CAP Evaluation News 11 - December 2025

The December 2025 issue of CAP Evaluation News focuses on assessing generational renewal in agriculture and presents the highlights of a comprehensive EU-wide study.

The report 'Assessment of generational renewal strategies across EU Member States' identifies key challenges for young farmers, including land access, finance, gender disparities, profitability concerns and rural quality of life issues, underscoring the complexity of demographic renewal in agriculture.  The study shows that CAP instruments, such as setting-up aid and income support, are central but insufficient alone; national policies complement them by addressing land access, advisory services and fiscal incentives, with some countries implementing gender-targeted programmes and integrated policy frameworks.

At the Member States’ level, examples of good practices include Austria’s mediation portal for farm succession, Ireland’s higher grants for women, and internship schemes in Estonia and Luxembourg. An evaluation of Malta’s start-up aid under the Rural Development Programme revealed barriers, including scarce and costly land, with recommendations leading to increased funding, policy reforms and new regulations to protect agricultural land, supporting generational renewal efforts.

Moreover, this edition of CAP Evaluation News presents a new methodology to assess the potential impacts of CAP Strategic Plans on six soil health indicators across 13 Member States, highlighting potential improvements, such as increased soil organic carbon, especially through eco-schemes and coupled income supports. The approach offers a replicable tool for policy evaluation and soil monitoring. The study has been published on the CAP Network database.

The newsroom section highlights the results of the thematic working group exploring CAP’s role in fostering digital solutions to modernise agriculture and rural areas. The thematic report presents a three-tier classification of digital interventions and methods to assess their impact on sustainability and productivity.

Finally, readers can find information about the open geodatabase, developed by the Horizon project LAMASUS, which integrates land-use data to support evidence-based CAP assessments by linking farming intensity with biodiversity and climate impacts, aiding policymaking for sustainable land management across Europe.