MIND STEP addresses the Work Programme Topic RUR-04-2018-2019, contributing to Rural Renaissance by further developing analytical tools and models to support policies related to agriculture and food. Agricultural policies like the EU CAP are widening the scope to contribute to the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainability Development Goals. From the Commission's legislative proposals (June 2018) it is expected that the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be redesigned in line with this. Consequences are among others a move of the CAP to farm specific measures and an improved link to environment, climate change and ecosystem services. It is proposed that Member States and regions develop their own CAP strategic plan with more attention to the regional implementation of the CAP. This wider scope and measures with a focus on individual farmers ask for a new generation of impact assessment tools. Current state-of-the-art agricultural models are not able to deliver individual farm and local effects as they are specified at higher levels of aggregation.

German-wide and plot-specific land use data is so far not public available. This can change due to the new data from satellite imagery from the Copernicus program (Sentinel), which is free and taken at a high frequency.

Farm structures are constantly changing – they must, if they respond to competition. However, how well do we know the current farm structures? Available statistics only provide limited information. Therefore, in this project we intend to initially identify the exact knowledge gaps and later develop approaches to close them.

The EU commission annually develops a projection of the future development in agriculture to detect trends as early as possible. Until now, the structure of farms played only a minor role. A greater consideration of the structure of farms would increase the quality of the projections, particularly after the reorientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013. The impact of the “Greening” of the first Pillar is closely related to the productive orientation of a farm – e.g., whether a farm produces as grassland farm rather milk or as arable farm cereals. Main objective of this project is to identify the factors that affect the productive orientation to predict the future development.

How profitable is German horticultural production, what are its production structures, its value chains, its market outlets and who provides advisory services? We want to thoroughly decribe and analyse the current situation.

Conditions in Switzerland with regard to agricultural market and support policy in future might develop towards the existing Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union. This would mean that external protection and high direct payments would be reduced. The consequences for the agriculture are not clear.