Scholarly record

THE AGROECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF BULGARIAN AGRICULTURE

Teodorina Turlakov

Abstract

The agri-environmental policy of the CAP is not new to the EU. It has been developing for over twenty-five years, as agriculture is the sector directly dependent on abiotic and biotic environmental factors. On the eve of the new programming period (2021-2027), challenges in relation to the environment, climate and sustainable agriculture are increasing. In the context of deepening environmental changes, the risks to agriculture are limited to: changes in agricultural land; reduction of agricultural productivity; reduction in the quality of the production; soil erosion and other negative consequences. On the other hand, agricultural activity with all the variety of interactions with the environment is one of the factors for environmental change. In response to the negative tendency for changing environmental factors and the relationship agriculture ? environment, the agroecological approach is developed. Using this approach, the EU's CAP seeks to offer ways to overcome and / or mitigate dependence and negative impacts, which would reduce both economic efficiency and food production globally. Emerged as a voluntary measure in 1985, the agri-environmental approach has become the only mandatory measure under the EU's rural development policy. A number of procedure issues arise in the process of implementation of this measure in Bulgaria. It is necessary to overcome structural disproportions and to take a number of national decisions, which calls into question the awareness and the effectiveness of the agrienvironment measure performance. The purpose of the report is to evaluate the application of the EU CAP agroecological approach and its return on the sustainability of Bulgarian agriculture. An overview of CAP mechanisms has been carried out in order to support agriculture in the direction of environmental protection. The two main measures of the Rural Development Programs in the period 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 are discussed. Data on the share of agrienvironmental areas in the total utilized area within the EU is presented, which is an indicator of the effectiveness of the agri-environment approach. Based on a survey amongst the farmers in Bulgaria, advantages and disadvantages of the applied agrienvironmental measures in the country are presented. The impact of climate change on the activity of farmers is being investigated.

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