Floor Brouwer (ed.) Sustaining Agriculture and the Rural Environment: Governance, Policy and Multifunctionality. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. 2004 (Reprinted 2016). Xi+360 pages. U.K. £98.10 (Hardback).

Abstract

The edited book, “Sustaining Agriculture and the Rural Environment”, is largely a European contribution to the Ecological Economics. It provides a useful review of ‘multifunctionality’ as the central attribute of the European Model of Agriculture (EMA) and its applied value to other developing countries. Brouwer introduces the book (in Chapter 1) with a premise that jointly with food and fibre, the European farmers also produce ‘public goods’ such as landscapes and biodiversity management, cultural heritage, and viable rural communities. He warms up the reader to digest what follows in the book with a quick overview of the market for these positive externalities and strategies for their continuous supply in the European Union’s Common Agriculture Policy. This paves the way for rest of the book, which is organised into four parts and seventeen chapters.