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As part of a series of evaluation of the Common agricultural policy (CAP) against its general objective of sustainable management of natural resources and climate action, the evaluation support study of the impact of the CAP on soil identified the activities impacting soil quality and reviewed the implementation choices at the Member States’ and beneficiaries’ levels on instruments and measures with an impact on soil quality and productivity. It investigated the effectiveness, efficiency, relevance and coherence and EU added value of the CAP instruments and measures addressing sustainable soil management and soil quality. The analysis covered the period from 1 January 2014 onwards, in all EU Member States. It considered all instruments and measures with a potential direct or indirect effect on soil sustainable management. A focus was made on the CAP instruments and measures explicitly designed to address sustainable soil management, i.e. the horizontal requirement of minimum soil cover and management practices (GAECs 4 and 5), the requirement to maintain soil organic carbon in soil (GAEC 6), the obligation of crop diversification under greening, and the RD support for investments in forests (M08), agri-environment and climate measures (AECM or M10.1) and support for organic farming (M11).
