Agricultural Policy in the Era of Digitalisation: Implications for Instrument Designs and Future Policy Strategies

The agricultural sector continues to digitalise, while demands for an agricultural policy offering better support for sustainability become increasingly fervent. However, it is far from clear how digitalisation could make agricultural policy more effective. Also demands on agricultural policy arising from further digitalisation are very uncertain. Our DigitAP project for the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture addresses these questions. It aims to provide guidance for future agricultural policy making. This contribution provides an overview of key insights from the project. The first part of the DigitAP project investigates the extent to which digital technologies can trigger different choices of agricultural policy instruments and novel design specifications that address problems of sustainability in farming more effectively and possibly more efficiently (Ehlers et al., n.d.). It develops and applies an analytical framework that focuses on the effects of digitalisation in distinct policy dimensions, drawing on theoretical insights and examples from practice in a European context. The analysis suggests that digital technology offers new options for agricultural policy, including novel designs that are more effective and less costly. New opportunities for more effective spatial targeting and tailoring of instruments arise, including results-based subsidies. Digitalisation could also move agricultural policy from direct intervention to information-based governance. However, legal constraints, political interests and the capabilities of the actors involved require attention in research and practice. The next part of the project addresses the uncertainties and unknowns for agricultural policy making arising with digitalisation of Europe’s agricultural sector. Using a combination of a Delphi study and a scenario development workshop with European experts, we developed four plausible scenarios for Europe in 2030: 1) digitalisation of the sector in current directions at current rates as a baseline scenario, 2) strong digitalisation of a regulatory government, 3) use of autonomous farming technology and 4) digitalised food business. For all scenarios we identified gaps in achieving a range of important European agricultural policy goals and measures addressing them. The baseline scenario needs strategies to ramp up infrastructure for digitalisations while the other scenarios need strategies to prevent risks and cater for special cases and diversity. It generally seems useful to increase digital competencies of the stakeholders and to consider policy styles fitting the scenarios. Finally, we examine how satellite-based remote sensing could affect agri-environmental policy making. Preliminary results of a systematic literature review suggest that satellite-based remote sensing captures agri-environmental concerns to varying extent. It aids monitoring of certain agri-environmental attributes of which some are of interest to agri-environmental policy, for example for evaluation and checking compliance. However, applicability of satellite-based remote sensing is biased towards certain agri-environmental attributes and less costly at larger resolution. Policy attention and respective measures, such as agri-environmental payments, may therefore become similarly biased in practice. References Ehlers, M.-H., Huber, R., Finger, R., n.d. Agricultural policy in the era of digitalisation. Food Policy.