| The Health Check (HC) of the European Common Agricultural Policy in 2003 sped up the process of policy reforms toward decoupled payments in order to urge agricultural production to respond to market signals. However, since decoupled payments could generate “coupled” effects on production, it remains questionable how single farm payment (SFP) alters agricultural intensification. Therefore, through a comparative statistical analysis applied on Italian FADN regional data, this paper aims at evaluating whether the HC reform had positive impacts on the aggregate expenditure on fertilizers and crop production inputs. From the results, it is observed that the expansion of profitable crops like vegetables, flowers and vineyards, along with the receipt of SFP... |
