Brussels, 30/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission said on Tuesday 29 March that it had updated the common agricultural policy (CAP) context indicators.
As part of the 2013 CAP reform and the emphasis given to performance-based EU spending, the Commission has established a set of CAP indicators linked to output, results and impact aimed at measuring the effects of policy measures.
Context indicators have also been set up for monitoring general contextual trends in the economy, environment and society which may affect the performance of the CAP. The Commission has recently updated these context indicators with the latest figures available at the end of 2015 (http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-indicators/context/2015/indicator-table_en.pdf ). These show, for example, that the most recent survey (in 2013) put the number of EU farm holdings at 10.84 million, with an average size of 16.1 hectares (ha). The largest average holdings are in the Czech Republic (133 ha), the UK (94 ha) and Slovakia (81 ha). This compares with the previous available figures (for 2010) putting the EU average for 12.2 million holdings at 14.4 ha. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)