Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Agrar- und Ernährungspolitik

Policy Brief von Peter H. Feindt, Pascal Grohmann und Elisabeth Stumvoll aus dem ENFASYS-Projekt veröffentlicht: Beyond the status quo? Using policy design principles to assess the legislative proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy post-2027. Link: https://www.enfasysproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/ENFASYS_Policy-Brief_CAP_post-2027_assessment_final.pdf

Citation:

Feindt, Peter H.; Grohmann, Pascal; & Stumvoll, Elisabeth (2026). ENFASYS | Policy Brief: Beyond the status quo? Using policy design principles to assess the legislative proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy post-2027, available at https://www.enfasysproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/ENFASYS_Policy-Brief_CAP_post-2027_assessment_final.pdf.

Jonas von Pfister, Nicolai Goritz, Giorgio Varanini, Adrien Ludot, Julian Nal, Maria Proestou und Alexandra Gottinger untersuchen, wie der Kontext umweltpolitischer Implementation mit den in der empirischen Forschung identifizierten Determinanten für Erfolg und Misserfolg der Implementation zusammenhängt.
Hierfür werteten die Autor:innen systematisch 88 empirische Studien zur Implementation von Umweltpolitik aus Ländern weltweit aus. Sie verglichen, wie häufig unterschiedliche hemmende und fördernde Faktoren in verschiedenen Kontexten identifiziert wurden – beispielsweise in Abhängigkeit von der Art des Politikinstruments oder den Zielgruppen einer politischen Maßnahme.
Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass einige Implementationsdeterminanten in vielen unterschiedlichen Kontexten auftreten. Die den implementierenden Akteuren zur Verfügung stehenden Ressourcen, politische Aufmerksamkeit, die Kohärenz des Politikinstruments und die Einstellungen der Zielgruppen gehören zu den am häufigsten identifizierten Faktoren. Gleichzeitig spielt der Kontext eine Rolle: Bestimmte Determinanten treten in einigen Kontexten deutlich häufiger auf als in anderen. Besonders deutliche Unterschiede zeigen sich zwischen ökonomischen und regulativen Politikinstrumenten.
Die Ergebnisse tragen dazu bei, die Implementationsforschung über das reine Zählen von Determinanten hinauszuführen und besser zu verstehen, welche Determinanten unter unterschiedlichen Kontextbedingungen wahrscheinlich auftreten.
 
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Jonas von Pfister, Nicolai Goritz, Giorgio Varanini, Adrien Ludot, Julian Nal, Maria Proestou, and Alexandra Gottinger examine how the context of environmental policy implementation relates to the determinants of implementation success and failure identified in empirical research.
To investigate this, the authors systematically reviewed 88 empirical studies of environmental policy implementation from countries around the world. They compared how frequently different barriers and enabling conditions were identified across settings—for example, depending on the type of policy instrument or the groups targeted by a policy.
The results show that some implementation determinants appear across many different settings. Resources available to implementers, political attention, coherent policy design, and the attitudes of target groups are among the factors most frequently identified. But context also makes a difference: particular factors appear much more frequently in some settings than in others, with especially clear differences between economic and regulatory policy instruments.
The findings help move implementation research beyond counting determinants and towards a better understanding of which determinants are likely to arise under different contextual conditions.

Zitation:

von Pfister, J., N. Goritz, G. Varanini, et al. 2026. “Does Context Really Matter for Environmental Policy Implementation? A Systematic Comparison of Implementation Determinants.” Environmental Policy and Governance 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.70134.

Wir haben das Konzept des Policy Layering genutzt, um zu untersuchen, wie die neue Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming Regulation (CRCF) mit zwei ohnehin schon dichten Politikfeldern zusammenspielt – der EU-Agrar- und der EU-Klimapolitik. Dafür haben wir uns den Stand der Carbon-Farming-Politik und die jeweiligen Anrechnungssysteme in acht EU-Mitgliedstaaten angeschaut, um zu diskutieren, wie sich die CRCF auf die Anreize (für Landwirt:innen und Käufer:innen von CRCF-Zertifikaten) und auf die Umweltintegrität auswirken wird. Wir kommen zu dem Schluss, dass die neue Politikebene aktuell noch kritische Schwachstellen aufweist, die die Wirksamkeit des CRCF infrage stellen.

We used the concept of policy layering to investigate how the new EU Carbon Removal and Carbon Farming Regulation (CRCF) will interact with two already dense policy fields, the EU agricultural and climate policy. We explored the status of carbon farming policy and respective accounting systems in eight EU Member States to discuss how the CRCF will play out in terms of incentives for action (for farmers and buyers of CRCF certificates) and environmental integrity. We argue that, at present, the new policy layer has critical shortcomings that put the effectiveness of the CRCF in question.

Zitation:

Hönle SE, Heidecke C, Bamière L. et al. Policy layering in EU carbon farming governance: insights from eight EU Member States. Environ Sci Eur 38, 147 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-026-01475-9

On 1 July 2026, Beatrice Walthall successfully defended her PhD thesis “Transformative Food System Governance: Aligning Principles, Tools, and Processes for Systemic Change in the Berlin-Brandenburg Region” at the Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Congratulations!

At the closing conference of the ENFASYS project on 16 June 2026 in Brussels, a policy brief on design principles to support farmers in the transition to more sustainable farming systems was published.

Farming systems in Europe are often locked into unsustainable practices.

This is not because farmers lack ambition, but because of institutional, financial and regulatory factors that make change difficult. Agricultural policies have evolved alongside these structures, tending to stabilise them rather than overcome the lock-ins.

Based on transdisciplinary and participatory research conducted in the ENFASYS project, we have derived ten design principles for the development and implementation of sustainability-oriented agricultural policy. These principles provide guidelines for the design of policies and offer a framework for evaluating them.

Link:

https://www.enfasysproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ENFASYS_Policy-Brief_Policy-Design-Principles-1.pdf

Citation:

Feindt, Peter H.; Grohmann, Pascal; & Stumvoll, Elisabeth (2026). ENFASYS | Policy Brief: Overcoming lock-ins: Design principles for public policies that support farmers towards more sustainable farming systems. Online available:
https://www.enfasysproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ENFASYS_Policy-Brief_Policy-Design-Principles-1.pdf

Am  10.6.2026 war Peter H. Feindt als Studiogast in der Sendung „Agenda“ des Deutschlandfunk. Thema war: „Landwirtschaft unter Druck – was sind Lebensmittel wert?“.

Die Moderation hatte Brigitte Baetz, weitere Studiogäste waren Dr. Franziska Kersten, MdB (SPD) und der Landwirt Karten Ellenberg.

Die Sendung ist unter folgendem Link in der Deutschlandfunk-Mediathek verfügbar:

https://share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothek-audio-teilen.html?audio_id=dira_C37B9D4264CF11F1741AB883034C2FA0

Peter H. Feindt wurde erneut in den Wissenschaftlichen Beirat für Agrarpolitik, Ernährung und gesundheitlichen Verbraucherschutz (WBAE) beim Bundesministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Heimat berufen.

Link: https://www.bmleh.de/DE/ministerium/organisation/beiraete/agr-organisation.html

A new article by Alexandra Gottinger and Sonja zu Jeddeloh has been published in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning. It examines the European bioeconomy transition through a critical interpretive synthesis of 108 publications. The study analyzes how the literature addresses global environmental, social, and economic impacts associated with European bioeconomy, with particular attention to cross-border effects of bioeconomy policies.

The findings show that environmental impacts receive the most attention, while social and economic dimensions—such as inequality and land ownership—have only recently gained prominence. Rising biomass demand is commonly identified as a key driver of impacts beyond Europe, although causal mechanisms are often not clearly specified. The literature further reflects ongoing debates about how to interpret these effects, ranging from unintended consequences to inherent features of the bioeconomy transition.

The study concludes that greater conceptual clarity and more systematic analysis of causal pathways are needed to better understand the broader implications of the European bioeconomy.

Citation:
Gottinger, A., & zu Jeddeloh, S. (2026). Seeing beyond Europe’s nose: a critical interpretive synthesis of negative impacts of the European bioeconomy transition. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2026.2650675

A new article co-authored by Nicolai Goritz, Maria Proestou, and Peter H. Feindt at the Agricultural and Food Policy Group has been published in Environmental Management. The study conducts a systematic content analysis of 78 national bioeconomy policy documents from 50 countries published between 2005 and 2020, investigating the extent to which governments recognize and address resilience challenges in their bioeconomy strategies.

The findings show that while two-thirds of documents mention at least one resilience challenge, the average text share devoted to these issues remains limited at 3.3%. Where challenges are articulated, they are predominantly framed in economic terms, with environmental, social, and political stresses receiving comparatively little attention. Nearly two-thirds of challenge-related text proposed no concrete policy instrument to enhance resilience. Agriculture and bioenergy emerged as the most salient sectors associated with resilience concerns, reflecting a strong influence of the bioresource vision of the bioeconomy.

The study concludes that resilience thinking remains unevenly integrated into bioeconomy policymaking globally, and calls for stronger anticipatory capacities, cross-sector stakeholder dialogue, and more explicit consideration of environmental and societal risks in strategic bioeconomy governance.

Citation:
Goritz, N., Proestou, M. & Feindt, P.H. (2026). Resilience Challenges in Bioeconomy Policies: A Global Comparative Analysis. Environmental Management, 76, 145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02432-1

Hier der Link:

https://www.zdf.de/video/magazine/heute-journal-104/heute-journal-vom-6-april-2026-100 

Hier der Link:

https://www.zdf.de/video/magazine/heute-19-uhr-102/heute-19-uhr-vom-06-april-2026-100

A new article co-authored by Maria Proestou, Nicolai Goritz, and Peter H. Feindt at the Agricultural and Food Policy Group has been published in Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy.

The study develops a framework that identifies 13 analytical criteria of neoliberal states relevant for understanding the extent to which a state is neoliberal concerning bioeconomy matters. The authors apply these criteria to the case of the German bioeconomy and find mixed evidence of neoliberalism. The study contributes to deepening our understanding of the nature of the state in bioeconomy matters, which is essential to achieving the bioeconomy transformation.

Citation:
Proestou, M., Goritz, N., & Feindt, P. H. (2026). Assessing the neoliberal state in the bioeconomy: evidence from Germany. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2026.2640761

On Tuesday, March 24, Dr. Harry Hoffmann presented initial findings from the RI-ProT project at the BUA Grand Challenges Conference.

Under the title “Alternative Food Proteins in Germany: An Integrated System and Policy Analysis”, the presentation introduced preliminary results from the project’s internal policy lab. Dr. Hoffmann highlighted:

1. insights into the German protein innovation system, analyzed using causal loop diagrams;
2. an overview of the national actor landscape, based on seven expert interviews and one focus group discussion; and
3. findings on the German policy environment, developed by project team member Patricia Jankowski.

The presentation sparked lively discussions on how systemic analysis can inform future innovation and policy strategies for sustainable protein alternatives in Germany. It also established a valuable connection to the work of the Fraunhofer Center for Responsible Research and Innovation which will enrich the future research foci of the project. 

Im Rahmen der Tagung "GAP, ELER & Umwelt 2026" der Deutschen Vernetzungsstelle Ländliche Räume (dvs) im Umweltforum Berlin hat Dr. Pascal Grohmann am 17.3.2026 einen Vortrag zu den Legislativvorschlägen der Europäischen Kommission für die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik (GAP) 2028-2034 gehalten. Auf der zweitägigen Tagung mit über 120 Teilnehmenden boten Fachvorträge und praxisnahe Workshops Raum für den Austausch zwischen Akteuren aus Verwaltung, Beratung, Landwirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Naturschutz, um die geplanten Änderungen und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Agrarumweltförderung zu diskutieren.

Informationen zum Programm und der Dokumentation der Tagung:

https://www.dvs-gap-netzwerk.de/service/unsere-veranstaltungen/bevorstehende-veranstaltungen/gap-eler-umwelt-2026/

Diskussion des RI-ProT-Projektes und des Innovationsradars im Rahmen des Future Thinking Impact Fields des Bosch Alumni Networks.

Als ehemaliger Stipendiat der Robert Bosch Stiftung (Postdoc Academy for Transformational Leadership) hat Dr. Harry Hoffmann sich erfolgreich dafür beworben, das RI-ProT Projekt und besonders das Kernelement des Innovationsradars im Rahmen eines Präsenz-Workshops des „Future Thinking Impact Fields“ zu präsentieren und mit den anwesenden ExpertInnen zu diskutieren. Das von Dagmara Weckowska, Cornelia Rauh, Luise Lallinger und Rosalyn Old konzipierte und realisierte Radar-tool hat laut den Teilnehmenden großes Potential, wobei auch die Herausforderungen der technischen Umsetzung im Zentrum der Diskussion standen. 

Artner-Nehls, A., Feindt, P. H., & Uthes, S. (2026). The evolution of discourses on livestock farming in Germany: a text mining analysis of parliamentary debates (1949–2021). Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 1–21. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2026.2631540 

This study investigates the evolution of political discourses on livestock farming in Germany from the post-war period to 2021, using a corpus-assisted discourse analysis combining structural topic modeling and lexicometric analysis of parliamentary speeches. The topic model revealed four themes: structural change, animal welfare, environmental degradation, and consumer safety. Semantic analysis revealed changing concepts and priorities, from livestock farming as an exclusively economic activity, to criticism of declining family farming with growing attention to animal welfare. The analysis reveals that while the discourse on livestock farming has diversified to include environmental, welfare and consumer concerns, new topics were often adopted through recombination with established discourses.

The new article “Pathways to strong and weak resilience orientation in bioeconomy policies: A global configurational analysis of policy design space conditions” has just been published in Environmental Challenges.

Goritz, N., Proestou, M., & Feindt, P. H. (2026). Pathways to strong and weak resilience orientation in bioeconomy policies: A global configurational analysis of policy design space conditions. Environmental Challenges, 22, 101425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2026.101425

The paper analyzes 78 bioeconomy strategies from 50 countries to explain why some exhibit strong resilience orientations while others remain weak. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identify distinct combinations of governance, economic capacity, land-use patterns, and resource dependence that shape resilience in bioeconomy policymaking. We show that wealth and low corruption are key conditions for strong resilience orientation, whereas low income, oil dependence, and certain land-use structures are often linked to weak resilience. Overall, the findings highlight that resilience-oriented bioeconomy policy depends on specific policy design spaces and combinations of enabling conditions rather than isolated measures.