Author: Miranda García and Raquel Pastor (AEIDL)
How can public authorities assess the likely impacts of agricultural policy choices? How can farmers, rural communities, and other stakeholders be meaningfully involved in shaping decisions? And how can digital data help track progress on issues such as soil health, pesticide use and water management?
Three newly updated Tools4CAP guidance documents address these questions by bringing together analytical tools, participatory approaches and data integration methods that can support the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of CAP Strategic Plans.
Building on the first methodological guidelines published in December 2024, the updated publications incorporate lessons from practical applications in different European countries and incorporate feedback gathered from stakeholders involved in CAP design and implementation.
Using models and experimental approaches to understand policy impacts
The updated publication on modelling tools and analytical approaches explains how quantitative approaches can support better-informed CAP planning. Models can help compare policy options, anticipate potential impacts and explore trade-offs between farm income, agricultural production, environmental performance and climate objectives.
To make the guidance more accessible to a wide audience, the revised publication includes a new glossary explaining key concepts, models and analytical approaches.
The guidance also draws on practical applications across the EU. These include assessing eco-scheme design in the Netherlands through a combination of modelling tools; examining policy options supporting protein crop production in Hungary using the CAPRI model; exploring longer-term land-use and sustainability questions in Czechia using the GLOBIOM model; and presenting experimental economics approaches in Occitanie, France, to better understand farmers’ preferences for agri-environment-climate measures.
The updated conclusions highlight that quantitative and experimental economics approaches can provide insights to support policy design and assessment. However, their usefulness depends on whether they are fit for purpose and respond to the needs of policymakers. This requires modelling teams to be available to answer questions, adapt to the analysis where needed, and communicate results in a clear and meaningful way. Transparency is also essential, particularly when explaining assumptions, methods, and results. In addition, involving stakeholders in the design of scenarios can help ensure that the analysis reflects practical needs and supports better-informed policy decisions.
The guidance also underlines the value of combining different modelling approaches and experimental economics, particularly when dealing with complex interactions and trade-offs between economic, environmental, and social objectives.
Ensuring that stakeholder voices inform decisions
The updated guidance on participatory and multi-level governance tools sets out practical ways to involve the people and organisations affected by agricultural policy in shaping, implementing and revising it. Farmers, rural communities, public authorities, environmental organisations, advisors and other actors can contribute different forms of knowledge and experience that help identify needs, assess priorities and improve the transparency of policy design processes.
The revised publication presents methods for developing shared visions for the future of agriculture and rural areas, assessing how policy measures contribute to objectives, clarifying the logic behind proposed interventions, prioritising needs and exploring possible future scenarios.
Drawing on practical applications and stakeholder feedback, the guidance stresses that participation works best when its purpose is clear, discussions are well facilitated, and participants can see how their contributions influence real decisions. It also considers how participatory approaches may support the preparation and implementation of future CAP interventions within an evolving post-2027 policy framework, where partnership, multi-level governance and coherence between interventions are likely to remain important considerations.
Making data integration operational
The third updated publication focuses on data integration and technical protocols for CAP monitoring and evaluation. It shows how satellite observations, farm-management systems, administrative databases, sensors, and environmental data can be combined to support policy implementation, monitoring, and evaluation processes. By translating policy needs into practical workflows and technical diagrams, the publication makes the guidance useful not only for policy officers, but also for technical teams, Paying Agencies, Managing Authorities and external contractors involved in designing CAP monitoring tools.
Building on seven user stories introduced in the previous guidance, the updated version expands three areas using practical experience from Spain, Italy and Greece:
- Soil health: experience from Spain in estimating soil organic carbon has led to a revised workflow combining soil sampling, Earth Observation data, additional spatial datasets and machine-learning methods.
- Pesticide use: a Spanish application combining aggregated Digital Farm Book data with the CAPRI model has identified practical requirements for data anonymisation, validation and preparation, while highlighting the importance of farmer trust and responsible data governance.
- Irrigation and water management: applications in Greece and Italy have strengthened the guidance by incorporating policy-monitoring dashboards, drought-risk assessment, regional benchmarking and climate-resilience considerations.
These examples show that the value of digital tools depends not only on data availability but also on data quality, interoperability, governance arrangements, and user trust. The updated guidance turns earlier technical concepts into more replicable, operational workflows and connects them with emerging policy needs relating to soil health, pesticide use, water management, climate adaptation and digitalisation within the future CAP framework.
Complementary approaches for stronger agricultural policy
Taken together, the three updated publications demonstrate how complementary approaches and integrated data systems can strengthen agricultural policymaking to support different stages of the CAP policy cycle. Models and behavioural methods can help anticipate impacts and understand responses to policy measures; participatory tools can ensure that decisions reflect real needs and perspectives; and integrated data systems can provide stronger evidence for monitoring progress and adapting policies over time.
By bringing these approaches closer to practical implementation, the updated methodological guidelines support managing authorities, policymakers and other stakeholders involved in preparing and implementing CAP Strategic Plans by providing methodologies, protocols and guidelines that can be adapted to different policy contexts.
More information:
D2.4 Methodological guidelines
D3.4 Decision-making Tools methodological guidelines including protocols
D4.4 Methodological guidelines and technical protocols on data integration