Income, subsidies and the future CAP: focus on French farms specialised in field crops and ruminant livestock

Abstract

Using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), this article first presents an overview of French agricultural incomes over the decade 2010-2019, notably of their heterogeneity according to production types, size and location. It illustrates their dependency on the various types of direct aids of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). On this basis, it then analyses the sensitivity of farm incomes to three scenarios of reorientation of CAP direct aids. The first considers a change in the way coupled supports are granted to bovine productions. The second measures the impact of full convergence, at the national level, of the basic payment per hectare. The third discusses the impact of increasing the redistributive payment on the first hectares of each farm. The dependency of certain categories of farms, including ruminants and crops, on direct aids is high and has increased over the last decade. It makes any ambitious reorientation of CAP support economically and politically difficult while there is urgency to increase the climatic and environmental efficiency of this policy and agriculture.