INTRODUCTION: GREENING THE COUNTRYSIDE? CHANGING FRAMEWORKS OF EU AGRICULTURAL POLICY
| Author | PETER H. FEINDT,PHILIP LOWE,HILKKA VIHINEN |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01835.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2010 |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01835.x
INTRODUCTION: GREENING THE COUNTRYSIDE?
CHANGING FRAMEWORKS OF EU AGRICULTURAL
POLICY
PHILIP LOWE, PETER H. FEINDT AND HILKKA VIHINEN
In response to wide-ranging criticism of agricultural policy, especially within Western industrial-
ized countries, new frameworks of justification are emerging and new hybrid policy fields have
been established to tackle some of the ‘externalities’ of agricultural support. However, institutional
frameworks are proving slower to change, partly because this would require coordinated action
across different levels of governance. Nevertheless, previously marginalized environmental con-
cerns have successfully gained entrance to agricultural policy networks, while the intersection of
trade liberalization and rural diversification have undermined the dominance of the productivist
mindset in government. This gives rise to a plurality of policy actors and actions which defy the
conventional categories of analysis of agricultural policy, ca lling for changing frameworks on the
polity of agriculture too.
CHANGING FRAMEWORKS FOR AGRICULTURAL POLICY
Traditional agricultural policy in Western industrialized countries has increasingly been
subject to public critique and political pressure. It is blamed for causing environmental
destruction in the countryside; for failing to halt the social and economic decline of
many rural areas; for being indifferent to the suffering of farm animals; and for allowing
new sources of risk to jeopardize the food chain. In many countries, a wider range of
activists – including, variously, consumers, tax payers, environmentalists, rural commu-
nity and animal welfare activists – has gained ground in framing public debate, thus
challenging the basic objectives of agricultural policy.
The critique has not been restricted to domestic politics. Similar concerns have been
expressed in international fora. A combination of transnational NGOs, international
agencies, and developing countries’ representatives, have indicted the rich countries’
agricultural policies – through the way they undermine the livelihoods of rural producers
in the Third World – as one of the chief obstacles to fighting global poverty. Because
of the spillover of agriculture policy – its inputs, its budgetary costs, its wastes, its
surpluses – into other realms, previously separate policy and public interest agendas
have had to make connections to agricultural production and trade policy. What was
once a very closed and technical policy field has been opened up to wider scrutiny
(Greer 2005).
Before the 1980s, when public criticism of intensive farming practices began to emerge,
there was a broad consensus around the objectives of agricultural policy. Part of the general
post-war settlement in Western industrialized countries had been the acknowledgement of
agriculture as a key national economic sector and, consequently, a political commitment
to supporting production. The assumption that agriculture provides an indispensable
national good – food security – that is threatened by market failure, especially volatile
markets and ruinous prices in years of good harvest, dominated policy justification.
Philip Lowe is in the Centre for Rural Economy, School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of
Newcastle upon Tyne. Peter H. Feindt is in the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University. Hilkka Vihinen
is in the MTT Economic Research, Helsinki.
Public Administration Vol. 88, No. 2, 2010 (287–295)
©2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.
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