Examples of conversion and weighting factors for the calculation of the EFA area

Concerning greening measures, farmers are still trying to familiarise themselves with the three agricultural practices that it entails: diversification of crops, maintaining permanent grassland, and allocating 5% of land to Ecological Focus Areas (EFA). These are the three new rules of the latest reform that farmers must satisfy in order to be fully eligible for direct payments (greening counts for 30% of direct payments allocation). As provided by Article 46 of Regulation (EU) No 1307/2013, by 31 March 2017 the Commission has to present an evaluation report to the Parliament and the Council on the implementation of EFA. Some Member States have proposed to harmonise the hectare thresholds for crop diversification and EFA at 15 hectares (they currently stand at 10 and 15 hectares respectively). All the landscape feature dimensions for ditches, field margins, buffer strips, forest edges without production, ponds, land lying fallow, and terraces, should be harmonised, as well as the weighting factor for nitrogen-fixing crops, catch crops and short rotation coppice.