Environmental Economics and Agricultural Policy

Abstract

Growing awareness of environmental costs associated with many systems of agricultural production has been paralleled by increased breadth and sophistication in environmental economics. In North America and Western Europe, in particular, this has led to steps to incorporate measures to control environmental externalities into policies for the support and regulation of agriculture; a measure of ‘greening’ has taken place in agricultural policy. In many less-developed countries (LDCs) environmental issues relating to land use are even more pressing than in the industrial nations, but, as a generalisation, the central focus of concern is at a different end of the range of problems. For whereas in the industrial countries of the temperate zones, the problems of large-scale erosion and destruction of the land base are generally less pressing,¹ these are urgent issues in some LDCs. On the other hand, in industrial countries there is more concern about the external costs of agriculture associated with pollution of water systems, insecticide residues, and with the degradation of the ‘wild’ environment as land is managed ever more intensively for agriculture and forestry. In addition, there is serious pollution of agriculture from the by-products of industry and urban living, particularly by ‘acid rain’.