The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: Could Reforms Make Baltic Sea Region Farms More Sustainable?

The document argues that the 2007-2013 CAP implementation in the Baltic Sea Region failed to significantly reduce environmental impacts due to poor targeting of measures, administrative hurdles, and a lack of stakeholder involvement. It suggests that post-2013 reforms should embrace the region's agricultural diversity and shift toward a model where environmental services are a core value of farming rather than a precondition for payments.

• The implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) between 2007 and 2013 had limited success in improving ecosystem services or reducing the negative environmental effects of agriculture in the Baltic Sea Region.
• There is a significant diversity in farm sizes and farming systems (intensive vs. extensive) across the Baltic Sea Region, which the authors argue should be treated as an asset for generating public goods, though this requires a more flexible payment scheme than currently proposed.
• CAP implementation has been uneven across EU Member States in the region due to differing entitlements, leading to a trend where countries use CAP payments to meet national compliance goals at the expense of collective regional action for shared water bodies like the Baltic Sea.
• Many agri-environmental measures under Pillar 2 failed to achieve expected results because they were poorly targeted and suffered from a mismatch between financial incentives and market forces, leaving many farmers feeling underpaid.
• The farm payment system suffers from widespread distrust among farmers, landowners, NGOs, and civil servants, exacerbated by a lack of effective monitoring and insufficient stakeholder involvement in the design of measures.
• Administrative burdens and high transaction costs hinder the effectiveness of CAP measures; for instance, in Finland, agri-environmental payments failed to reduce nutrient discharge from agricultural sources.
• The authors recommend consolidating CAP Pillars 1 and 2 to treat environmental services as a core value of farming and introducing 'soft measures' to support dialogue between riparian countries on nutrient reduction targets.

APA

Powell, N., Osbeck, M., Larsen, R. K., Andersson, K., Schwartz, G., & Davis, M. (2013). The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: Could Reforms Make Baltic Sea Region Farms More Sustainable? Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-bc-pb-2013-cap-reform.pdf

Chicago

Powell, Neil, Maria Osbeck, Rasmus Kløcker Larsen, Kim Andersson, Gerald Schwartz, and Marion Davis. The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: Could Reforms Make Baltic Sea Region Farms More Sustainable? Stockholm Environment Institute, 2013. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-bc-pb-2013-cap-reform.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Powell |first1=Neil |last2=Osbeck |first2=Maria |last3=Larsen |first3=Rasmus Kløcker |last4=Andersson |first4=Kim |last5=Schwartz |first5=Gerald |last6=Davis |first6=Marion |title=The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: Could Reforms Make Baltic Sea Region Farms More Sustainable? |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2013 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-bc-pb-2013-cap-reform.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{powell2013common, author = {Powell, Neil and Osbeck, Maria and Larsen, Rasmus Kløcker and Andersson, Kim and Schwartz, Gerald and Davis, Marion}, title = {{The Common Agricultural Policy Post-2013: Could Reforms Make Baltic Sea Region Farms More Sustainable?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2013}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Air-land-water-resources/sei-bc-pb-2013-cap-reform.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }