The present medium term prospects for agricultural markets and income in the EU feature some considerable improvements, including an extended time horizon (beyond the usual 7 years) and product coverage (including biofuels, detailed oilseed complex and whole milk powder) as well as an attempt to identify and quantify the main areas of uncertainty: a separate part has been added to the publication dealing with scenarios on various uncertainties.
The modelling approach has been improved by increasing the number of market and modelling experts involved and by relying on agro-economic models that represent the state of the art. The validation procedure was extended to an external review of the baseline and uncertainty scenarios in a workshop on 5-6 October 2010 in Brussels, gathering high-level policy makers, modelling and market experts from the EU, the United States and international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Bank.
These changes are to be seen as an attempt to improve the accuracy, usefulness and relevance of baseline market prospects that are more important this year as the projections and analyses presented in this publication will feed into the ongoing Common Agriculture Policy post-2013 impact assessment process, as a reference (baseline) for future policy options.
For the first time, the publication involved joint efforts by the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development and the Joint Research Centre – Institute for Perspective Technological Studies (IPTS). While the authorship and responsibility for the contents of the publication rest with the Agriculture Directorate-General, acknowledgement is due for the staff at the IPTS working on the modelling background and baseline projections, as well as the uncertainty scenarios in Part II of the publication.