European Agriculture: Policies, Production and Trade

ISBN-13: 9780415085335 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 233 str.

Brian Gardner

Opis

European agricultural policy is too often a tangled web of technicalities wrapped in incomprehensible jargon. Yet it deals with the most basic human requirement - food. This work attempts to explain the complexities of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the 1994 General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the changes that are being forced on agricultural policy in Europe by environmental legislation, biotechnology and political change. Reforms of the CAP were agreed in 1992. Explaining the reform programme in detail, the book goes on to question the effectiveness of the reform and suggests that they will do nothing to diminish the costliness of the CAP or prevent European farm production overstepping the limits imposed by the 1994 GATT agreement. Referring to a wide geographical range of European case material, the author challenges the common assumption that in a world apparently short of food it makes sense to expand high-cost European farm production. It is clear that continued over-production will inevitably lead to new political conflicts with America and other major agricultural exporting nations.

Spis treści

Part 1 European Agriculture: development under the 'common agricultural policy' Chapter I - Why support farmers? Why agriculture is still the most protected industry Chapter II - Development of the CAP. Farmers and European politics Chapter III - How the EU supports agriculture. Market manipulation and the world market. The cost to consumers. The price of supporting farmers - producer gains and consumer losses Chapter IV - The agricultural revolution. Peasants into tycoons in one generation Part 2 Chapter V - Going to the trade wars. Overproduction, surpluses and international politics Chapter VI - The Great Reform. Fitting European agriculture into the world system Chapter VII - Impact of CAP reform and GATT Uruguay Round agreement on agricultural trade Part 3 Chapter VIII - European farming and the environment. A sustainable agriculture? Reconciling food production and environmental acceptability Chapter IX - The 'Biotech revolution'. Producing more from less. Chapter X - European Agriculture in the twenty first century? EU enlargement and the modification of the CAP. The European industry's place in world food supply, new uses for old crops.

O autorze

Brian Gardner