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Balancing sustainability and profitability: Italian farmers’ perspectives on Common Agricultural Policy eco-schemes

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  • Teresina Mancuso,
  • Tiziana Pagnani,
  • Giovanni Gulisano,
  • Anna Irene De Luca,
  • Emanuele Spada
Teresina Mancuso
Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Turin
Tiziana Pagnani
Department of Economics and Law, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio
Giovanni Gulisano
Department of Agriculture, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria
Anna Irene De Luca
Department of Agriculture, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria
Emanuele Spada
Department of Agriculture, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rea-17127

Published 2026-09-25

Keywords

  • Common Agricultural Policy,
  • Eco-schemes,
  • Latent Class Analysis,
  • Farmer Behaviour,
  • Sustainable Agriculture,
  • Italy
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Mancuso, T., Pagnani, T., Gulisano, G., De Luca, A. I., & Spada, E. (2026). Balancing sustainability and profitability: Italian farmers’ perspectives on Common Agricultural Policy eco-schemes. Italian Review of Agricultural Economics. https://doi.org/10.36253/rea-17127

Copyright (c) 2026 Teresina Mancuso, Tiziana Pagnani, Giovanni Gulisano, Anna Irene De Luca, Emanuele Spada

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform introduces ‘eco-schemes’ as a voluntary, payment-for-practice mechanism to operationalise the European Green Deal. Despite significant financial ring-fencing, farmer uptake remains contingent upon the complex interplay between economic incentives, technical feasibility, and behavioural factors. In this context, this study investigates the drivers of eco-scheme adoption in Italy, a country characterised by high structural and regional heterogeneity. Using survey data from 345 farmers, we employ latent class analysis to identify distinct attitudinal and operational profiles. The model identifies four latent classes: ‘animal welfare specialists’, ‘collective pragmatists’, ‘proactive farmers’, and ‘CAP sceptics’. Our findings reveal a significant ‘perception inversion’: while specialised livestock farmers perceive high utility in animal welfare measures, they report negligible impacts and low premium congruity for area-based interventions, with the opposite trend observed among crop-oriented farmers. Furthermore, a critical ‘information bottleneck’, stemming from low cognitive accessibility and reliance on intermediaries, deters participation among smaller, traditional farms. The results suggest that a monolithic policy design fails to account for the diverse opportunity costs and technical constraints of heterogeneous farm typologies. In conclusion, especially in view of the post-2027 CAP, achieving desired adoption effects requires a shift from flat-rate compliance towards differentiated incentives and robust agricultural knowledge and innovation systems to mitigate the inherent uncertainty of the new ‘green architecture’.

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