Prevalence of Agroecological Systems in Europe: A Farm-Level Assessment Based on FADN.

1. CONTEXTAgroecology is increasingly recognised as an important approach to improve the sustainability of global food systems. This manifests in global and regional targets of agroecological practice uptake, also in the European Union (EU). There is thus an urgent need to better understand the development of agroecological farming systems and associated driving factors at larger spatial scales. Yet, existing research on this is mainly limited to single case studies or countries.2. OBJECTIVEIn this paper we assess the degree to which farm management in the EU is aligned with agroecological principles and further explore, how a variety of factors at different levels, including farm(er) characteristics, the biophysical environment as well as socio-economic framework conditions embedded in different administrative regions are related to this degree of agroecological farming.3. METHODSBased on unbalanced panel data of roughly 60,000 farms from 24 EU countries for the years 2011 until 2018, we first create a composite indicator to quantify the extent to which farm management aligns with agroecological principles across the EU and over time. In a secondary regression analysis, we estimate a correlated random effects model in combination with a control function approach to assess the driving factors behind variations in the composite indicator scores.4. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSOur findings indicate that between 2011 and 2018 there was no increasing trend in mean agroecological scores in the European Union. Most of the variation in agroecological scores is connected to factors which are either constant or vary little over time and are mostly exogenous to farmers. Thus, more effort is needed to increase the uptake of agroecological practices in the agricultural sector to contribute to the EU environmental and climate objectives.5. SIGNIFICANCEWe present a novel empirical approach to monitor the degree to which farm management is aligned with agroecological principles in a large-scale cross-country context, based on the Farm Accountancy Data Network database and on robust statistical methods. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the prevalence of agroecological systems and factors associated with variations in agroecological scores, which is both crucial for the future development of EU agricultural and environmental policy.