The problem

Europe’s dairy industry depends heavily on policy-making and is facing enormous change as the income support it gets is “decoupled” from production and, instead, is linked to environmental, food safety, animal welfare and rural development requirements. It is crucial, therefore, that policy-makers are able to forecast the impact of their decisions before implementation. Much work needs to be carried out to provide them with tools that can predict such future effects with some accuracy.

Overview:

EDIM’s strategic aim is to help policy-makers evaluate the impact of their proposed decisions. It builds on two models already developed by the project consortium which simulate the impact of dairy policies on the main market variables for milk and 14 related products.

This project seeks to:

• Improve the existing tools so they better represent the dairy industry in an enlarged EU
• Develop complementary tools that can perform more in-depth analyses on specific issues, such as the impact of decoupling
• Use these tools to simulate dairy policy scenarios

Contribution to policy development:

• EDIM will help policy-makers to evaluate the impact of their proposed dairy policies
• Useful policy scenarios will be developed specifically with the EU’s Directorate-General for Agriculture

Project deliverables

• Build databases for the EU-15 and the ten new Member States – October 2004 and
  February 2005
• Building an improved model, extending it to all 25 Member States – April 2005
• Deliver complementary tools – April 2005
• Use of simulation system to evaluate some scenarios – End September 2005

Dissemination

• Papers to scientific journals – Throughout project
• A special session at the 2005 European Association of Agricultural Economists’ Conference – August 2005
• Project website – Throughout project
• Final report on simulations of policy scenarios – End September 2005

Technical information

Project acronym: EDIM
Project’s official full title: European Dairy Industry Model
Research priority: 8.1 “Sustainable management of Europe’s natural resources”
Specific webpage: Not yet available
Proposal/contract no: 502111
Start date: 1 April 2004
Kick off meeting: 17 May 2004
Completion date: 30 September2005
European Commission scientific officer: Daniele Tissot (daniele.tissot@ec.europa.eu)

Coordinator:
Name: Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique
Abbreviated Name: INRA-31 0685
Address: ESR INRA – BP27 – 31326 Castanet Tolosan
Country: France
Tel: +33 5 61 28 53 52
Fax: +33 5 61 28 53 72
Website:  www.toulouse.inra.fr/esr

Partners

Name: Wageningen University
Abbreviated Name: WU
Country: The Netherlands

Name: Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Abbreviated Name: UNICATT
Country: Italy

Name: Bundesforschungsanstalt fuer Landwirtschaft
Abbreviated Name: FAL
Country: Germany

Name: VITAMIB SARL
Abbreviated Name: VITAMIB
Country: France