Agriculture, Trade and the Environment

This timely book focuses on the liberalization of agricultural policy and questions whether it is compatible with the goal of achieving economic and environmental sustainability in the European Union. It presents an invaluable contribution to the growing literature on the sustainability and policy aspects of trade liberalization, focusing on European agriculture.Agriculture, Trade and the Environment discusses quantitative methods for the assessment of agriculture-environment trade-offs for policy analysis at the firm, regional or national levels. It also presents the experience of countries in Europe, with particular regard to the impact of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and the repercussions of the Uruguay Round. Using a wide range of analytical and quantitative tools, country case studies examine agricultural areas in Austria, Scotland, Italy, Spain, Greece and Estonia. The authors then go on to look at future developments in an enlarged EU context. They conclude that efficient policies for environmental management in the EU need to be tailored to fit local conditions. Any attempt to impose uniform policies across a region as environmentally and economically diverse as Europe will have widely divergent and unintended consequences. This book will prove invaluable to academics and students with an interest in agricultural economics, environmental and ecological economics and the European Union.