An agent-based model for assessing the impacts of decoupled agricultural support on landscape values

In this article we present an empirical agent-based landscape model that is capable of simulating the consequences of changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—or any other economic parameters—on landscape mosaic and biodiversity in a real agricultural region. The model links changes in policy to structural change in agricultural production and concomitant impacts on the landscape (measured using relevant indicators). The utility of our approach is that it can use anonymous survey data on individual farms combined with generally available landscape metrics to generate an empirical agent-based model of a real agricultural landscape. We use the model to evaluate the consequences of the 2005 decoupling reform on landscape mosaic and biodiversity for a cross-section of case-study regions in EU-27. Our results demonstrated that eliminating the link between support payments and production has ostensibly quite negative consequences for the landscape but only in particular regions and circumstances. In other regions decoupled support was shown to be redundant in terms of generating landscape benefits. Implications for continued CAP reform are discussed