How effective is greening policy in reducing GHG emissions from agriculture? Evidence from Italy

Agriculture contributes significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for more than 10% of total CO₂ emissions in the EU-28 area. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) plays an important role in promoting environmentally and climate friendly practices and needs to respond to the new environmental challenges by better integrating its objectives with other EU policies. In this respect, the recent CAP reform 2014–2020 made a further step, making a large part of direct payments conditional on new agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment, i.e. "greening". In this study we estimate the potential environmental benefits from greening in terms of GHG emissions in four regions of Northern Italy, one of the major European agricultural areas in terms of emissions. The emissions were quantified and broken down into the three main GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) per production process. This information was subsequently used in a Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) farm-based model on more than 3,000 farms, to estimate the effects of greening on regional land use and its contribution in reducing the total emissions. The new agri-environmental constraints produce a modest abatement of total emissions of greenhouse gases (− 1.5%) in the analyzed area. The model estimates a reduction in CO₂ emissions of about 2%. Emissions from nitrous oxide show a decrease of 2.1% and the reduction in the methane is about 0.4% compared to the observed scenario. The process of "lightening" that affected the greening during the CAP negotiation has inevitably resulted in missing an opportunity to introduce a significant positive change of behaviour into agriculture, in line with the expectations and needs of society for EU agriculture as a provider of public goods. - Highlights: • Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of total CO₂ emissions in the EU-28 area. • We estimate the environmental benefits from greening in terms of GHG emissions. • Greening causes a reduction of GHG emissions of 1.5% (N₂O–2.1% and CH₄–0.4%). • Modest result for a measure created to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. • The first pillar of the CAP needs to better justify its role as provider of public goods.