Investigating the reasons behind the choice to promote crop diversification practices through the new CAP reform in Europe

The present study investigates the factors that might contribute influencing Member States decision to promote the adoption of crop diversification practices through their provisional National Strategic Plans for implementing the 2023–2027 Common Agricultural Policy. The Qualitative Comparative Analysis method is used to explore the link between key agricultural land uses and land use pressure indicators and the choice of funding the adoption of diversification practices and of imposing restrictions to access subsidies for their adoption. Results highlight that the choice of financing the adoption of diversification practices is associated with: the diffusion of cereal crops (share of cereals crops on the arable land above the median value of 20%), the diffusion of large farms (share of agricultural land for farms above 100 ha on the UAA above the median value of 10%) and the poor diffusion of grasslands (share of agricultural land cultivated with permanent grassland below the median value of 30%), mainly for eastern European countries, and with biodiversity pressures (share of biodiversity pressure indicators above the median value of 0.36), mainly for central European countries. Conversely, the choice of imposing high restrictions on the adoption of diversification practices is mainly associated with different form of land use pressures (nutrient leaching, biodiversity losses and soil erosion), mainly for southern European countries. Lack of financing and lack of restrictions remains unexplained for some MS (i.e., this is particularly evident for Sweeden and Finalnd) and apparently contradictory choices are highlighted for some others (i.e., financing the adoption of diversification practices with limited restrictions, which was addressed for France, Austria, Slovenia and Lithuania). The paper concludes providing a summary of the main findings, some policy recommendations to cope with existing shortcomings in current plans, due to excess flexibility and lack of coherence with existing priorities and highlighting the limits of the approach used and some proposal for further investigation. •The paper investigates the way how governments promote crop diversification and why through their CAP plans.•The investigation is carried out through a qualitative comparative analysis based on country level data.•Results reveal contrasting motivations behind the choice of funding and regulating crop diversification.