The European Union is set to expand its data collection from member states’ farms to include environmental and social information.
As part of the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy, it has proposed changing the existing Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) to the Farm Sustainability Data network (FSDN), building in additional metrics on top of the economic data currently collected from over 80,000 farms.
The FADN was established in 1965, to work alongside the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). However, with CAP’s current shift of emphasis towards environmental and social concerns, the approach, widely considered to have been successful, looks likely to be broadening in scope.
Data collection methodologies will be in line with those used for the FADN, while EU member states will be able to set their own incentives to encourage farmers to participate.
Alongside the move, additional data sharing has been proposed, with the aim to speed up the move towards more sustainable practices on farms.
Cost increases could be managed
The shift would be likely to increase costs, according to a study by researchers at Wageningen University and Research. Realising the FSDN’s data collection demands would raise the average cost per farm from 750 to 1040 euros – an increase of 40%.
Estimated costs calculated in the study varied widely between EU members, however, with increases of around 10% in the Netherlands but 124% in France. This suggests that there is best practice that can be learned from, they stressed, with innovations expanded more widely that could ultimately cut the outlay necessary for the change.
Another option to collect all the necessary economic and sustainability data at no extra cost would be by reducing the overall sample of farms from 85,000 to 75,000, and collecting sustainability data from a sub-sample of 15,000 of those, they noted.
“A viable organisational form for the collection of farm sustainability indicators can be developed. It is logical and a welcome development that the European Commission improves its monitoring and policy evaluation by extending the FADN into a Farm Sustainability Data Network,” they added.
