CAPRI Online Manual (update)

CAPRI aims at building up a Policy Information System of the EU’s agricultural sector, regionalised at NUTS 2 level or farm types inside NUTS 2 regions with an emphasis on the impact of the CAP. The core of the system consists of a regionalized or farm type agricultural sector model using an activity based non-linear programming approach. One feature of such a highly disaggregated, activity based agricultural sector model is the detailed information resulting from ex ante simulations of policy scenarios concerning the output and input of specific agricultural production activities and their relationships. This information is also a pre condition to judge possible impacts of agricultural production on the environment. However, these systems require as well this kind of information (data) ex-post, at least partially. It is especially necessary to define for each region in the model, at least for the basis year, the matrix of I/O-coefficients for the different production activities together with prices for these outputs and inputs. Moreover, for calibration and validation purposes information concerning land use and livestock numbers is necessary.

Already from the beginning of the development of the CAPRI model, the regional agricultural statistics (EUROSTAT table group reg_agr) was judged as the only harmonized data source available on regionalized agricultural data in the EU. Other regional Eurostat data are suplementing the regional agricultural statistics such that we are currently using the following:

• Land use from regional landuse statistics [agr_r_landuse, discontinued table]
• Land cover from LUCAS [lan_lcv_ovw, currently only used in COCO1]
• Crop production - harvested areas, production and yields [table agr_r_crops]
• Animal production - livestock numbers [table agr_r_animal]
• Milk production [agr_r_milkpr]
• Agricultural accounts on regional level [table agr_r_accts]
• Structure of agricultural holdings including labour force [ef_ls_ovlsureg, ef_olslsureg, ef_oluaareg, ef_oluaareg, ef_r_nuts]

Although the content of the regional datasets has remained in time, the naming and classification within EUROSTAT is undergoing continuous modifications. Tables considered of low interest are discontinued (and may be still used in CAPRI some time after this point, such as table agr_r_landuse). And new topics are covered providing useful data in some areas, for example from agri-environmental indicators (table reg_aei):

• Estimated soil erosion by water, by NUTS 3 regions (aei_pr_soiler)
• Manure storage facilities by NUTS 3 regions (aei_fm_ms)

The following table shows the availability of the different regional tables as they have been used in the current database (with series completed up to 2014). However, the current coverage concerning time and sub-regions differs dramatically between the tables and within the tables between the Member States. A second problem consists in the relatively high aggregation level especially in the field of crop production. Hence, additional sources, assumptions and econometric procedures must be applied to close data gaps and to break down aggregated data.