# Supporting the small market gardening sector in France: Comparison of two policy options

Pauline Lécole, Raphaële Préget, Sophie Thoyer

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Pauline Lécole, Raphaële Préget, Sophie Thoyer. Supporting the small market gardening sector in France: Comparison of two policy options. Ecological Economics, 2025, 238, pp.108722. 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2025.108722. hal-05163348

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## ANALYSIS

# Supporting the small market gardening sector in France: Comparison of two policy options

Pauline Lécole<sup>a, *</sup>, Raphaële Préget<sup>b</sup>, Sophie Thoyer<sup>b</sup>

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

### ARTICLE INFO

JEL:

Q18

Keywords:

Common agricultural policy

Small farms

Discrete choice experiments

Coupled support

Lump-sum payment

Market gardening

### ABSTRACT

France's Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan introduces a coupled aid program to support small-scale market gardening farms. This study, using data from a discrete choice experiment and national-level simulations, compares the projected outcomes of this new program—which has strict eligibility requirements—with those of an alternative scheme inspired by the CAP's Small Farmers Scheme (SFS), where farms self-select to receive lump-sum payments. Results indicate that the SFS+ (including environmental and employment conditions) may effectively promote agro-ecological transition in the market gardening sector and could serve as a valuable recommendation for revisions to France's strategic plan and those of other Member States.

## 1. Introduction

The 2023 CAP and the implementation of the “new delivery model”, which gives Member States more subsidiarity in its application, has enabled Member States to innovate and respond in a more targeted way to their particular challenges. The French CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) has sized this opportunity to introduce a new coupled aid for the small market gardening sector (specialist market garden vegetables grown outdoors or under glass).<fnref n="1" /> This new aid is part of the first pillar direct payment budget that can be dedicated as “coupled income support” to sectors, types of productions or types of farming that face difficulties and are important to the Member State for socio-economic or environmental reasons. France’s annual budget for coupled income support is around 1,01 billion euros (mostly for the livestock sector), of which 1 % (i.e. €10 million) is reserved since the 2023 CAP for the small market gardening sector. This aid was introduced in response to recurring demands from farmers in this sector, who argued that the per-hectare direct payments<fnref n="2" /> of the CAP’s first pillar provided inadequate support due to the small

size of their farms.<fnref n="3" /> They also highlighted that they faced higher unit operating costs compared to larger farms. A recent study indicated that market gardening is the production type with the highest share of farms below the monetary poverty threshold: over 26 %, compared to less than 18 % for all farm types combined (Givois and Apers, 2025). To address this, the French Ministry of Agriculture chose to provide targeted additional income support through the setting-up of a new coupled payment (pertaining to pillar 1 of the CAP). While this package offers a substantial payment of approximately €1600 per hectare of market gardening, access is limited to farms with a total cultivated area of less than three hectares. The purpose of this eligibility criterion is to focus aid on the smallest market gardening farms, which often face persistent financial difficulties and, as stated in the French CSP, “are essential to contributing to the supply of fresh vegetables to local markets”. The per-hectare amount is not explicitly justified in the CSP through an economic calculation of needs or costs; rather, it was most likely determined by dividing the allocated budget of €10 million by a rough estimate of the number and size of eligible farms.

<footnote><sup>a</sup> Institut Agro, CEE-M, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, INRAE, Bat 26, 2 place Viala, 34000 Montpellier, France</footnote>

<footnote><sup>b</sup> INRAE, CEE-M, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, Institut Agro, Bat 26, 2 place Viala, 34000 Montpellier, France</footnote>

<footnote>* Corresponding author at: Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Institut Agro, 2 place Viala, 34060 Montpellier, France.</footnote>

<footnote>E-mail addresses: pauline.lecole@supagro.fr (P. Lécole), raphaele.preget@inrae.fr (R. Préget), sophie.thoyer@inrae.fr (S. Thoyer).</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ The classification of farms into farming types in the FADN or in Eurostats statistics indicates the “Horticulture” category. This category then includes several sub-categories, among which we find “specialist market garden vegetables”. This is the sub-category to which we refer in this article.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Direct payments include decoupled and coupled payments.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Paysan Breton (2019), Les maraichers veulent leur part d'aides Pac, https://www.paysan-breton.fr/2019/01/les-maraichers-veulent-leur-part-daides-pac/ (accessed 22 May 2025); Terre-net (2019), Maraicher et “oublié de la Pac”, il réclame une redistribution plus juste, https://www.terre-net.fr/economie-agricole/article/147814/maraicher-et-oublie-de-la-pac-il-reclame-une-redistribution-plus-juste (accessed 22 May 2025)</footnote>
The Ministry could have chosen to help small market gardeners with many different policy instruments. One option could have been to activate the Small Farmers Scheme (SFS), introduced by the 2014 CAP regulation and maintained in the 2023 CAP. The SFS was specifically designed to provide some financial support to very small farms while alleviating the administrative burden associated with CAP payments. They need only compile a very light CAP dossier and are not subject to conditionality or to CAP-related administrative or on-farm controls. Given the flexibility offered by the new CAP, the French Ministry of Agriculture could have adapted the SFS to the needs of small market gardeners in France by raising the ceiling of the lump-sum payment (set in 2014 at €1250 per farm) in order to make it more financially attractive, and by requesting, in return for this higher payment, that farmers comply with certain easy-to-monitor eligibility conditions regarding employment and sustainable farming practices. The advantage of such an "augmented SFS" (henceforth SFS+) is that, just like with the SFS, the farmer chooses whether or not to participate, which contributes to reducing the feeling of inequity associated with an eligibility threshold. In addition, it can help target support to farms that are willing to contribute to employment and the environment.

Taking 2020 as the year of reference, the objective of this paper is to compare these two policy options: a coupled payment for small market gardening farms (with 3 ha of land or less) versus a specific small farmer scheme open to market gardeners only and imposing an environmental certification and a minimum employment condition on those who choose to join. We simulate and compare the outcomes of the two scenarios, for an equivalent budget, on the number and characteristics of beneficiaries and the amount of aid received. For the coupled payment scenario, we use the 2020 Agricultural Census and the 2019 FADN to simulate, based on national statistics and eligibility criteria, the number and characteristics of beneficiaries. The SFS+ is a hypothetical scenario and farmers decide to join on a voluntary basis. We therefore need to simulate what the likely enrolment of small farmers in such a scheme would be. We use the results of a stated preference survey conducted in 2020 as a discrete choice experiment by Lécole et al. (2022). It was designed to evaluate the willingness of French small farms to join the SFS and different SFS+ scenarios. Analyzing the answers of 223 market gardeners to this survey (which gathered more than 600 responses), we re-estimate the model that explains the preferences of this category of farmers for the SFS and for an SFS+ that would include environmental and employment conditions. We also measure the additional cultivated area under environmental certification, and the net increase in permanent job creation induced by the two conditions of the SFS+.

Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have analyzed alternative policy instruments for supporting farmers’ income, focusing on their direct impacts on production decisions and indirect effects on markets and international trade (Hertel, 1989; Dewbre and Short, 2002). There is an abundant literature examining the relative advantages and drawbacks of coupled and decoupled subsidies, especially in the context of the CAP. Indeed, the guaranteed price system which was the main income-support instrument of the CAP until 1992 functioned as a coupled support mechanism, linking payments to specific production types and quantity produced. The 1992 CAP reform introduced semi-decoupled aids, transitioning to fully decoupled payments after the 2003 reform. These decoupled payments are paid per hectare, irrespective of production type or quantity. This shift aimed to address budgetary constraints of the CAP and pressures from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), aligning with economic theories that demonstrate the superiority of decoupled payments in terms of income support efficiency and lower market distortions. However, subsequent theoretical and empirical studies have shown that, considering real market conditions, farmers’ risk attitudes, financial

constraints, and land market dynamics, decoupled aids are not entirely neutral regarding production choices, productivity and farm enlargement strategies. Authors have shown that decoupled payments exhibit wealth effects (Esposti, 2017) and are often capitalized into related markets, such as land markets (Hennessy, 1998; Bhaskar and Beghin, 2009; Just, 2011; Baldoni and Ciaiai, 2023). Empirical works have also investigated how such payments could change labour allocation (Hennessy and Rehman, 2008) and the relative intensity of labour and land use. Decoupled payments reduce the marginal return to farm labour leading both to a substitution effect (farmers are inclined to increase off-farm labour) and to a wealth effect (since farmers receive an increase in non-labour income, they can choose to enjoy more leisure). Many ex-post analysis of the net causal impacts of the 2003 CAP reform on productivity (Kazukauskas et al., 2014; Mennig and Sauer, 2023) show small positive effects without significant change on environmental performance. In the same context, Guyomard et al. (2004) compared four income-support programs—output subsidies, land subsidies, and decoupled per-hectare payments with and without mandatory production—evaluating their effectiveness in achieving three policy objectives: income support, maintaining a large number of farmers, and reducing negative externalities associated with input use. Their partial equilibrium model exercise indicated that, for an equivalent budget, decoupled payments are the most efficient instrument for income support. However, their relative effectiveness concerning the other objectives depends significantly on the relative elasticities of supply and demand in output and land markets, leading to no definitive, across-the-board conclusions.

In our study, the two types of payments examined operate under different rules than those commonly analyzed in the literature mentioned above. Our SFS+ is not strictly akin to a decoupled payment: it is in fact more decoupled than area-based payments, as it is a lump-sum payment paid per farm, independently of production volumes and farm size, albeit subject to eligibility conditions. And it is partially coupled since it is open to market gardeners only. The coupled aid to small market gardeners is labeled as such because it falls into the "coupled income support" category financed by the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund. It is indeed crop-specific but it is decoupled from produced quantities. Yet, it is strongly linked to farm size since farmers cultivating more than 3 ha (whatever the type of production) are not eligible.

These specificities make these two payments quite different from what has been already studied in the literature on the relative merits of coupled and decoupled payments that was sparked by the 2003 CAP reform. Yet this literature helps to identify what are the issues at stake when switching from one type of support to another one: beyond the static immediate impacts linked to eligibility, conditions and enrolment described in Section 4, we highlight in the conclusion section what could be the longer-run dynamics and the unintended effects.

The agricultural economics literature on these two types of aid is relatively scarce, and to our knowledge, no scientific publication analyzes the proposal of a lump-sum farm-level payment as a substitute for area-based payments for small-scale farms.

The interest of this work is threefold: 1) the lack of support to the small scale market gardening sector is debated in France but also in the rest of the European Union, especially since it echoes societal concerns on local healthy food (Ministry of agriculture and food sovereignty, 2023b, p. 130); 2) The French case offers a nice case study to compare two alternative policy options for supporting a small-scale production sector and 3) our results shed light on the alternative policy options that could be used for the support of the market gardening sector in the design phase of the Member States' CSP for the post-2027 CAP.

Section 2 presents the context of the market gardening sector in
France and describes the two policy scenarios in more detail. Our methodology for the comparison of alternative policy options is described in Section 3. Results are given in Section 4. Section 5 summarizes the finding and draws some conclusions.

## 2. The small market gardening sector in France and policy scenarios

### 2.1. Context

A large number of environmental and social NGOs at the national and EU levels (e.g., WWF, BirdLife, Oxfam) supported by farm unions defending the peasant agriculture model (embodied by the *Confédération Paysanne* in France and Via Campesina in Europe), advocate that the CAP redirects its financial support to family-based, small-scale, agroecological farms. They claim that the small market gardening sector deserves to be better supported financially in Europe by arguing that it supplies fresh, healthy, locally-produced vegetables and maintains agricultural activities and employment in peri-urban areas. In addition, they also indicate that small farms are essential for consolidating social ties and improving environmental awareness, as many sell directly to consumers. Although these claims are not all supported by scientific evidence (Enthoven and Van den Broeck, 2021), the French Ministry of Agriculture has responded to the demands of the small-scale market gardening sector by introducing in the CAP strategic plan a new coupled support in favour of small-scale market gardening farms. Indeed, the market gardening sector complains that the per-hectare allocation system of decoupled payments prevents its farmers from receiving significant support, given the small size of farm holdings in this sector. It argues that it is one of the farming sectors with the lowest ratio of CAP first-pillar support per unit of work (Forget et al., 2020). The small market gardening sector also claims that it contributes to many of the sustainability objectives defended by the Ministry of Agriculture and therefore deserves to be better supported financially: it supplies fresh, healthy, locally-produced vegetables and maintains agricultural activities and employment in peri-urban areas.

The 2020 French Agricultural census lists 8427 market gardeners, 96 % of whom were born after 1950 and are therefore considered as “non-retired” in the rest of our study; 35 % of them are organic market gardeners. Fig. 1 shows a simple estimate of the direct payments to which they are entitled, based on their cultivated area. Fig. 1 illustrates that 86 % of the non-retired market gardening population (6976 farmers) receive less than €5000 of decoupled payments per year, which are considered direct payments given the absence of coupled payments. The average decoupled payment to market gardeners is €2800 per farm, much lower than the average €22,900 decoupled payment made to

French farms (Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, 2023a, FADN). This confirms the validity of the market gardening sector's assertions that it is not treated fairly by the CAP's current rules for the allocation of aid.

In practice, farmers with a theoretical decoupled payment below €200/farm do not receive any direct payments in France. Indeed, to limit the administrative burden, Member States are allowed to set a minimum payment threshold below which payment is not made. It is also worth noting that in practice 37 % of market gardeners receive no support from the CAP, compared to just 6 % across all agricultural sectors (Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, 2023a, p. 68).

### 2.2. Introduction of a new coupled payment in the French CAP Strategic Plan

To respond to the requests of the small market gardening sector, the French Ministry of Agriculture has introduced into the CAP Strategic Plan (validated in late 2022 by the European Commission) a new<fnref n="4" /> coupled payment for areas planted with vegetables and berries. This payment was activated as of January 2023. Only farms with an agricultural area of less than 3 ha are eligible, and they must grow at least 0.5 ha of vegetables or berries (excluding some crops that are already supported by other coupled aid, such as industrial tomatoes or early potatoes). The coupled payment is set at €1588 per hectare of eligible vegetable crops for a planned budget of €10 million. The eligibility criterion on the maximum size makes it clear that the Ministry's intentions are to exclude the sector of large scale vegetable production. Indeed the Ministry of Agriculture specifies in the CSP that the coupled support is intended to benefit mostly market gardening farmers who have diversified seasonal production mostly based on agroecological practices that are “globally favorable to biodiversity and water quality” (French Ministry of Agriculture, 2023b, p. 436). The CSP also mentions that such farmers have a high intensity of labour on their farm and contribute to the consolidation of rural employment.

Yet eligibility criteria that completely exclude farms above a given size are unusual. Indeed, this creates a sharp threshold effect at 3 ha. To illustrate this in Fig. 2, we simulate the total amount of coupled (€1588/ ha of eligible crops) and decoupled (around €199/ha of utilized agricultural area UAA)<fnref n="5" /> support that French market gardeners would receive, under the assumption that they dedicate 100 % of their farm- land to vegetables and berries.

A market gardener with a UAA of 3 ha entirely planted with vegetables and/or berries will receive a total amount of direct payments estimated at €5361 = (1588 + 199) × 3. Market gardeners who are excluded from the coupled payment because their farm size exceeds 3 ha will need to cultivate 27 ha to get the same amount through decoupled payments only.

### 2.3. A new version of the Small Farmers Scheme, an alternative option to support the small market gardening sector?

In a press release dated June 2021,<fnref n="6" /> the French farm union *Confédération paysanne* was critical of the first CSP draft aired by the Ministry, especially of the eligibility criteria. The union advocated instead

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. Proportion of non-retired market gardeners, according to the estimated first-pillar direct payment amounts they are entitled to.</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="4">⁴ France had already dedicated 13 % of its first-pillar envelope/budget to coupled payments (plus 2 % for protein crops) as authorized by the 2014 CAP, in order to support vulnerable sectors.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ The calculations of direct payments were made using FADN, taking into account the basic payment, the greening payment, and the redistributive payment (average of subsidies below and above 52 ha) without considering the additional Young Farmers payment.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Confédération Paysanne (2021), PAC: l'Etat renonce à la production de fruits et légumes en France, https://www.confederationpaysanne.fr/rp_article.php?id=11567 (accessed 22 May 2025)</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2. Coupled and decoupled payments to which market gardeners are eligible, and number of farms according to farm size.</figcaption></figure>

for the activation of the CAP Small Farmers Scheme (SFS), with the recommendation to target it to the market gardening sector. As presented in the introduction, the SFS was introduced by the 2014 CAP reform as part of efforts to simplify the CAP and as a way to facilitate small farmers' access to CAP payments. It is a self-selection process as farmers freely choose to join the SFS or to remain in the regular CAP payment system. Farmers opting for the SFS receive a fixed lump-sum payment, regardless of their size, production or location. This payment replaces all other first-pillar direct payments and is not subject to the conditionality. The SFS allocates financial support to farmers (capped at €1250/farm/year) and waives the administrative drudgery and controls associated with CAP declaration and cross compliance conditions. France did not activate the SFS, but 14 other Member States including Germany, Italy, Portugal and Romania (European Commission, 2017) chose to open it in the period 2014–2023.<fnref n="7" /> Various European Commission evaluation documents (European Commission, 2018; European Commission, 2019; European Commission, 2021) provide some analysis of the SFS’s impact on production, inequalities and the environment. Their main conclusions are that the exemption of SFS beneficiaries from conditionality and greening requirements represents a sizeable missed opportunity.

Following Lécole et al. (2022), we investigate a more sophisticated version of the SFS that could have been designed by the French CSP (and could still be included in its subsequent versions during the 2023–2027 programming period). This “SFS+” would be open to market gardeners only. It would offer a higher per farm payment and, in return, would impose on all market gardeners wishing to join the scheme two easy-to-monitor conditions, one on environmental practices and the other on on-farm employment. We believe that these two conditions correspond to the objectives set out by the French Ministry in the CSP for the small

market gardening sector.

* The “environmental condition” states that SFS+ farms must have an environmental certification officially recognized by the French Ministry of Agriculture.<fnref n="8" /> These include organic farming and Haute Valeur Environnementale (HVE)<fnref n="9" /> farming certifications as well as other regional certifications covering different types of production systems.<fnref n="10" />

* The “permanent employment condition” requires that the farmer employ a permanent worker for at least one-third of a full-time position (i.e., four months per year concentrated during the peak activity in summer for example).

Farmers must comply with the conditions at the end of the enrolment year, otherwise they only get a €1000 payment. These two conditions are fairly easy for public authorities to monitor (no on-site inspection required) and simple for farmers to declare (environmental certification and employment on the farm are already known by the administration). They are also very relevant to the market gardening sector. Market gardeners also complain that they are often overworked and cannot afford to hire permanent work to help (Dumont and Baret, 2017). The

<footnote n="7">⁷ Nine Member States have opted to automatically register farmers receiving less than €1250 in the SFS (though farmers who prefer not to participate can request to opt out of the scheme). Consequently, the percentage of farmers engaged in the SFS compared to all farmers in the Member States is relatively high, averaging 20 %. For Member States that didn’t opt for automatic farmer involvement, the percentage is lower, averaging 7 %.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ The list of eligible environmental certifications was presented to the DCE respondents.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ High Environmental Value (HVE) is a French agricultural certification that guarantees compliance with practices that promote biodiversity, the responsible management of inputs (pesticides, fertilizers), and the sustainable use of water resources. HVE-certified farms must meet performance thresholds based on environmental indicators (see Appendix E). However, the HVE certification promotes environmentally-friendly practices but is much less demanding than organic certification.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ Such as AREA – Environmental certification for farms in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, focusing on reducing pollution from livestock effluents, fertilizers, and phytosanitary products, as well as managing water use, AgriConfiance – Certification for winegrowers promoting reduced inputs, biodiversity, soil and water conservation, and lower antibiotic use, CRC – Controlled sustainable farming for cereals, aiming to reduce pesticides, use adapted seed varieties, and limit insecticides during storage.</footnote>
SFS+ could help, for example, to pay for a part-time permanent worker who could potentially be hired by several market gardeners in the same area. In the cases of very small, newly-installed farmers, the “permanent labour condition” can become a constraint as they may not want to take the risk of hiring a permanent worker but the work by Morel and Léger (2016) on microfarms using permaculture techniques shows that they are very rapidly in need of labour force.

## 3. Methodology

The methodological challenges to comparing the two policy options are twofold.

(i) We can only conduct a valid comparison if the public budget spent on farm support is the same for the two policy options (Guyomard et al., 2004). We choose to take the budget spent under the coupled payment policy scenario as the reference budget. Then, we vary the lump-sum SFS+ payment in order to reach the same reference budget. For the coupled payment scenario, we use the 2020 Agricultural Census and the 2019 FADN to identify, based on national statistics and eligibility criteria, the number and characteristics of beneficiaries.

(ii) The SFS+ is a hypothetical scenario and farmers decide to join on a voluntary basis. We therefore need to simulate what the likely enrolment of small farmers in such a scheme would be. For this purpose, we use the results of a discrete choice experiment conducted in 2020 by Lécole et al. (2022). It was designed to evaluate the willingness of French small farms to join the European SFS and to explore different scenarios of a SFS with higher per farm payments and various conditions on environmental practices and employment. Analyzing the answers of 223 market gardeners to this survey (which gathered more than 600 responses), we re-estimate the model that explains the preferences of this category of farmers for the SFS and for the SFS+ that we wish to simulate (see Appendix A).

### 3.1. Comparison framework: Same budget spent on a same target population

To be valid, the comparison for a given budget must encompass the same target population. We choose to define our target population as all non-retired market gardeners receiving less than €5000 of first-pillar direct payments. Indeed, our target population must include all market gardeners who would potentially be interested to enrol in the SFS+ scenario since it is a voluntary scheme. Of course, the SFS+ program is particularly attractive to those who currently receive less than the SFS+ lump sum payment, but it may also attract some market gardeners who are prepared to receive less in exchange for a simplified system. Although somewhat arbitrary, the € 5000 threshold seems high enough to ensure that no market gardener receiving more than € 5000 euros in first-pillar aid would wish to enrol in the SFS+ program.

From the 2020 French Agricultural Census, we identify our target population: it consists of 6976 market gardeners for a total cumulated UAA of 29,735 ha. As illustrated in Fig. 1, 86 % of market gardeners receive less than €5000 in direct payments and are thus included in our target population.

As summarized in Fig. 3, we need to compute the payment that each market gardener of our target population would receive in the two alternative scenarios: Scenario 1 corresponding to the implementation of the coupled support for small market gardeners (which is the CAP 2023 in France); and Scenario 2, corresponding to our hypothetical SFS+.

We first compute Budget 1 needed to pay all farmers of our target population under the coupled payment scenario (Scenario 1). We distinguish three categories of market gardeners: i) farmers with a

vegetable/berry area of at least 0.5 ha and a UAA of less than 3 ha; they are eligible for the market gardening coupled payment and receive both coupled and decoupled payments on a per ha basis; ii) farmers whose UAA is greater than 3 ha; and iii) farmers with a UAA of less than 3 ha but with a vegetable/berry area of less than 0.5 ha. The last two categories are not eligible for the coupled payment for market gardening and receive only the decoupled payment. The total spending for these three categories of farmers defines Budget 1.

The challenge then, is to define, in the SFS+ scenario (Scenario 2), the lump sum payment per farm that yields a spending Budget 2 as close as possible to Budget 1. In the SFS+ scenario, two categories of farmers are distinguished: i) farmers who choose to join the SFS+ and get the lump sum payment instead of their decoupled payment; and ii) farmers who choose not to join the SFS+ and prefer to keep their regular decoupled payment or stay in their non-payment situation. The method used to perform the calculation is detailed in the next section.

### 3.2. Determining the SFS+'s lump-sum payment for a given budget

In Lécole et al. (2022) a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) survey is used to estimate ex-ante the values that French farmers place on specific characteristics of different SFS+, called 'programs'. A DCE is a well-established stated-preference method used to assess individuals' preferences in hypothetical situations (Louvière et al., 2000; Lancaster, 1966). Different SFS+ programs are considered within that DCE, and in particular, the SFS+ program, which imposes the environmental and permanent employment conditions described above.

The microeconomic foundation of DCE is the random utility theory, which assumes that the indirect utility ($U_{nit}$) a farmer $n$ obtains from choosing an alternative $i$ in choice card $t$ consists of an observed (deterministic) component ($V_{nit}$) and an unobserved (random) component ($\epsilon_{nit}$), such that: $U_{nit} = V_{nit} + \epsilon_{nit}$. Farmers are assumed to choose the alternative that provides them with the highest expected utility.

In this paper, based on the responses to this DCE survey, we estimate a mixed logit model considering only the 223 respondents who are market gardeners and who receive less than €5000 of first-pillar direct payments. The mixed logit model allows us to take into account preference heterogeneity across the respondents and to estimate individual-specific coefficients. The utility function is thus expressed as: $U_{nit} = \beta_n X_{nit} + \epsilon_{nit}$, where $X_{nit}$ is the vector of attribute levels (including the environmental and employment conditions), and $\beta_n$ represents their associated preference parameters for each farmer $n$. The error term $\epsilon_{nit}$ follows an extreme value type 1 (Gumbel) distribution. Choices made by respondents are used to estimate the preference parameters.

We then use these new estimated individual coefficients to simulate the enrolment decision of each market gardener in the DCE sample for different lump-sum payment levels. More concretely, to simulate the enrolment decision of a respondent in the SFS+ program for a given lump-sum payment level, we compare the deterministic part of his status quo's utility $V_n(SQ)$ to the deterministic part of the utility he would gain from enrolling into the considered SFS+ program $V_n(SFS +)$. These utilities are calculated by using the estimated individual preference parameters of each respondent. We assume the respondent enrolls in the SFS+ program only if the utility obtained with the SFS+ program is higher than the utility of his status quo (i.e. $V_n(SFS +) > V_n(SQ)$). This allows us to calculate the enrolment rate at the scale of our sample. More details on the model specification used to estimate preference parameters are available in Appendix B.

Finally, we scale-up our simulations, based on the DCE sample of 223 respondents, to our target population. It would be too coarse and inaccurate to assume that the average rate of adoption estimated from our DCE sample can be applied directly to the target population. First, because our sample of 223 respondents is not representative of our target population. Organic farmers are significantly over-represented, as are farms selling through short supply chains and farmers under 40 years old (see Table C1 in appendix C). Second, as shown in Lécole et al.
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. Comparison of the budgets needed in the two scenarios for our target population.</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>**Table 1**
Number (and %) of market gardeners from the DCE sample (Lécole et al., 2022).</caption><thead><tr><th>DCE sample</th><th>Number of market gardeners</th><th>Percentage of market gardeners</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>No condition fulfilled</td><td>9</td><td>4 %</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>173</td><td>78 %</td></tr><tr><td>Permanent employment condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>2</td><td>1 %</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental and permanent conditions fulfilled</td><td>39</td><td>17 %</td></tr><tr><td>TOTAL</td><td>223</td><td>100 %</td></tr></tbody></table>

(2022), the choice to join the SFS+ program depends on the first-pillar direct payments received by the farmer in the status quo situation and on whether or not he already complies with the SFS+ conditions. This leads us to consider four categories of farmers: 1) those who fulfill none of the two conditions; 2) those who fulfill the environmental condition only; 3) those who fulfill the permanent employment condition only; and 4) those who fulfill both conditions. In particular, note that by distinguishing between farmers who comply with the environmental condition (such as organic farmers) and those who do not, we mitigate the potential bias arising from the over-representation of organic farmers in our sample. Table 1 shows the distribution of respondents according to their compliance with the conditions tested in the SFS+.

We have verified that considering more categories according to the amount of payment received in the status quo situation does not really change the results.<fnref n="11" />

Once we have estimated what proportion of market gardeners would choose the SFS+ in each category, we construct the same table as Table 1 but at the scale of metropolitan France for our target population, using data from the 2020 Agricultural Census (Table 2). Comparing both tables, we see that there is an over-representation in the DCE sample of farmers already fulfilling the environmental condition only and of those fulfilling both conditions simultaneously, and an underrepresentation of those fulfilling the permanent employment condition only and of those not fulfilling any conditions. This confirms the need to consider the four different categories of farmers when extending our results to compare the different scenarios at the level of the target population. That being said, this decomposition does not rule out the possibility that our estimates of engagement rates in SFS+ remain biased, particularly due to

<table><caption>**Table 2**
Number, percentage and UAA of non retired market gardeners receiving less than €5000 of first-pillar direct payments (calculated from 2020 census).</caption><thead><tr><th>2020 Agricultural Census</th><th>Number of market gardeners</th><th>Percentage of market gardeners</th><th>Averages UAA (ha)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>No condition fulfilled</td><td>3046</td><td>44 %</td><td>3.5 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>1964</td><td>28 %</td><td>3.7 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Permanent employment condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>1001</td><td>14 %</td><td>5.9 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental and permanent employment conditions fulfilled</td><td>965</td><td>14 %</td><td>5.9 ha</td></tr><tr><td>TOTAL</td><td>6976</td><td>100 %</td><td>4.2 ha</td></tr></tbody></table>

the significant over-representation of organic farmers in our sample.

## 4. Results

This section provides simulations, at the French scale, of the eligibility rate and associated public spending of the coupled payment scenario of our target population and of the SFS+ scenario with both an environmental and a permanent employment condition. In the last subsection, we analyze the incentive effect and potential impacts of the €2500 SFS+ on permanent employment and on environmental certification.

### 4.1. The coupled payment scenario

Among the nearly 7000 market gardeners of our target population, we calculate from the 2020 census data that 45 % would be eligible for the market gardening coupled payment,<fnref n="12" /> 40 % would not be because their UAA is greater than 3 ha, and 15 % would not be because their UAA is less than 0.5 ha (1002 farmers).

The 1002 market gardeners with a UAA < 0.5 ha do not receive any direct payments, since they are not eligible for the coupled payment, and their entitlements to decoupled payment is below €200/farm. Therefore, the amount of first-pillar direct payments of these 1002 farmers is estimated at €0.

The 2806 market gardeners who are not eligible for the coupled payment (because their UAA > 3 ha), only receive decoupled CAP payments. This represents a budget of €4.9 million and a total area of 24,684 ha.

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Since many small market gardeners do not receive any first pillar direct payment, we distinguish between two subsamples based on the amount received under the status quo situation: the 109 respondents who receive nothing (0€) and the 114 who receive a positive amount (>0€). Table C2 in Appendix C shows that the enrolment rates in the SFS+ program, when simulated separately for these two subsamples are very similar to those obtained for the full sample of 223 market gardeners.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² As the census does not specify the areas cultivated for all eligible crops, we make the simplifying assumption that all market gardeners whose UAA is between 0.5 and 3 ha are eligible, although in reality, farmers must cultivate at least 0.5 ha of eligible crops (mostly vegetables and/or berries). This probably leads to a small overestimation of the number of beneficiaries.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 4. Comparison of coupled payment scenario and SFS+ simulation.</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>**Table 3**
Number (and %) of market gardeners who would enrol in the SFS+ or be eligible for the coupled payment.</caption><thead><tr><th>Number of market gardeners</th><th>Target population</th><th>Coupled payment (eligible rate)</th><th>SFS+ €2500 (enrolment rate)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>No condition fulfilled</td><td>3046</td><td>1480 (49 %)</td><td>1352 (44 %)</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>1964</td><td>958 (49 %)</td><td>1215 (62 %)</td></tr><tr><td>Permanent employment condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>1001</td><td>370 (37 %)</td><td>1001 (100 %)</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental and permanent employment conditions fulfilled</td><td>965</td><td>360 (37 %)</td><td>965 (100 %)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>TOTAL</strong></td><td><strong>6976</strong></td><td><strong>3168 (45 %)</strong></td><td><strong>4533 (65 %)</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

The 3168 eligible market gardeners have a cumulated UAA of 4835 ha (on average 1.53 ha/farm). The total budget dedicated to those farmers is €8.6 million, €0.9 million of which are decoupled payments, and a maximum €7.7 million in coupled payments<fnref n="13" /> (assuming that the whole UAA is planted with vegetables/ berries). The average total first-pillar direct payments received by eligible farms is €2727.

In the coupled payment scenario, Budget 1 for the target population is therefore €13.5 million in CAP direct payments, 57 % of which is dedicated to the coupled payment (Fig. 4).

## 4.2. Simulation of the SFS+ scenario

Results of the mixed logit for market gardeners are presented in Appendix B. They are qualitatively the same as when using the responses of the 608 farmers. Following the procedure detailed in Section 3, and using Table 3, we compute the enrolment rates for the SFS+ for each category of farmers from the sample of respondents, for different lump-sum payment levels. We apply this enrolment rate to the number of market gardeners of the target population for each category to obtain the number of farmers who would enrol in the SFS+ (last column of Table 3) at the French scale and the corresponding budget. In order to compare the two scenarios, we also estimate the total amount of direct payments received by farmers in our target population who would not join the SFS+.

The lump sum payment amount is used as a calibration parameter to match the budget needed to finance the coupled payment (as foreseen by the French CSP), and the budget that would be necessary for the implementation of the SFS+.

The SFS+ payment resulting in a Budget 2 almost equal to Budget 1 is €2500/farm/year. Under this scenario, 4533 market gardeners would join the SFS+ (see last column of Table 3). This represents more than 65 % of the target population for an SFS+ estimated budget of €11.3 million (see Fig. 4). The estimated decoupled payment budget of the 2443 market gardeners who would not join the SFS+ is €2.6 million. The estimated total of Budget 2 is €13.9 million (see Fig. 4).

We also calculate, for informational purposes, the enrolment rate in the €1250 SFS as it is designed in the 2014 CAP. We estimate that 2790 French market gardeners would register in the SFS if it were activated in 2020. This represents 40 % of our target population. The estimated budget of the SFS is therefore €3.5 million. For those who would choose not to join the SFS, we estimate a decoupled payment budget of €6.5 million. The total budget for the SFS scenario is therefore €10 million.

## 4.3. Incentive effect and potential impacts of the €2500 SFS+

To conclude our comparison, we evaluate the incentive effect of the program by estimating the number of market gardeners who would choose to join the SFS+ despite the fact that they do not meet the conditions in their business-as-usual situation and would therefore have to get an environmental certification, officially hire a permanent worker, or both. From Table 3, among the 4533 market gardeners who would enrol in the €2500 SFS+, only 21 % already meet the environmental and employment conditions. The others would have to comply with at least one of the conditions and 30 % would have to meet both the environmental and the employment conditions, thus ensuring environmental and employment contributions.

The additional number of permanent job creations concerns 2567 market gardeners who wish to join the SFS+ but do not meet the employment condition yet (1352 fulfill no conditions, and 1215 fulfill only the environmental condition). We assume that these farmers currently have no permanent employees on their farms, thus necessitating the employment of one-third of a full-time position to meet the SFS+ employment condition. Consequently, we estimate an additional effect of +856 full-time equivalent positions, which represents an increase of roughly 22 % of the total permanent employment of our target population (including family employment).

The implementation of the €2500 SFS+ would lead 2353 market gardeners to get environmental certification. This would correspond to an additional 10,640 ha under environmental certification or 36 % of the total agricultural area of our target population.

The additional gains in terms of area under environmental certification is obvious in the CAP 2014–2020 context, where direct payments were only subject to the conditionality (described in the CAP’s Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC)), which is different from the environmental condition of SFS+. These additional effects are

<footnote n="13">¹³ Note that this figure is lower than the announced budget of €10 million to finance the coupled aid for the small market gardening sector.</footnote>
calculated based on the assumption that coupled payments have no direct impact on farmers' decisions to hire a worker or switch to more environmental practices.

## 5. Discussion and conclusion

Many considerations come into play when introducing a new policy measure. It is therefore difficult to make a full comparison of the advantages and drawbacks of each policy option. This paper provides an ex-ante evaluation of two policy options to support small market gardening farms. It compares them in terms of support distribution, employment and environment. More precisely, we compare the new coupled aid to the small market gardening sector proposed in the 2023 French CAP Strategic Plan and a hypothetical Small Farmers Scheme with environmental and employment conditions (SFS+) set at €2500 per farm also targeting the market gardening sector. As a benchmark, Section 5.1 provides simulations on enrolment rates of small market gardeners, had France chosen to open the small farmer scheme during the 2014–2022 period.

### 5.1. The simulated impact on the small scale market gardening sector of the implementation of the Small Farmers Scheme (SFS) as designed in the 2014 CAP reform

France has chosen not to activate the CAP SFS, either in the 2014–2022 period, nor for the 2023–2027 period. Yet our simulations show that such a scheme would have attracted 2790 market gardeners (40 % of all market gardeners in our target population) and guaranteed them an annual payment of €1250 per farm. Although this is not a generous amount of support, it is granted without conditions or controls and avoids the threshold pitfalls of the coupled support proposed in the CSP. The SFS would support market gardeners who are not eligible for the coupled payment, either because they are too small or because their UAA is greater than 3 ha. Indeed, it is likely that most market gardeners with a UAA between 3 and 6 ha would opt for the SFS, were it offered in France, since the maximum amount they can currently hope to receive (including the eco-scheme payment) remains slightly lower than €1250.

### 5.2. The relative advantages of the two policy options

Four points can be highlighted with regards to the comparison of the two policy options.

* Eligible farmers under the coupled payment scenario get an average payment per farm of €2727, close to the €2500/farm granted by the SFS+, but of course with a large variance (from around €900 for a 0.5 ha farm to €5400 for a 3 ha farm).

* The lump-sum payment scenarios (SFS and SFS+) are voluntary schemes. This avoids the trap of defining an eligibility threshold on the maximum farm size, which could disappoint many market gardeners who are just above the 3 ha land limit.

* A significant proportion of market gardeners (57 % of our target population) who indicate that they would enrol in SFS+ do not comply with the employment condition yet. This indicates a strong interest among market gardeners to hire more permanent work, despite the relatively low financial incentive. For instance, an annual payment of €2500 would only cover the full costs of 1.5 months of wages at minimum wage levels, which constitutes approximately 38 % of the additional cost associated with hiring a permanent worker for four months (equivalent to one-third of a full-time position). This result underscores the substantial challenge of work overload faced by many small market gardeners (Lécole, 2021) and may indicate that many already get some (undeclared) help from family members and are willing to legalize the situation.

* The implementation of the SFS+ would lead to an additional 10,640 ha going under environmental certification, considering the context

of 2020 as the reference situation. This does not mean that the environmental gains would be great, since it is notorious that some of the environmental certifications, such as the High Nature Value farming label, are not very demanding, but it could be a first (small) step towards more environmental practices.

The previous analysis has focused on direct effects of the two policy options. Although measuring their dynamic effects is beyond the scope of this study, we formulate a few hypotheses on how they can affect vegetable production and the relative intensity of labour and land use in the market gardening sector.

Will the area under market gardening increase? Since the SFS+ is only available to market gardeners, it could theoretically induce small farmers to switch to market gardening (or to increase their area planted with vegetables) to become eligible for this payment. But this effect is expected to be really marginal, considering the low amount paid, except maybe by encouraging young /newly installed farmers to engage into market gardening activities. The impact on newly installed farmers may be stronger with the coupled payment since it provides a guaranteed payment (of a maximum of 4700 €). It may also help to cover fixed costs and thus may allow marginal small market gardeners who would otherwise be forced to shut down to remain in production. It can also contribute to relieving their credit constraints and enable much needed investments.

Will the labour to land ratio in the small market gardening sector change? It is a known fact that the sector is very labour intensive. The 3 ha eligibility condition of the coupled payment might increase this intensity further by preventing farmers from expanding their area beyond this limit. The labour condition of the SFS+ could also affect the labour allocation of the farm operator, enabling him to substitute a permanent worker's time to his own time, freed for leisure or off-farm work.

We cannot measure quantitatively the consequences of the coupled payment on employment and environmental certification although we can hypothesize that a payment of nearly €1600 per hectare (and up to €4700 per farm) will facilitate the hiring of an agricultural worker, or alleviate the financial burden of an environmental certification, but there is no certainty on these outcomes.

It is important to point out the limits of these two scenarios, and to discuss alternatives that were not simulated here but should deserve attention for the revision of the French CSP, and for the post 2027 CAP.

- On the SFS+: we could have simulated different combinations of conditions for the SFS+. We selected environmental certification and the requirement to employ at least one-third of a permanent worker as conditions for the SFS+ due to their strong alignment with the objectives of the French CSP (supporting market gardeners in the agroecological transition<fnref n="14" /> and promoting job creation in rural areas). The Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) survey results indicate that market gardeners are generally receptive to employment conditions. Many currently work long hours and rely on unpaid family assistance, sometimes approaching legal boundaries. Mandating the hiring of a worker often transitions previously undeclared family helpers into formal employment. This condition can also encourage diversification activities, such as engaging in direct sales or collaborating with other farmers to establish local food product shops. Additionally, the obligation to hire a permanent worker serves as a positive signal, prompting both private and public initiatives to assist farmers in recruiting suitable personnel. It acts as a catalyst for shared employment opportunities, including the formation of employer groups and the establishment of collective farms.

Given the small amount paid in our SFS+ and the small number of farmers concerned, the risks of adverse consequences that are often

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Agroecological transition refers to the shift towards more sustainable agricultural systems that prioritize ecological principles, such as biodiversity, soil health, and resource conservation, while enhancing socio-economic resilience and reducing environmental impact.</footnote>
listed when a subsidy is tied to employment remain limited. However, given the tightness of the agricultural labour market, especially when skills in market gardening are required, it cannot be ruled out that the implementation of SFS+ would create an additional demand for agricultural workers that would not be easily met and could lead to wage increases in this sector.

With the implementation of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2023 and France's decision to include environmental certification as one of the three alternative requirements to receive eco-scheme payments, we are reassured about the relevance of the environmental condition in our SFS+. This alignment establishes a form of equivalence between market gardeners who opt to remain within the traditional aid system (decoupled payments, eco-scheme payments, and coupled aid) and those who would choose the lump-sum payment offered by the SFS+. Finally, given the introduction of eco-scheme payments, it is likely that the additional environmental effect of the SFS+ within the current CAP framework would be less pronounced than it was in the 2020 context. A precise assessment would require conducting a new choice experiment that explicitly incorporates the revised context in which farmers' decisions would be made.

- On the coupled payment: the design of the coupled income-support for small market gardeners could be enhanced with marginal efforts. The current eligibility threshold for coupled payment has been criticized as unfair to those whose UAA slightly exceeds 3 ha, rendering them ineligible although their economic and working conditions are no different from their counterpart with less than 3 ha. It also has potential unintended effects by discouraging market gardeners from expanding their holdings even when such expansion would be economically or technically advantageous. In some instances, it might even lead to underreporting of cultivated areas.

To address these issues, an infinity of solutions can be considered. We describe two of them in Appendix D:

* Scenario 3, aligning with the complementary redistributive income support approach, a decoupled payment could be granted for the first 3 ha to all market gardeners, regardless of their total farm size. This method is administratively straightforward. However, it would reduce the funds available for redistribution to smaller farms and might not alleviate the perception of unfair treatment within the small market gardening sector.

* Scenario 4, degressivity and capping: Implementing a degressive payment structure, where coupled aid per hectare gradually decreases beyond certain size thresholds, could mitigate the abrupt cut-off effect. While this approach smooths the payment distribution, it is administratively more complex.

## 5.3. Conclusion: Policy recommendations for the next CAP

Our analysis indicates that a lump-sum aid per farm, coupled with straightforward and easily controllable conditions on the sustainability

of the farm (SFS+), could be an effective option to support small-scale farms in specific production sectors. Many small farmers are interested in this type of support, because it is administratively simpler for them to apply. Our study shows that they are even willing to forgo higher payments in order to benefit from this simpler system of income support allocation that provides them with greater medium-term visibility on the amounts they will receive.

It's worth noting that lump-sum payments already exist within the CAP and the French Strategic Plan and are well accepted: for instance France has chosen in its CSP to allocate the first pillar's complementary income support for young farmers as a lump-sum aid of approximately €4400 per farm, regardless of the farm's size or production type.

The 2023 CAP introduced eco-schemes, thereby strengthening incentives for environmental practices. Additionally, the recent revision of the CAP in May 2024 removed conditionality controls for farms under 10 ha. These developments partially reduce the advantages of the SFS+ as proposed in our 2020 survey. Nevertheless, we recommend continuing to explore the benefits of lump-sum payments for small farms in the future. They contribute to simplifying the CAP and reducing the administrative workload for Member States' payment agencies (European Court of Auditors, 2016). It is indeed a recent recommendation of the European Commission (European Commission, 2025). Moreover, simple conditions, such as environmental certification, would encourage farms under 10 ha to adopt environmentally responsible practices. Finally, an improved SFS system avoids the negative effects of per-hectare subsidies, particularly those related to farm enlargement and land prices. Therefore, we recommend further research into these truly decoupled aids, especially in contexts where there is strong political will to support small-scale agriculture.

## CRediT authorship contribution statement

**Pauline Lécole:** Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Investigation, Conceptualization. **Raphaële Préget:** Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Investigation, Conceptualization. **Sophie Thoyer:** Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Investigation, Conceptualization.

## Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

## Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

## Appendix A. DCE survey

The presentation of the SFS programs to respondents was done step by-step in the DCE survey by Lécole et al. (2022). The first part of the questionnaire gathered information on CAP direct payments received by respondents and on their current situation regarding environmental certification and employment statistics. These questions were essential in order to define properly the status quo situation of each respondent and to introduce the attributes of the SFS programs. The second part of the survey was dedicated to the choice experiment questionnaire, which consisted of eight choice cards presented to respondents (one example is presented in Fig. A1). The last part of the survey included follow-up questions to identify protest answers, as well as questions on the social and economic status of respondents.
<table><caption>Table B1 (continued)</caption><thead><tr><th>Equation</th><th>Variables</th><th>ML_608farmers</th><th>ML_223market gardeners</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td></td><td>(0.227)</td><td>(0.289)</td></tr><tr><td>emplhi</td><td></td><td>2.467***</td><td>2.504***</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>(0.163)</td><td>(0.266)</td></tr><tr><td>enga</td><td></td><td>0.844***</td><td>1.000***</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>(0.129)</td><td>(0.183)</td></tr><tr><td>ASC_preg0</td><td></td><td>3.210***</td><td>2.878***</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>(0.295)</td><td>(0.505)</td></tr><tr><td>ASC_AB</td><td></td><td>2.965***</td><td>2.562***</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>(0.174)</td><td>(0.372)</td></tr><tr><td>Observations</td><td></td><td>19,456</td><td>7136</td></tr><tr><td>Nb of farmers</td><td></td><td>608</td><td>223</td></tr></tbody></table>

Standard errors in parentheses. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05.

ML_608farmers refers to the mixed logit run with 608 farmers, cf. Lécole et al. (2022) table 5 (3) ML_0_AB.

ML_223market gardeners refers to the mixed logit run with the 223 market gardeners receiving less than 5000€. Only bold coefficients are used for simulations.

Table B.1 presents the mean estimated coefficients for our samples - covering all 608 farmers in the second-to-last column as obtained in Lécole et al. (2022) and the 223 market gardeners in the last column. However it is the individual estimated coefficients of each of the 223 market gardeners that are used to determine their enrolment decisions in the SFS+ program.

As in Lécole et al. (2022), we observe a positive sign of the coefficient associated to the environmental attribute (envir). Programs which include the environmental condition are preferred on average to programs with no environmental conditions. This somehow surprising result is essentially due to our particular sample. Indeed, 94 % of respondents are organic farmers and already fulfill the environmental condition. In contrast, a SFS+ with a permanent employment condition decreases the probability of being chosen (negative coefficient associated with emplhi).

To simulate whether respondent *n* enrols in the SFS+ considered in this study, we compare $V_n(SFS +)$ to $V_n(SQ)$ computed as:

$$V_n(SQ) = \beta_{n,kmontant} * \text{valstatuquo}_n + \beta_{n,envir} * \text{cond\_env}_n + \beta_{n,emplhi} * \text{cond\_emplhi}_n$$

$$V_n(SFS +) = \beta_{n,kmontant} * 2.5 + \beta_{n,envir} + \beta_{n,emplhi} + \beta_{n,ASC\_AB}$$

with $\beta_{n,a}$ the estimated individual parameter of respondent *n* corresponding to variable *a*, $\text{valstatuquo}_n$ the amount of first direct payment in k€ received by respondent *n* and $\text{cond\_env}_n$ (resp. $\text{cond\_emplhi}_n$) a dummy variable that equals 1 if respondent *n* fulfils the environmental condition (resp. the employment condition) and 0 otherwise.

## Appendix C. Additional tables

<caption>Table C1</caption>

Comparison of our sample with the French Agricultural Census 2020.

<table><caption>Table C2</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>French Agricultural Census</th><th>Sample</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Number of farms</td><td>6976</td><td>223</td></tr><tr><td>Utilized agricultural area</td><td>4,2 ha</td><td>4,6 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farmers under 40</td><td>30,2 %</td><td>50,7 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farmers over 60</td><td>14,4 %</td><td>4,0 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farmers working full-time</td><td>76,9 %</td><td>81,2 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farms with at least one occasional worker</td><td>43,0 %</td><td>38,6 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farms with at least one permanent worker</td><td>41,5 %</td><td>13,5 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of organic farms</td><td>35,5 %</td><td>94,2 %</td></tr><tr><td>Percentage of farms selling through short supply chains</td><td>74,8 %</td><td>95,1 %</td></tr></tbody></table>

Simulated enrolment rates in SFS+.

<table><thead><tr><th>Simulated enrolment rates in SFS+</th><th>Over 223 market gardeners receiving &lt;5000€</th><th>Over 109 market gardeners receiving 0€</th><th>Over 114 market gardeners receiving &gt;0€</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>No condition fulfilled</td><td>44 %</td><td>43 %</td><td>50 %</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>62 %</td><td>71 %</td><td>65 %</td></tr><tr><td>Permanent employment condition fulfilled (only)</td><td>100 %</td><td>100 %</td><td>100 %</td></tr><tr><td>Environmental and permanent employment conditions fulfilled</td><td>100 %</td><td>100 %</td><td>100 %</td></tr></tbody></table>
## Appendix D. Alternative scenarios

We simulated two additional alternative options (scenarios 3 & 4), for a budget of €10 million and for the whole population of French market gardeners of 2020.

* Scenario 3: a redistributive payment for the first 3 ha of all market gardening farms would lead to a per hectare payment of €590 (see Table D1).

* Scenario 4: a degressivity and capping payment scheme (see Table D2). We chose a cap at 10 ha above which the coupled payment is 0 (75 % of French market gardeners have less than 10 ha of UAA). We chose to establish size thresholds following the quartile distribution of farms: a first threshold for 1 ha or less (25 % of farms), paid at €900/ha), a second one at 3 ha (50 % of farms) with the two additional hectares paid €600/ha, and a third threshold at 10 ha (with hectares between 3 and 10 paid at 200€/ha)

<caption>**Table D1**</caption>

Scenario 3, redistributive payment.

<table><caption>**Table D2**</caption><thead><tr><th>Scenario 3</th><th>Redistributive payment</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Threshold</td><td>3 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Amount</td><td>€590/ha</td></tr><tr><td>Beneficiaries</td><td>All market gardeners</td></tr><tr><td>Market gardeners with less than 3 ha</td><td>4205 farms receiving 590*UAA</td></tr><tr><td>Market gardeners with more than 3 ha</td><td>Total = €3 million<br>3955 farms receiving 590*3</td></tr><tr><td>Budget total</td><td>Total = €7 million<br>€10 million</td></tr></tbody></table>

Scenario 4, degressivity and capping payment.

<table><thead><tr><th>Scenario 4</th><th>Degressivity and capping payment</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Threshold</td><td>1 ha (25 % of French market gardeners have a UAA of less than 1 ha)<br>3 ha (25 % of French market gardeners have a UAA between 1 and 3 ha)<br>10 ha (25 % of French market gardeners have a UAA between 3 and 10 ha)</td></tr><tr><td>Amounts</td><td>0 to 1 ha: €900/ha<br>1 to 3 ha: €900/ha for the first ha and €600/ha for the next two hectares<br>3 to 10 ha: €900/ha for the first ha, €600/ha for the next three hectares and €200/ha for the remaining hectares up to a maximum of 10 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Beneficiaries</td><td>All market gardeners with less than 10 ha</td></tr><tr><td>Budget total</td><td>€9.9 million</td></tr></tbody></table>

Fig. D1 shows the consequences in terms of amounts distributed of the two scenarios (S3 and S4) compared to the existing coupled payment (S1).

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. D1.** Direct payments according to UAA.</figcaption></figure>
# Appendix E. High Environmental Value (HVE) certification

High Environmental Value (HVE) is a French agricultural certification that guarantees compliance with practices that promote biodiversity, the responsible management of inputs (pesticides, fertilizers), and the sustainable use of water resources. HVE-certified farms must meet performance thresholds based on environmental indicators.

Each environmental indicator consists of multiple criteria, each assigned a specific scoring scale. The total score for an indicator is obtained by summing the scores of its various criteria. An indicator is considered validated when the overall score is equal to or greater than 10 points. To achieve HVE certification, a farm must meet the required thresholds for all four environmental indicators.

## Examples of criteria for environmental indicators:

**Biodiversity:** share of arable land dedicated to agroecological infrastructures, diversity of agroecological infrastructures, plot size, share of the main crop as a percentage of the UAA (Utilized Agricultural Area), number of cultivated plant species, number of livestock species, the presence of beehives, the presence of endangered plant varieties, breeds, or species, and soil biological quality.

**Phytosanitary Strategy:** the percentage of untreated areas, the Treatment Frequency Indicator, active monitoring of parcels, use of alternative methods to chemical plant protection products, treatment application conditions to minimize environmental contamination.

**Fertilization Management:** proportion of organic nitrogen applied, use of decision-support tools, percentage of UAA not fertilized, proportion of legumes in the UAA, soil coverage.

**Irrigation:** recording irrigation practices, use of equipment optimizing water application, participation in a collective water management initiative, agronomic practices implemented to conserve water.

## Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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