The use of FADN methodology to support the evaluation of business development plans in the RDP Sicily 2014-2020

Article 19(4) of Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 provides that business start-up aid for young farmers, non-agricultural activities in rural areas and the development of small farms shall be conditional on the submission of a business plan.Therefore, this tool, also known as Farm Development Plan (FDP), is mandatory to verify the economic improvement of an investment under sub-measures 6.1 “Business start up aid for young farmers”, 4.1 “Investments in agricultural holdings” and operation 6.4.a “Investments in creation and development of non-agricultural activities” so that rural development resources can be directed towards those project ideas which are consistent with the objectives and purposes of the rural development strategy and, thanks to the support, have the highest probability of success. The article presents the lesson learned from the Sicilian experience of designing a web-based tool for FDP submission, namely “PSAWeb Sicilia”. This device allowed the Managing Authority (MA) of RDP Sicily 2014-2020 to make available an FDP scheme to users in compliance with EU obligations, consistent with the objectives and purposes of the Programme, as well as with the implementing and procedural provisions of regional calls. The computerised management of the FDPs ensured better coordination between the offices responsible for verifying and evaluating the proposals, while processing and analysis of aggregated data from over 8,400 business plans provided an in-depth knowledge of the investment needs in Sicilian agriculture and a better capacity to forecast the RDP potential response as well as some aspects of specific interest to the regional agricultural system. Thanks to PSAWeb Sicilia, in fact, a large amount of data at farm, sectoral, territorial and type of investment level was collected providing information of inestimable value not available from other data sources. The assessment of access requirements in terms of farms’ economic size, economic-financial viability and profitability was ensured by borrowing principles and procedures from the Italian FADN. The cooperation between the MA and CREA-PB achieved several results. Firstly, the data collected combined with the monitoring data have been made available for the evaluation activity and for the communication to the public of the RDP implementation. This information will also be very useful both for better targeting interventions in 2021-22 and for reprogramming them in the future cap. Finally, as a positive externality, the use of the application has contributed to increasing accounting knowledge among operators and technicians in the agricultural sector, so that it has become a teaching tool in some university courses.