Barriers to the implementation of environmental measures in agriculture in Thuringia and Baden-Württemberg

The loss of biodiversity in Germany in recent years has been particularly severe in agricultural landscapes. Although the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) offers numerous funding instruments to support the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and green infrastructure, success to date has been limited. For this reason, the CAP4GI project is investigating how the provisions of the current CAP can be better implemented and develops recommendations both for the current and future CAP. 

To this end, participatory exchange platforms with farmers were set up in three regions each in Baden-Württemberg and Thuringia, two federal states with very different agricultural structures. The aim of the exchange was to identify potential improvements to agri-environmental support measures so that they can be made more attractive for farmers and more ecologically effective. In the preparation of the first platform meetings, scoping interviews were conducted in which the farmers were asked about their suggestions for topics for the exchange, their wishes for the participation of other stakeholders from authorities, associations, societies, etc., and their motivation to participate. This report presents the methodology behind the scoping interviews and platforms as well as the results of the scoping interviews and the first platform meetings. 

At the first platform meetings, the focus was on identifying the obstacles and barriers that farmers face when implementing agri-environmental measures. It became apparent that the biggest problems in both federal states largely overlap and consist of insufficient remuneration for the measures, excessive bureaucracy and a lack of flexibility in the requirements. Other problem areas include controls and sanctions, doubts about the usefulness of certain requirements, dependence on the wishes of land owners and a lack of contact persons and advice as well as personnel and time for implementation.