Availability and use of IACS geospatial data in the EU

Policy Briefing #68 (v1) gives approaches to the quantification of agroforestry and woody landscape features in the EU, based upon open access to Member States’ Geospatial Aid Application (GSAA) and Land Parcel Information System (LPIS) data – with harmonised coding (Lawson, Muraru & Kay 2024) of crops, land uses and environmental designations.  This data will be part of a much-needed move from pixel to parcel representation of agricultural, forestry and environmental information, and should form the basis of the “Farm Sustainability Compass” promised in the DG AGRI Vision for Agriculture and Food. It should also form the core of GHG inventory reporting by Member States and the new “geospatial carbon certification registry” planned for release by 2028 through the Carbon Removals Certification Framework.  Open access to anonymised IACS-GSAA-LPIS information was required of all Member States by June 2024, through the High Value Datasets Regulation of 21/12/22 (2023/138). This stipulated a range of publicly-collected high-value datasets, including GSAA and LPIS,  which should be openly and freely available by  9.6.24, together with well documented APIs  (DG Connect 2024).  Only 2 MS are fully compliant with this regulation, but 13 more are largely compliant. EURAF hopes that compliance procedures will be initiated soon by DG CONNECT and that high-quality  data will be available by the 20th anniversary of entry into law of the INSPIRE Directive on 15th May 2027. This date could also mark the launch of the  “Farm Sustainability Compass” (ibid).