Agriculture And East West European Integration

This title was first published in 2000: This volume analyzes key issues of the process of integrating Central and Eastern European countries with the European Union related to agriculture. The issues include the comparative advantage of CEEC agriculture and its development under various accession policy scenarios; the likely policy developments in both the CEECs and the EU, based on economic, social and political economy considerations; the expected economic impacts and adjustment costs for the agro-food sector under various policy outcomes; the most important constraints for integration including policy convergence issues and internal constraints; and how integration will potentially affect trade and labour flows in the Union. The country combines detailed country-specific and region-wide empirical and theoretical analysis.

The Common Agricultural Policy was the most important policy for the longest duration of the European Economic Community's existence. Apart from subsidizing and modernizing European agriculture and securing supplies for its consumers, this policy was meant to be the beacon of European integration. However, it also became the most controversial policy of the EU - symbolized by subsidized overproduction, bureaucracy, and burgeoning farmers' protests. This volume provides the first archive-based assessment of its history in the age of the Cold War and beyond. Its chapters deal with the wider context of agricultural integration since the 1920s; with the basic ideas that drove this policy; with the negotiations and controversies that went along with it as well as with its economic effects and global impact. Apart from its empirical findings, this book offers new ways of linking EU history to larger trends of contemporary history. The editor of this volume, Kiran Klaus Patel, is Professor of EU history and transatlantic relations at the European University Institute in Florence.

This book engages in the controversies of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms, demonstrating how these are reiterated by mainstream theoretical approaches in the field. The reforms that the European Union’s CAP underwent during the last three decades were intended to make it less trade-distorting, more taxpayer-friendly and more able to meet the new challenges of environmental concerns and rural development/territorial cohesion. The outcome of the reforms has, however, contradicted these objectives, with the controversies being reiterated by the mainstream theoretical approaches in the field. European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy Reforms argues that these controversies are due to reductionist, rationalist and idealist assumptions with regard to the object of inquiry applied by mainstream approaches. It proposes an alternative critical approach that takes into account the role of real material factors. Critical realism is not just an alternative explanation of CAP reforms but an alternative theory of how explanations can be made, which enables readers to reflect upon and endorse the results of existing lines of research in proceeding towards deeper level theory.

This book looks at agriculture and the environment, placed within the dynamic context of post-communist societal change and entry into the European Union (EU). Scrieciu explores developments in eleven Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and argues for agriculture’s natural place in these societies. The history of these countries is significant in how it has shaped the institutions and influenced the outcomes. In many cases, during communism, agriculture was not considered a strategically. An ecological consciousness did not figure high on the agendas of authoritarian regimes. After 1990, some post-communist farm economies progressed slower than others, and environmental pressures mostly diminished with agricultural restructuring. In parts of CEE, increases in numbers of low-input small farms have resulted in some, though largely unintended, ecological benefits. A dual environmental challenge has nevertheless surfaced. On one hand, environmentally unsustainable practices have been attributed to some low-input farming. On the other hand, risks of farm over-intensification and resource overexploitation are on the rise. Also, environmental regulatory and institutional frameworks are not always effectively in place. EU membership is not creating the anticipated benefits for farm growth. There are a number of systemic structural barriers preventing many farmers from drawing on Common Agricultural Policy incentives and support. The presence of many vulnerable poor farms is clearly problematic, particularly economically. However, small-scale farms could be made more acceptable and profitable by ensuring EU policies acknowledge their value and by building institutions to support alternative farm growth strategies, aside from the traditional European model of individual corporate farm expansion. The voluntary uptake of grassroots rural cooperation and farm associations may represent such an alternative. Future European farm policy reforms need to reach the small and vulnerable, and better tackle issues of farm equity, poverty, and agricultural sustainability in the new Europe. This is a timely contribution as this type of "transition" has just begun. This book should be of use to students and researchers looking at agricultural and environmental economics, post-communist rural societal change, European integration and the Common Agricultural Policy.

This book interprets the Common Agricultural Policy in the context of the broader processes of globalization, especially as those processes link to the organization of interests in the farm sector and the long-standing corporatist relationships between farmers and the state.

This title was first published in 2000: This volume analyzes key issues of the process of integrating Central and Eastern European countries with the European Union related to agriculture. The issues include the comparative advantage of CEEC agriculture and its development under various accession policy scenarios; the likely policy developments in both the CEECs and the EU, based on economic, social and political economy considerations; the expected economic impacts and adjustment costs for the agro-food sector under various policy outcomes; the most important constraints for integration including policy convergence issues and internal constraints; and how integration will potentially affect trade and labour flows in the Union. The country combines detailed country-specific and region-wide empirical and theoretical analysis.

The first study to focus specifically on the economics of agricultural trade issues in centrally planned economies, this volume contains recent findings of economists who have examined the decisionmaking processes and the trends that relate to agricultural trade with the West by Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. Future prospects for agri