Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-06T07:45:34.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Policy prospects for the hills and uplands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2010

D. R. Harvey
D. R. Harvey
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, The University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 7RU
Get access

Abstract

The arguments presented in this paper strongly support the stated intention of the European Commission that farm product prices must be set more competitively with the world market. Indeed, they go further. The only long-term sustainable agricultural policy for the European Community is to let farm products compete unsupported on a free-trade world market (the ultimate objective of the GATT negotiations). This does not deny either justification or need for some form of compensation to the present industry for the loss of support. However, the argument does clearly require that such compensation should be ‘neutral’ — that it should not distort or alter production and allocation decisions from those which would be taken in the absence of such compensation. The only genuinely neutral compensation would be single lump sum capital transfer through a government bond issue. However, failing this, definitely limited annual support payments independent of current production decisions and relating to past production quantities less than those which would be produced under uncompensated free-trade would be ‘quasi neutral’, and might as a result be acceptable as non-distorting under GATT. In this sense, the price reduction proposals currently being discussed are a definite step in the right direction, especially for cereals.

Nevertheless, agriculture faces a continued period of difficult adjustment, especially difficult in the hill and upland areas. As far as conventional agriculture is concerned, there is little prospect of these areas being able to compete directly in the final consumer markets at world price competitive levels. Their comparative advantage will lie with the production of breeding and store animals, to be finished on grass or grain in more productive locations. Fewer people will be able to earn a full-time living from agriculture in these areas and other things being equal, hill and upland farms seem likely to become even more extensive ranching operations than is the case at present. However, other things are not equal. It seems likely that society will continue to value the non-productive elements of hill and upland agriculture, which in many cases are seen as adding to the amenity and landscape qualities of these regions. Since the demand for these features will grow, ways will be found to supplement farming incomes in these areas (especially) in order to conserve the landscape, wildlife and amenity characteristics.

Type
Research Article
Information
BSAP Occasional Publication , Volume 18: Livestock Production and Land Use in Hills and Uplands , January 1994 , pp. 7 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © British Society of Animal Production 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adger, N., Brown, K., Shiel, R. and Whitby, M. C. 1991. Dynamics of land use change and the carbon balance. ESCR Countryside Change Initiative working paper 15. Countryside Change Unit, Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar
Allanson, P. 1991. The MacSharry plan: modulation in the cereals sector. ESRC Countryside Change Initiative working paper 27. Countryside Change Unit, Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar
Burrell, A. ed. 1989. Milk quotas in the EC. Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, Oxford.Google Scholar
European Commission. 1991a. The development and future of the Common Agricultural Policy. COM(91) 258 final, 22nd July, Brussels.Google Scholar
European Commission. 1991b. The development and future of the Common Agricultural Policy, reflections. Paper of the Commission COM(91) 100 final, 1st February, Brussels.Google Scholar
European Commission. 1992. Agricultural situation in the Community: annual report. Brussels.Google Scholar
Gorter, H. de and Harvey, D. R. 1990. Agricultural policies and the GATT: reconciling protections, support and distortion. International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, working paper 90–9. Cornell University, December.Google Scholar
Gourlay, S. 1989. What do we mean by supply management? AMC Review, no. 7, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar
Hanley, N. ed. 1991. Farming and the countryside: an economic analysis of external costs and benefits, pp. 275–321. CAB International.Google Scholar
Harris, S., Swinbank, A. and Wilkinson, G. 1983. The food and farm policies of the European Community. Wiley.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. R. 1985. Milk quotas: freedom or serfdom? CAS Study 1. Centre for Agricultural Strategy and Knight, Frank and Rutley, Reading University.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. R. 1989. Alternatives to present price policies for the CAP. European Review of Agricultural Economics 16: 83–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D. R. 1990. The economics of the farmland market. The agricultural land market (ed. Dawson, P. J.), Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar
Harvey, D. R. and Hall, J. 1989. The GATT and agriculture. DP1/89, Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar
Hill, B., 1990. Evidence to the European Communities Committee. House of Lords.Google Scholar
Hubbard, L. J. 1986. The co-responsibility levy — a misnomer? Food Policy 11: 197–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirschke, D. 1991. Perspectives for the grain economy in Eastern Europe and implications for the world market. International conference on mechanisms to improve agricultural trade performance under the GATT, Kiel. Technical University of Berlin.Google Scholar
Mclnerney, J. P. 1986. Agricultural policy at the crossroads. In Countryside planning yearbook, volume 7 (ed. Gilg, A. W.), pp. 44–75. Geo Books, London.Google Scholar
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. 1950–1988. Annual reviews of agriculture. Her Majesty's Stationer) Office, London.Google Scholar
Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development. 1987. National policies and agricultural trade. OECD, Paris.Google Scholar
Parikh, K. S., Fischer, G., Frohberg, K. and Gulbrandson, O. 1986. Towards free trade in agriculture, food and agriculture programme. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Geneva.Google Scholar
Petit, M., Benedictis, M. de, Britton, D., Groot, M. de, Henrichsmeyer, W. and Lechi, F. 1987. Agricultural policy formation in the Community: the birth of milk quotas and CAP reform, Elsevier.Google Scholar
Roningen, V. O. and Dixit, P. M. 1989. Economic implications of agricultural policy reform in industrial market economies, Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Staff Report AGES 89–36.Google Scholar
Tangermann, S. 1991. LUFPIG Working Paper on Implications for the CAP of Developments in Eastern Europe; background paper for A Future for Europe's farmers and the Countryside (by Marsh, , Green, , Kearney, , Mahe, , Tangermann, and Tarditti, ) commissioned by the Land use and Food Policy Inter-Group, European Parliament. The Changing Role of the CAP: The Future of Fanning in Europe. Belhaven, London.Google Scholar
Tracy, M. 1989. Government and agriculture in western Europe, 1880–1988. 3rd edition. Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Traili, B. 1988. The rural environment: what role for Europe? In Land use and the European environment (ed. Whitby, M. C. and J., Ollerenshaw), Chapter 6. Belhaven, London.Google Scholar
Tyres, R. and Anderson, K. 1988. Liberalising OECD agricultural policies in the Uruguay round: effects on trade and welfare. journal of Agricultural Economics 39: 197–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willis, K. and Whitby, M. C. 1992. Evaluation of rural employment projects and policies: a review of British experience, ESRC Countryside Change Initiative working paper 33, Countryside Change Unit, Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar