre - Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS, Spain) in cooperation with EuroCARE (Bonn, Germany) and the collaboration of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI, the Netherlands) and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Unicatt, Italy). The report provides an economic impact assessment of possible implications of the Health Check of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with an explicit focus on regional effects of a milk quota abolition in the EU-27 in the year 2015. For the analysis the CAPRI model was updated with econometric estimates of milk quota rents at regional level and simulation results are presented for the year 2020. The detailed spatial resolution allows identifying regions where economic changes are larger than visible from aggregated impacts at Member State or European level.

CAPRI long-term climate change scenario analysis: The AgMIP approach

The current paper investigates the long-term global effects of crops productivity changes under different climate scenarios and the impact of biofuels expansion using the Common Agricultural Policy Regionalised Impact (CAPRI) model. These analyses are conducted in the framework of the AgMIP project (Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project). The results indicate that globally there will be both winners and losers, with some regions benefitting from agricultural production adjustment as a result of climate change whilst most regions suffering losses in production and consumption. Biofuel expansion leads to land relocation away from crop agricultural commodity production to new energy crops which is reflected in lower production levels of agricultural commodities and higher agricultural prices.

Economic impacts of climate change on agriculture: the AgMIP approach

Abstract The current paper investigates the long-term global impacts on crop productivity under different climate scenarios using the AgMIP approach (Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project). The paper provides horizontal model intercomparison from 11 economic models as well as a more detailed analysis of the simulated effects from the Common Agricultural Policy Regionalized Impact (CAPRI) model to systematically compare its performance with other AgMIP models and specifically for the Chinese agriculture. CAPRI is a comparative static partial equilibrium model extensively used for medium and long-term economic and environmental policy impact applications. The results indicate that, at the global level, the climate change will cause an agricultural productivity decrease (between − 2 % and − 15 % by 2050), a food price increase (between 1.3% and 56%) and an expansion of cultivated area (between 1% and 4%) by 2050. The results for China indicate that the climate change effects tend to be smaller than the global impacts. The CAPRI-simulated effects are, in general, close to the median across all AgMIP models. Model intercomparison analyses reveal consistency in terms of direction of change to climate change but relatively strong heterogeneity in the magnitude of the effects between models.

The Common Agricultural Policy SIMulation (CAPSIM) Model: Dairy Reform and Western Balkan Countries Accession Scenarios

The aim of this study is to provide and describe a multicommodity analysis able to focus and investigate two EU relevant agricultural policy aspects: the dairy reform and the enlargement to Western Balkan countries. The analysis is carried out using the Common Agricultural Policy SIMulation (CAPSIM) model developed in the early 1980s by EuroCARE and the University of Bonn on behalf of DG ESTAT. The model is further upgraded for this study in order to analyse the effects of the Health Check decisions on the EU dairy market as well as the impact of the EU enlargement towards Western Balkans countries. Key results of the main quota expiry scenario for 2020 are that milk production would increase by 3.1% in the EU-27 whereas milk prices would drop by 7.3%. Accession effects in the Western Balkan countries would originate in some convergence to EU prices, in technology transfer which would increase yields, and in CAP components introduced on the Western Balkan like milk quotas or decoupled payments.