Many studies have demonstrated that mountain agriculture provides a range of ecosystem services such as water regulation, soil conservation, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration. Furthermore, it plays a crucial role in preserving local cultures and food, and traditional knowledge. Small farming in the mountains also fosters rural development, generating employment opportunities.However, despite its importance, mountain agriculture, it is now facing various challenges that threaten its sustainability. The number of mountains farms is continuously decreasing, with very low generational renewal rates. One of the most immediate consequences is land abandonment, which in turn brings undesirable effects such as reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services, and rural viability. According to Dax et al. (2021) EU land abandonment risk is three times higher in mountain areas than elsewhere.The EU, through the CAP, claims to assist small farms. However, CAP tools have not always been able to support small farms. In the Lombardy mountains only 32.5% farms receive CAP directs payments, share reduced to 22.7% among small farms. Given the role played by mountain small farms in managing the territory, and in contrasting mountains abandonment, a paradigm shift in CAP support for this type of farms would be desirable. As a consequence we propose a new CAP policy scheme, tailored to mountain small farms, with a yearly payment per working unit, and conditioned to the respect of environmental and labour commitments. Although CAP payments are given per unit area, the Mountain Small Farmer’s Scheme (henceforth MSFS) proposes a payment per working unit. This would provide an incentive for people to stay in the mountains as a key factor for territory management and viability.This paper aims to assess, by a Discrete choice experiment (DCE), the willingness of small mountain farmers to join MSFS, in order to: i) measure in monetary terms small farmers’ favour or aversion to some potential entry conditions to the scheme; ii) simulate the potential participation among the entire population of farmers; and iii) estimating the costs of such policy implementation.
Bertoni et al. (Wed,) studied this question.