Research

This project examines central aspects of insurance premium subsidies within the framework of the Hail Insurance Promotion Act. The planned approach is divided into a theoretical analysis of scientific literature (WP1) and two subsequent empirical analyses. First, in a theoretical literature analysis an overview of the design of similar funding systems in an international context is given and based on this, possible improvement potentials for the Austrian system are identified. Second, based on the theoretical literature analysis, a first empirical analysis identifies key drivers of the development of costs and demand in relation to the insurance premium support. Third, a second empirical analysis shows the individual farm-level effects of subsidized insurance in the current system. Through these 3 outputs, the project intends to also identify improvement potentials in terms of data requirements for effective monitoring. The results of the planned research project therefore represent a well-founded information basis that political decision-makers can use for the further development of the Austrian system of insurance premium support in agriculture.

VALOR will establish a world leading system to evaluate and explore the impacts of pollinators on local societies and economies. The project team will take a full systems based approach and world leading research methods to explore the local landscape, farm business, societal, policy, nutrition and value chain dependences on pollinators in six case study regions. VALOR embeds policy, practice and business in its core research focus, working directly with stakeholders to develop believable scenarios and accessible tools that will not only facilitate the incorporation of pollinators into decision making at multiple scales, but will allow future efforts by research and private sector actors to easily replicate our approach. Our outcomes will be disseminated through European partners and hosted on our existing knowledge hubs, ensuring impact beyond the end of the project. The Horizon Europe project VALOR is led by the University of Reading, the Institute of Agricultural and Forest Economics leads WP 4 ‘Local scale economic and social dependences’.

With the European Climate Law, the achievement of the EU's climate target formulated in the European Green Deal to reduce emissions in the EU by at least 55% by 2030 becomes a legal obligation. The Fit for 55 package includes a number of proposals to revise and update EU legislation and aims to ensure a coherent and balanced framework for achieving the EU's climate goals. With the presentation of this package, the European Commission proposes a net carbon storage target of 310 Mt CO2 eq in the LULUCF sector for the EU by 2030, and a binding national target of 5,650 kt CO2 eq applies to Austria. In this context, the European Commission proposes to establish a carbon storage certification scheme to provide additional incentives to increase net carbon storage. Within the framework of a study, the potentials for increasing net carbon storage in land use are to be evaluated with a view to achieving the target proposed for Austria. To this end, the willingness of farmers to implement possible additional measures of land management and land use changes with regard to agricultural land will be examined. With the support of the expertise of suitable partners, a practical questionnaire will be developed that asks about the willingness to implement additional measures for additional carbon storage in soil and biomass (compared to the current state) on farms. In addition, a research and presentation of conducive and inhibiting socio-economic framework conditions in Austria for the implementation of measures for carbon storage on agricultural land is carried out.