Spatial diversity in cereal crops : what do we learn from CAP reforms? : a farm-level analysis

On-farm agricultural biodiversity conservation has long been recognized as a fundamental resource to the maintenance of ecologic and economic functions. Among the factors affecting biodiversity, institutional failures at different scales are reported as potential causes of biodiversity loss both in developed and developing areas. In this paper, we hypothesise the existence of a potential relationship linking CAP support measures and crop-diversity. To assess this hypothesis we construct a diversity function in which a measure of spatial diversity among cereal species is expressed as a function of a set of economic and agro-ecological variables. Using a panel dataset for the period 2004-2010, we compare the results obtained from the pooled estimator with Fixed Effects results. The empirical analysis shows the existence of a stable relationship between our measure of spatial diversity and CAP support measures.