Direct subsidies and environment: Questioning common agricultural policy

Does the CAP direct payment distribution really benefit to the most environmentally friendly farms? A set of environmental indicators has been created to rank farms on their potential environmental impacts using French FADN’s 2013 data. Then, these classes have been connected with the amounts of direct payments received. Results are processed on three types of farm (specialized in cereals and oilseeds, meat cows and milk cows). It shows that the more farms are classified as environment-friendly, the less they get CAP direct payments per hectare. This decrease is due to the loss of first pillar payments, which cannot be fully offset by second pillar supports.