Speaker
Description
Preserving farmland biodiversity is one of the objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union.
To achieve this goal, it is important to restore landscape connectivity by enriching agricultural landscapes again with accessible habitats for breeding, feeding, and shelter. In intensive agricultural regions of Germany, adding more hedges would be highly beneficial for biodiversity and would also serve for climate adaptation. Most hedges are protected by law and cannot be removed. However, planting and maintaining hedges can be financially disadvantageous to farmers. To offset this disadvantage, some federal states subsidise hedge planting, while others do not. Here, CAP funding is complemented through federal directives.
However, there is still much uncertainty about how to optimize subsidy design to maximize ecological impact while meeting farmers' needs and adapting to local conditions
This study examines hedge planting subsidies, specifically the effect of subsidy height on farmer adoption and resulting changes in landscape connectivity in Thuringia and Baden-Wurttemberg.
For this purpose, we developed an agent-based economic-ecological model. This model simulates how policy payments and regulations affect landscape composition and configuration through farmers' decisions.
The work is part of the CAP4GI project that explores restoring Green Infrastructure through better CAP payments.
Employing digital experiments, we assess alternative payment schemes that may be implemented with the upcoming CAP reform in 2028 or via the German action plan for natural climate protection.
We also explore the importance of boundary conditions such as tenure and non-pecuniary incentives for farmers. From this, we develop recommendations on how policies can be adjusted to account for the current gap between ecological needs and farmers’ challenges. In the future, the model may be coupled to ‘Persefone.jl’, an agro-ecological model, to assess the outcomes for biodiversity.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
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