The use of fadn methodology to support the evaluation of business development plans in the rdp Sicily 2014-2020

• Information

  DESCRIPTION

  P. 1-26

  NOTE

  • Article 19(4) of Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 provides that business start-up aid for young farmers, non-agricultural activities in rural areas and the development of small farms shall be conditional on the submission of a business plan. Therefore, this tool, also known as Farm Development Plan (FDP), is mandatory to verify the economic improvement of an investment under sub-measures 6.1 “Business start up aid for young farmers”, 4.1 “Investments in agricultural holdings” and operation 6.4.a “Investments in creation and development of non-agricultural activities” so that rural development resources can be directed towards those project ideas which are consistent with the objectives and purposes of the rural development strategy and, thanks to the support, have the highest probability of success.
  • The article presents the lesson learned from the Sicilian experience of designing a web-based tool for FDP submission, namely “PSAWeb Sicilia”. This device allowed the Managing Authority (MA) of RDP Sicily 2014-2020 to make available an FDP scheme to users in compliance with EU obligations, consistent with the objectives and purposes of the Programme, as well as with the implementing and procedural provisions of regional calls.
  • The computerised management of the FDPs ensured better coordination between the offices responsible for verifying and evaluating the proposals, while processing and analysis of aggregated data from over 8,400 business plans provided an in-depth knowledge of the investment needs in Sicilian agriculture and a better capacity to forecast the RDP potential response as well as some aspects of specific interest to the regional agricultural system. Thanks to PSAWeb Sicilia, in fact, a large amount of data at farm, sectoral, territorial and type of investment level was collected providing information of inestimable value not available from other data sources.
  • The assessment of access requirements in terms of farms' economic size, economic-financial viability and profitability was ensured by borrowing principles and procedures from the Italian FADN. The cooperation between the MA and CREA-PB achieved several results. Firstly, the data collected combined with the monitoring data have been made available for the evaluation activity and for the communication to the public of the RDP implementation. This information will also be very useful both for better targeting interventions in 2021-22 and for reprogramming them in the future cap. Finally, as a positive externality, the use of the application has contributed to increasing accounting knowledge among operators and technicians in the agricultural sector, so that it has become a teaching tool in some university courses. [Publisher's text]

  KEYWORDS

  • Rural Development Programme, Business plan, Investments, FADN
• In this issue

  • Guest editorial : current use and new perspectives for the Farm Accountancy Data Network
  • The use of fadn methodology to support the evaluation of business development plans in the rdp Sicily 2014-2020
  • Ten years after : diffusion, criticism and potential improvements in the use of FADN for Rural Development assessment in Italy
  • Enhancing the Italian fadn for sustainability assessment : the state of art and perspectives
  • Estimation of the impact of cap subsidies as environmental variables on Romanian farms
  • Generating cropping schemes from FADN data at the farm and territorial scale
  • FADN data to support policymaking : the potential of an additional survey
  • Modeling change in the ratio of water irrigation costs to farm incomes under various scenarios with integrated FADN and administrative data
  • Mapping data granularity : the case of FADN
  • Use and users of FADN data in Italy
  • Financial sustainability in Italian Organic Farms : an analysis of the FADN Sample
  • Sustainability and competitiveness in farms : an evidence of Lazio region agriculture through FADN data analysis
  • Economic characterization of irrigated and livestock farms in the Po River Basin District
  • Organic and conventional farms in the Basilicata region : a comparison of structural and economic variables using FADN data
  • Investments financing at farm level : a regional assessment using FADN data
  • The role of neighborhood effects on investing dairy farms
  • The impact of irrigation on agricultural productivity : the case of FADN farms in Veneto
  • Referee 2021