Agricultural policy is the direction of the policy, which concerns itself with the agriculture.

It can be subdivided in agricultural market policy, agrarian social politics and agrarian structural policy.

Participants

Participants are the according to professional status organizations, the state, public bodies and other groups of interests.

Goals

The goals of the agricultural policy are historical and internationally regarded very various.

In the European union eight goals were specified:

• Quality of the agricultural products
• Productivity increase
• appropriate living standard for the persons active in the agriculture
• Stabilization of the markets
• Supply security
• Safety device of the jobs (within the agrarian range)
• appropriate consumer prices
• Reduction of the surplus production of agricultural products (expenditure decrease, at present-agrarianspent over 40% of the total budget of the European Union)

In recent time in addition also goals of nature and (health) consumer protection are discussed.

In the world-economical framework the agricultural policy is endeavored, which national and/or European Union width rural economy before the international competition to protect (agrarian protectionism).

In the developing countries the agricultural policy should be directed first toward the supply of the native population with food. Actually become generally accepted partly different interests (e.g. cultivation of export products).

Instruments

Note: Older versions of this article contained for this an extensive keyword list, see discussion: Agricultural policy. Some these references are to be still inserted and described here.

The common agricultural policy (GAP) of the European union went through several phases:

A initial high price strategy to the income safety device for the farmers (rising prices with nearly unlimited acceptance warranty) led to high

Into the 1980er years measures were therefore decided for Produktionsregulierung: Quotations for milk, regulations for the delimitation of grain production, surface quiet putting programs. European Union advancement programs (subsidies) should make the export of surplus possible, led however to substantial costs and instabilities on the world market.

With the reforms GAP in the year 1992 direct income aids were expanded and the prices the lower level outside of the European Union were approximated.

Conflicts with the large your USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and also at agrarian exports interested developing countries were the subject of many international negotiations (HOLE 1986, OECD 1987, Uruguay round 1986-1993, World Trade Organization agrarian round 2000). New challenges for the European Union-internal competition represent the of you width run gene, particularly since the agricultural effective area increases by 30% and even 50%igen increase registers the number of persons employed in this sector.

The present agrarian reform plans the dismantling of subsidies and a regrouping: the payments should not be coupled to products any more, but than surface premium per hectare are paid. Support is to give it also for environmentalcareful managing, landscape and nature protection.

Important instruments of the European agricultural policy

Trade within the European Union (intervention prices): The European Union annually determines a minimum price/intervention prices for certain agrarian goods. If the market price falls under the minimum price/intervention prices, the European Union buys these products from the producers. One calls this support buyings. On the one hand the producer's prices are stabilized and taken by these support buyings on the other hand surplus from the market. This prevents a further sags the market price. The purchased products are central stored and sold, depending upon market tendency, later again. This price and acceptance warranty promote however the overproduction. By the GAP reforms of 1992 and 2003 as well as the agenda 2000 the intervention prices were drastically lowered and replaced by income aids.

Import (absorption): The production costs for nearly all agricultural products, which are produced in the European community, lie the far over level of the world prices. Therefore these are not In order to prevent a flooding of the European market with cheap imported goods from other countries, the European Union introduced the threshold price. A supplier from a non--European Union country must exhaust the difference between the world price and the threshold price as a kind tariff to the European Union. This regulation is called absorption. This makes the entrance to the European market to non--European Union countries more difficult. Vorallem of developing countries are affected by the regulation.

Export: In order on the international market, the producers let themselves can be competitive the difference between the world price and the threshold price of the European Union be disbursed. This means that a farmer can sell, its products to the low world price and nevertheless to profit makes.

Resuming one left

Results

The results of the European Union agricultural policy are There are numerous structure problems:

• The supply security of the industrialized countries is very high.
• The costs of the agricultural policy of the rich countries are disputed.
• The income of the farmers partly increased.
• The quantity and the paragraph of expensively produced surplus are problematic.
• The ecological subsequent problems and the world nourishing situation are unresolved challenges.

See also

Wikipedia category agricultural policy - agenda 2000 - agrarian history - agrarian reform - agrarian structure - rural economy - farmer movement - a farmer party - land reform - Federal Ministry for nutrition, agriculture and consumer protection - consolidation of farmland - Industrielle agriculture - Landwirtschaftskammer - you find further articles about land and forestry in the Wikipedia portal of the same name.

Related links

• Official homepage for the common agricultural policy of the European Union
• GAP Dossar with Europe digital
• W. Grosskopf/E. Thiele: Script for lecture "bases of the agricultural policy" (pdf, 806 KB)

Literature

• Ulrich intelligent one, forty years agricultural policy in the Federal Republic of Germany, 2 Bde., Hamburg 1989
• Ulrich intelligent one, - agricultural policy between reform and mad cow disease, settler publishing house, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88680-736-3

Articles in category "Agricultural policy"

We found here 28 articles.