Daniele Bertolozzi-Caredio

Gene editing (GE) is gaining momentum worldwide, but limited data on UK farmers' preferences hinders our understanding of its potential impact amid deregulation debates. Based on a survey of 200 English arable farmers, we employ a Latent Class Analysis and Multinomial Logit regressions to investigate current preferences for GE crops. The analysis reveals a high willingness of adoption, outlines three preference profiles, including eager, wary, and hesitant adopters, and identify factors influencing such preferences. Results spot a possible substitution effect among GE crops and agricultural insurance, and suggest farmers may adopt GE in response to growing public demand for sustainable practices.

Previous research has shown that identifying a successor prompts significant changes in farm management, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the succession effect. Based on a survey of Polish and Italian farmers and the use of count data regressions, we investigate whether the successor's gender and involvement in farm operations influence the succession effect. We find that the identification of a successor has a significant effect on all types of management practices. The identification of a female successor favours the adoption of innovation and diversification practices. Conversely, identifying a male successor favours integration practices. However, the effect emerges only when the successor is already involved in farm management, indicating that both certainty of succession and the successor's direct engagement are decisive. This evidence helps better outline the succession effect theory. To leverage the succession effect, policymakers could incentivise successors’ early involvement in farm management and make the existing post‐installation support for young farmers available prior to succession.

Alongside the devolution of decision-making powers to Member States, the latest reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introduced CAP Strategic Plans to enhance the design and implementation of increasingly complex policy objectives and to reinforce the use of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM). This paper is based on desk research, combining a comparative review of European Union (EU) regulations and programming documents, and insights from the Tools4CAP project, which conducted interviews, surveys, and focus groups across Member States. The gaps in strategic planning are evident in the weak logical connection between individual phases of CSP preparation and the weak evidence-based justification of decisions regarding the selection and design of interventions. Quantitative tools and scientific evidence were underutilised, while political-economy constraints and path dependency dominated decision-making. As a result, CAP Strategic Plans were often developed through a series of disconnected tasks, producing documents with loosely linked sections lacking overall coherence. The upcoming integration of CAP planning into broader National and Regional Partnership Plans may simplify procedures but risks weakening EBPM principles. Systematic integration of science into planning, methodology development, interdisciplinarity, and better communication between researchers and decision-makers are needed to realise the ideal concept of EBPM. Institutional capacities for the use of evidence need to be strengthened, mandatory impact assessments and open data platforms introduced, and dialogue between science and policy enhanced. The limitations include reliance on secondary data and qualitative insights rather than detailed empirical evaluation across all Member States.