@article{Vollaro:109428,
      recid = {109428},
      author = {Vollaro, Michele},
      title = {The impact of the Single Farm Payments on the Expenditure  on Fertilizers and crop protection inputs: a comparative  study of the Italian agriculture},
      address = {2010},
      number = {704-2016-48238},
      pages = {26},
      year = {2010},
      abstract = {The Health Check (HC) of the European Common Agricultural  Policy in 2003 sped up the
process of policy reforms toward  decoupled payments in order to urge agricultural production  to
respond to market signals. However, since decoupled  payments could generate “coupled” effects
on production, it  remains questionable how single farm payment (SFP) alters  agricultural
intensification. Therefore, through a  comparative statistical analysis applied on Italian  FADN
regional data, this paper aims at evaluating whether  the HC reform had positive impacts on the
aggregate  expenditure on fertilizers and crop production inputs. From  the results, it is observed
that the expansion of  profitable crops like vegetables, flowers and vineyards,  along with the
receipt of SFP increased the expenditure of  fertilizers and crop protection inputs. Such  findings
suggest that the HC reform has been so far  effective in terms of aligning agricultural production
to  markets’ signals, but with the unintended consequence of  higher intensification. We deduce
that farmers may allocate  higher proportions of SFP to purchase fertilizers and crop  protection
inputs whenever the opportunity of higher  profits is found in those cropping activities requiring  a
higher intensive use of production’ factors.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/109428},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.109428},
}