Land Use Policy 48 (2015) 515–524 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Multi-stage linear programming model for optimizing cropping plan decisions under the new Common Agricultural Policy Ángel Galán-Martín a , Carlos Pozo a , Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez a,b,∗ , Assumpció Antón Vallejo a,c , Laureano Jiménez Esteller a a Departament d’Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Av.Països Catalans 26,43007 Tarragona Spain b School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, University of Manchester, Mill, Sackville Street, Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom c Institut de Recerca I Tecnología Agroalimentàries (IRTA), Ctra Cabrils, km 2, 08348 Cabrils Barcelona, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 17 February 2015 Received in revised form 23 April 2015 Accepted 24 June 2015 Keywords: Cropping plan Decision support tool Common Agricultural Policy Greening rules a b s t r a c t The new European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy will cover the period from 2015 to 2020. Signif- icant novelties in the payment scheme have been introduced which may potentially encourage farmers to implement changes at the farm level by meeting certain environmental requirements in return for support payments. The mandatory requirements, commonly known as ‘greening rules’, consist of crop diversification, maintenance of permanent grassland and establishment of an ecological focus area. This paper presents a decision-support tool based on a multi-stage linear programming model that identifies optimal cropping plan decisions under the new Common Agricultural Policy. The capabilities of our tool are illustrated through its application to the Spanish agricultural regions. Our method identifies the optimal cropping plan (i.e., crops to be grown and their acreage each year during the reform horizon) that maximizes the farmer’s net return in each region. Furthermore, the model can also be used to cal- culate the minimum subsidy value that would make the implementation of greening rules economically appealing, thereby promoting the widespread adoption of more sustainable agricultural practises. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Union (EU) that aims to improve the agricultural productivity ensuring both a fair standard of living of the EU farmers and reasonable food prices without compromising the availability of supplies for consumers. The CAP has always been updated to respond to the challenges of its time.Recently, a new reform enti- tled “the CAP towards 2020: meeting the food, natural resources and territorial challenges of the future” (European Commission, 2011) has been released. The new EU’s CAP, which will be active from 2015 to 2020, intro- duces a novel payment scheme that will potentially induce changes at the individual farm level. The main objective of this new payment scheme is to redistribute the subsidies both between and within EU Member States and farmers in an equity manner so as to move toward a more sustainable agricultural production. All EU Member ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 977 558 618; fax: +34 977 559 621. E-mail addresses: angel.galan@urv.cat (Á. Galán-Martín), carlos.pozo@urv.cat (C. Pozo), gonzalo.guillen@urv.cat (G. Guillén-Gosálbez), assumpcio.anton@irta.cat (A. Antón Vallejo), laureano.jimenez@urv.cat (L. Jiménez Esteller). States are therefore expected to implement in the short term the new payment scheme based on a uniform payment per hectare by adopting a national or regional approach (based on administrative or agronomic criteria) (European Parliament and European Council, 2013). The previous single payment scheme is therefore replaced in this reform by a new basic payment scheme. Broadly similar to the single payment, the basic payment is a direct payment per hectare to active farmers based on their entitlements, which correspond to the eligible hectares. In addition to the basic payment scheme, the CAP reform intro- duces a “Payment for agricultural practices which are beneficial for the climate and the environment”. This is commonly known as “greening payment” and represents an additional direct aid per hectare rewarding agricultural sustainable practices. The Green- ing payment may potentially encourage farmers to meet certain environmental requirements in return for governmental support payments. This greening aid rewards farmers complying three basic EU measures (or equivalent practices). These are: (1) crop diversi- fication, (2) maintenance of existing permanent grassland and (3) establishment of an ecological focus area on arable land. Several EU farms will fulfill these greening measures with- out having to implement major changes to their current cropping http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.06.022 0264-8377/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.