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Valuation of a farm at current market value is a crucial part of the process of farm transfer, be it between family members through inheritance or on the open market between buyers and sellers. This article explains the methods available to and used by professionals in France to value farms, and presents results of an application of the methods on bookkeeping data for French representative commercial farms.

International audience

L’évaluation d’une exploitation agricole est une étape importante lors d’un processus de transmission. Les auteurs ont interrogé 67 experts fonciers et experts comptables en France sur ce processus. L’étude atteste de la prédominance de la méthode patrimoniale associée à des méthodes prenant en compte les flux financiers de l’exploitation. L’enquête souligne plusieurs enjeux forts de l’évaluation, notamment la conciliation des perspectives entre vendeurs et acheteurs, la prise en compte des facteurs intangibles et l’intérêt de développer des normes et des barèmes d’évaluation. MOTS-CLÉS : évaluation économique et financière, exploitations agricoles, France Determining farm value: A survey of French practices Farm valuation is an important step in the transfer process. The authors surveyed 67 land experts and accountants in France on this process. Their study shows the predominance of the patrimonial method associated with methods that take into account the financial flows of the farm. The survey highlights several major issues in the valuation process, in particular the conciliation of perspectives between sellers and buyers, the consideration of intangible factors and the interest in developing valuation standards and scales. (JEL: G32, Q12). KEYWORDS: economic and financial valuation, farms, France

In this article, we assess farms’ technical efficiency accounting for their production heterogeneity and correcting for the potential endogeneity associated with the adoption of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) agri-environmental schemes (AESs). We estimate a first-step selection probit model. In a second step we estimate the latent class stochastic frontier model (LCSFM) separately on each of the two sub-samples, the AESs adopters and the AESs non-adopters. We also account for heteroscedasticity in the estimation of inefficiency effects in the LCSFM within each sub-sample. The application is to Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) dairy farms in France during 2002–2016. We identify one class with intensive technology and one class with extensive technology for each of the two sub-samples. The investigation of inefficiency effects shows that modeling production heterogeneity could help better target the CAP, since the relationship between operational subsidies and farms' efficiency differs depending on whether or not production heterogeneity is accounted for., Agricultural Economics, 53 (3), ISSN:0169-5150, ISSN:1574-0862

Understanding and measuring the sustainability of farms is key to evaluating progress towards policy goals for a more sustainable agriculture. In the LIFT project, a farm typology was developed to classify farms according to their ecological performance, based on farm-level variables from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Selected variables are used to assess three key ecological dimensions of farming: total input intensity; degree of circularity (reliance on own- produced versus external inputs); and avoidance of the use of specific inputs of concern for the environment and consumers. The combination of these aspects is considered as a measure of the farm proximity to a full agroecological approach. The typology allows comparison of farms across farm types, countries and years. We briefly present the method and discuss two key aspects: 1) how the proposed farm typology can inform policymaking in the context of a new EU policy framework; 2) how it can inform the foreseen transformation of the FADN into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN). We suggest that the use of a typology approach under the new FSDN provides useful information on the impacts of the implementation of agroecological practices with an acceptable additional effort in terms of data collection.

ispartof: EUROCHOICES vol:21 issue:3 pages:21-26 status: published

In light of the high environmental ambitions of the European Union (EU), it is imperative to monitor and better understand the agroecological transition of EU agriculture and its effects on all sustainability dimensions in order to tap its full potential. Two H2020 research projects, LIFT and UNISECO, analysed the agroecological transition of farming systems in the EU. Both projects use ecological classification systems (typologies) and performance indicators to assess farms depending on their degree of implemented agroecological practices. Results are visualised with spider web diagrams to unveil synergies and trade-offs within and between economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions. The two projects’ approaches differ in terms of data requirements, scale and scope of indicators, but provide complementary insights. The LIFT approach is applicable to data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), a representative sample of EU agriculture, focused on large-scale monitoring of farm income and business activities, but can also be used with further data sources and flexibly adjusted to different spatial scales (NUTS regions, countries, EU). In UNISECO, sustainability assessment tools were applied in 15 case studies across Europe. Among them is the SMART Farm Tool. It is based on the guidelines for the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA) from the FAO and covers a wide range of topics with over 300 indicators.

This deliverable D7.6 of the LIFT project is the final scientific deliverable of the project that was carried out during four years from May 2018 till April 2022. The deliverable summarises the methodologies used and the key results for the main research activities that were carried out in LIFT: definition of ecological agriculture; adoption of ecological approaches; farm performance of ecological agriculture; territorial sustainability of ecological agriculture; trade-offs and synergies across sustainability dimensions and scales; impact of policies; role of stakeholders. Recommendations in terms of policies, data and research needs, are then provided.

This Deliverable 5.2 of the LIFT project presents a territorial level sustainability assessment of alternative scenarios for the adoption of ecological farming approaches for 16 case study areas across Europe. Given that there are many approaches to sustainability assessment depending on the theoretical framework, the assessment’s aims, and data used, this deliverable begins with a review of the sustainability assessment literature in relation to agriculture and territorial scale issues, to identify the most appropriate methodology for this deliverable. The limited availability of landscape-scale data, the use of scenarios, and the need to rapidly apply a straightforward methodology across diverse case study areas, favoured a qualitative assessment of each adoption scenario in terms of their impacts against a set of regionally-specific sustainability objectives. Moreover, because territorial impacts can reflect many interacting cause-effect relationships, network analysis formed an optional extension to the assessment, to explore the patterns of influence underpinning scenario performance. In order to define the sustainability objectives for assessment, an initial long list of possible objectives was created through a review of the academic literature and relevant regional policy documents, followed by a round of stakeholder consultation to produce a final short list of objectives for each case study area. Performance against these objectives was assessed for four ecological farming adoption scenarios that differed in terms of the rate (either high or low) and distribution (clustered or dispersed) of adoption in 10 years’ time. The ecological practices being adopted in these scenarios were identified based on the output of Delphi exercises with stakeholder panels for each case study area, conducted as part of previous research in LIFT. Drawing on results from LIFT, local literature, and expert knowledge, each scenario was described as the product of a set of drivers of change. The drivers of change were tabulated against the objectives to produce an assessment matrix for each scenario. Groups of experts and stakeholders completed these matrices by deciding whether the state of each driver in each scenario had a positive or negative, strong or weak, impact on each objective. The different driver impacts on each objective were aggregated to show the scenario’s overall performance against each objective. For the High Weald case study area in England, the assessment matrices were also used to create network graphs to show the interacting cause-effect relationships between drivers and impacts, and network analysis was used to identify features of the system that were especially influential in determining overall sustainability performance. Based on this qualitative mapping of impacts against sustainability objectives, across case study areas, territorial sustainability performance was assessed to be strongest when the ecological farming adoption rate was high, and when adoption occurred in a clustered distribution (although the impact of adoption distribution was typically smaller than the impact of adoption rate). The same overall pattern was also reported when considering only the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, but economic sustainability performance was only impacted by the rate, and typically not the distribution, of adoption. These results suggest that the practices identified by stakeholders as relevant to future ecological adoption scenarios for a given case study area tend to be appropriate for achieving the area’s specific sustainability objectives, and that the spread of ecological farming approaches, at least in some areas, has the potential to deliver ‘win-win-win’ outcomes that reconcile performance across different sustainability dimensions. However, no one scenario was best for every objective in a case study area, so even if high clustered adoption of ecological farming makes an overall positive contribution to sustainability at the territorial level, realising this scenario in practice will still involve navigating some trade-offs between objectives. By extending the methodology to include network analysis, the sustainability assessment for the High Weald highlighted pathways and barriers that could be important in accounting for differences in scenario performance. In particular, information exchange among farmers on the benefits of ecological practices (facilitated by strong organisational and advisory support, and the use of technology) was a key contributor to the strong territorial sustainability performance of a high clustered adoption scenario. The network graphs produced for the High Weald also provided some indication as to how the territorial sustainability performance of ecological farming is due to a combination of farm-level and landscape-level processes, and suggested areas of interaction between these farm and landscape-level processes. As an example, strong interpersonal relationships among farmers could enhance information exchange that promotes ecological practice uptake on individual farms, but also encourage greater coordination of land management and collaboration between farmers. While the combination of scenario analysis, qualitative impact mapping and network analysis has been used for sustainability assessment before, in this case scenario development was built around alternative outcomes for the spread of agricultural land management practices, rather than starting with particular philosophies about the direction of society or policy. A key challenge, and priority area for further innovation, could be to reconcile the approach presented here with farm-level sustainability assessments, helping to identify areas of alignment or disconnect between farm and territorial level performance.

In the present deliverable, D5.3 of the LIFT project we present a framework which evaluates the over-all sustainability performance by incorporating farm and territorial level. The framework considers the sustainability along the economic, social and environmental dimensions. Matches and mismatches between the two spatial levels are considered by weighting farm level performance across said three dimensions. Weights are context-specific and reflect the importance of each dimension at the territo-rial level. Further, by evaluating sustainability performance across three different dimensions we are able to assess the synergies and trade-offs that exist between each and consider how these drive overall sustainability performance. The framework may also be used to inform policy decision-making by identifying which farming approaches are most sustainable within a particular case study area, and by identifying areas of focus to increase adoption rates of said systems. The deliverable includes three components. First, we provide a brief overview of the literature on sustainability performance assessments and position the present framework within it. Following this we provide a detailed explanation of how the framework is constructed, highlighting the input data used. Second, we apply the framework to five LIFT case study areas, namely Flanders (Belgium), Aus-tria, Romania, the United Kingdom and France. Here we detail the process of applying the data and discuss the results and how these can be interpreted. We also demonstrate how these results can be linked to drivers of change to help inform policy decision-making and identify target areas for increas-ing adoption of sustainable farming approaches. Finally, we provide insights into the assumptions that underpin the framework, highlighting the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed approach. We also provide insights and point of consideration for future application of the framework. The framework incorporates stakeholder’s sustainability objectives, multicriteria analysis, secondary data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) database, and further descriptive analysis to present an innovative multi-dimensional and multi-scale approach to evaluating farming approach sustainability performance. Though the framework has been developed within the LIFT project, it is highly flexible and can easily be adopted by interested parties outside of the LIFT project.

In light of the ambitions of the European Union (EU) to achieve an ecological transition of its agricultural sector it is crucial to assess and continuously monitor (i) the uptake of main ecological approaches by farms and (ii) associated effects on farm performance, considering all sustainability dimensions (economic, environmental, social) jointly. Given these needs, in the present deliverable D5.1 of the LIFT project, we develop a novel indicator system, which combines the LIFT farm typology and farm performance data, covering all sustainability dimensions. The approach compares performance of farms in five ecological groups (referred to as ecological farming approaches or ecological farming systems) from the LIFT farm typology (Conservation Agriculture, Low-Input farming, Integrated/Circular farming, Organic farming, Agroecology) as well as possible combinations of these groups with a less ecological group, referred to as Standard farming. This allows us to depict whether ecological farms perform differently or have different trade-offs and synergies than standard farms. Based on this system, we carry out a farm sustainability performance assessment with the two main data sources in the LIFT project, namely Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data and data from the LIFT large-scale farmer survey, covering main farm types present in the European Union (EU) in several case study regions/countries. Additionally, we present in-depth analyses of further specific aspects, namely (i) the extension of the developed indicator framework to bio-economic models, (ii) the integration of the consumption and provision of ecosystem services into the developed indicator system through composite agri-environmental performance (AEP) indicators, derived from the body of secondary literature and region-specific stakeholder input, and (iii) working conditions and employment on farms in the context of an ecological transition. Overall, our results show the importance of considering trade-offs and synergies both within and between farm sustainability dimensions, in the assessment of farm level sustainability performance of ecological farming approaches. Our results also highlight that in many cases the effects of an increasing uptake of ecological approaches are heterogenous and need to be investigated further. We clearly point out the assumptions associated with our approach as well as its limitations. Given these limitations, the LIFT farm sustainability performance assessment developed here is nevertheless well suited for large-scale and long-term monitoring. This is based on readily available FADN data and, in the near future, could be based on Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN) data, providing an in-depth exploratory view for policy makers and researchers regarding farm level sustainability performance of ecological approaches in the EU farming sector. We outline several possible avenues for further research, namely (i) the inclusion of other data sources, (ii) the usage of econometric methods to facilitate causal inference, (iii) the broader usage of the developed composite AEP indicators, and (iv) further in-depth studies regarding the social sustainability dimension. Finally, in terms of policy recommendations we point out the importance of (i) flexible policy measures, able to properly address region-specific needs of farms, (ii) sound data as a basis for evidence-based policy, and (iii) investigating the ecological transition of the EU farming sector in more detail also at regional level, e.g. via living labs.

We present in French the results of the LIFT project, in particular with respect to the LIFT typology, the analysis of farmer working conditions, the role of collective machinery use, and the role of policies, for ecological agriculture.

Pesticide use in vineyards is high in France, in particular in Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, France. Several solutions are investigated by research and governments, to encourage wine producers to change their practices and reduce their pesticide use. The solutions generally involve only producers and government (regulation, policies). The study, carried out in LIFT research project, is original in the sense that it investigates whether citizens could be actors of change. With an online survey to more than 250 citizens living in Nouvelle-Aquitaine close to vineyards, we investigated their willingness-to-pay for a regional fund that would help wine producers to change their practices. Findings show that one quarter of the citizen respondents declared that they are willing to contribute financially to a regional fund that would help wine producers to change their practices. The presentation of these results was followed by a round table. The debate in the round table was very rich and highlighted several success stories where the different stakeholders (producers, government, citizens) could work together to encourage producers to reduce their pesticide use, and also stressed that citizens could be a driving force behind practice changes.

We present a literature review of the role played by agricultural cooperatives in influencing farm sustainability. We first focus on the theoretical literature to highlight the various economic behaviours of cooperatives. Then we investigate all three dimensions of sustainability in developing and developed countries. We aim at linking the empirical findings to the theoretical understanding of cooperatives, in particular members’ heterogeneity. This paper shows that cooperatives play a non-negligible role in farm economic sustainability and in the adoption of environmentally friendly practices, suggesting that both public policies and private initiatives in cooperatives may be complementary. As regards social sustainability, there are only a few studies existing on the role of agricultural cooperatives. The trade-off between economic and environmental sustainability in cooperatives would need to be further investigated.