Alternative subsidy scenarios for different agricultural practices: A sustainability assessment using fuzzy multi-criteria analysis

The recent Common Agricultural Policy reform (CAP14) at the European level links the granting of aid to farmers to adhering to environmentally-friendly farming practices. It therefore becomes important to assess the overall effectiveness of such a policy by taking into account different economic and environmental criteria. In this work, an ex ante assessment of different agricultural policy scenarios in Italy is undertaken at the national level, through the adoption of a fuzzy multi-criteria analysis approach, to account for the different economic and environmental aspects (indicators) of each scenario. Italian agricultural holdings were divided into homogeneous groups (according to farm typology, location, and environment), in order to determine the most preferable scenario for each group. Results are extremely heterogeneous across the macro areas, the farm typologies, and the climatic zones, and it is not possible to determine a ‘good-for-all’ scenario. However, we can observe that when all indicators are assigned an equal weight and also when environmental indicators are assigned a higher weight, the preferred scenario for the majority of groups is the alternative scenario where a tax of 30% on pesticides is added to the CAP14. On the other side, when economic indicators have a higher weight, the situation of subsidies preceding CAP14 (base subsidies and environmental subsidies, with no differentiation among conventional and organic farming) seems to be the ‘best’ scenario for all groups, with one exception.