"Setting up Young Farmers" CAP Measure in Rural Areas of Greece

Abstract

LIAISE Policy Brief No. 4 on "'Setting up young farmers' CAP measure in rural areas of Greece" has just been published.The imbalanced allocation of age- classes with high share of older farmers against younger ones, and the difficult access of young and well trained farmers to the primary sector are important factors that negatively affect the rural areas in most of the European countries. 'Setting up young farmers' is a measure of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that tries to answer these problems. A Test Case Study was set up in the context of the LIAISE project in order to measure the direct and indirect impacts of 'Setting up young farmers' measure in rural areas. Among the various models and tools that could be used to understand Rural Development Programme (RDP) effects and measure its impacts, the Multicriteria Decision Analysis approach was selected. We used this approach to assess the impacts of the measure in rural areas (prefectures) of Northern Greece, focusing on economic and social impacts. The results of the Test Case highlight the importance of context-sensitive methods for generating and disseminating knowledge taking into account local information needs. The "Setting up young farmers" RDP measure was implemented in two programming periods, 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 in the seven prefectures of the Region of Central Macedonia in Northern Greece.