National Agricultural Policy Research Articles

Terrain mapping unit-based approach for sustainable agricultural development in India—an example from plains ecosystem at semi-arid interface

‘Green Revolution’ was adopted as National Agricultural Policy by the Government of India to meet the requirements for food grain self-sufficiency. Improved seeds, fertilizers and irrigation were provided as science and technology (S&T) inputs to the soil resource base of the country. Land use changes in order to increase the area of land under cultivation have resulted in sectoral imbalances. The introduction of irrigation, fertilizers and new seed varieties using the district as a unit of agricultural input and management, without consideration of moisture and pedogenetic requirements at the micro-level, have resulted in ecological imbalances and environmental degradation in some parts of the district. Intensive irrigation has resulted in water mining in some blocks, and over a period of years the upper aquifer has been lost and in parts of the Aligarh district water-logging and salinity development has taken place.This paper presents the concept of spatial information systems for sustainable agriculture to eliminate the overdose effect of S&T inputs in a land system such as the fragile ecosystem at the semi-arid border in India.The present study has attempted to integrate the natural resource endowments of lithology, soil, ground-water and geomorphology into terrain mapping units (TMUs). The geological, geomorphological and soil maps were generated using remotely sensed data. For ground-water, well logging was carried out and secondary data regarding depth to water-table were collated. The spatial modelling for depth to water-table was carried out using SURFER software. The files on geology, geomorphology, soil and depth to water-table were digitized and integrated to generate an illuminated model characterized by areas of homogeneity in terms of geology, geomorphology, soil and ground-water conditions to map the TMUs. Intergraph's Modular GIS Environment (MGE) software was used to integrate the multiple data base.For sustainable agriculture the natural boundaries represented by TMUs will be more appropriate as spatial units for the application of agricultural inputs and management practices for the land system, rather than villages, blocks and districts which have cultural boundaries. The methodology proposed will be useful for all ecosystems in semi-arid and arid regions.

European integration and the relationship between state and regions in Italy: The interplay between national and common agricultural policies

The relationship between state and regions in Italy has been going through important changes since the beginning of the regionalization of the Italian state in the early 1970s. Nonetheless, the dominant view on Italian regionalization has been rather sceptical: generally, it has been considered as ineffective, having failed to decentralize the policy process, and to reduce state control over the peripheries, especially over finances and the budgetary process. In short, for a long time, many scholars shared the opinion that Italian regionalization was a new instrument for the old mechanism of state control (Dente, 1983). In the last ten years, though, new changes have had positive effects on Italian regionalism, strengthening the position of the regions and conversely loosening the state's general control over policies and resources. These changes are due to two main factors: (1) the crisis of the Italian state in the early 1990s and the growth of some antistate forces, mainly shown by the emergence of the Northern League with its roots in the northern regions; (2) the new perspective brought into the process of european integration by the Maastricht Treaty, which redefines the position of the regions with regard to European Union (EU) institutions by means of the legal concept of subsidiarity. Steps towards the establishment of direct and stable links between regions and the EU, in an attempt to by-pass the member states, are now manifest in some important cases: Germany, Spain and Belgium, notably (Hooghe, 1992; Harvie, 1994; Jones and Keating, 1995).

Does the World Trade Organization Care about Ecosystem Health? The Case of Trade in Agricultural Products

ABSTRACTWe now live under a comprehensive international trading system which affects what we eat, wear, buy, and produce. As of January 1995, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1947 (GATT 1947) was replaced by the World Trade Organization Agreement (WTOA) which sets out rules affecting practically all trade in goods and services worldwide.The implications for trade in agricultural goods are enormous. Today, not only are rules concerning trade in goods generally applicable to trade in agricultural goods, but new rules specific to trade in such products are set out in the WTOA’s Agreement on Agriculture. The WTOA promises to limit national agricultural policies which impede international trade in agricultural products. The new WTOA rules should increase efficiency of and decrease friction arising in trade in agricultural products. These developments represent truly positive economic and political outcomes.But what will be the environmental effects of changes in trade flows facilitated by WTOA rules and institutions? How will the new rules affect ecosystem health? The truth is that the worlds of trade law and ecosystem health are light‐years apart. Advocates for free trade and those for the environment often distrust each other and think that the interests of one can be advanced only through the sacrifice by the other. The first part of this article traces some of the reasons for the evolution of this seemingly zero‐sum game. The second section of the article examines the historical development and current treatment of environmental measures under the WTOA.The agricultural sector is then highlighted as a microcosm of how the new WTOA rules will produce environmental effects which positively, although perhaps unintentionally, affect agroecosystems. The article concludes with speculation as to whether it is not now time to reorient the acrimonious trade/environment debate to one which is less adversarial and more focused on achieving ecosystem health while continuing to improve international market access and trade relations.

Political economy determinants of agricultural protection levels in EU member states: An empirical investigation

This study uses a political economy approach to explain differences in agricultural protection levels among EU countries during the period 1975–1989. Panel data regression analysis is conducted for two different measures of agricultural protection. The paper shows that agricultural support increases when market conditions are against agriculture (countercyclicity), and in countries with a comparative disadvantage in agriculture. The number of farms strongly conditions the protection patterns across countries, showing that small countries and small agricultural sectors are more likely to gain CAP transfers. The results support the hypothesis that national agricultural policies have been used by member states as anadditional compensatory mechanism to the CAP. Finally, the use of a protection index that removes the assumption of zero substitutability among inputs and outputs increases the explanatory power of the model.

Policy and Management Work within International Agricultural Research

The diversity of players in the field of agricultural (and, more generally, rural) policy and management research is sketched in a global overview of relevant research resources, and the small but important part played by the CGIAR Centres in this is explored, particularly where it has maximum value in terms of international public goods, and for strategic links to other parts of the CGIAR portfolio. The patchy and often slender (and perhaps diminishing in specific cases) capacity of national agricultural policy research and analysis units in the less‐developed world to deliver the needed research products is examined.

The flexible planting program: divergent national and regional economic impacts

National agricultural policies intended to stabilize farm price and income may have different impacts on different agricultural sector of a state or a region. A policy which influences a region's agriculture also may affect the general economy of that region, depending on the degree to which agriculture is linked to the general economy. This study evaluates the economywide impact of the Flexible Planting Program (FPP) -- a recent policy designed to encourage farmers to respond more to market than to the government incentives. The study employs an integrated modeling framework which links the national and state farm sectors to the region's non-farm sectors. Because of reductions in real U.S. market prices and, in turn, Tennessee market prices of some farm commodities under FPP, production of most agricultural outputs are expected to decline in Tennessee by 1995. Study results indicate that as a result of price reductions, the agricultural sector will lose about 15 percent of output, income, and employment. These losses cause significant negative impacts on the business-related service sector. The service sector suffers a loss of 31 million dollars in total output and 523 jobs. The total income lost by the service sector (18 million dollars) will be much higher than agriculture sector (11.99 million dollars). Thus, though the FPP may deliver its intended good at the national level, the policy has the potential to cause undesirable impacts on certain regions.

‘We want the return for our sweat’: The new peasant movement in India and the formation of a national agricultural policy

‘We want the return for our sweat’: The new peasant movement in India and the formation of a national agricultural policy

La politique agricole allemande en mouvement : le chemin de l'avenir

While not affecting its place within the national economy, reunification deeply modified the german agriculture internal structure. In this volatile context, the national agricultural policy is going to be renovated. Farms are modernized, while market policies are continuated without significant changes. Public interventions in agriculture are more complex, because institutional and financial landers competences are reinforced. As a consequence, contrasted policies are operated in the various parts of the country.

The demand for potatoes in Tunisia: Are they a cereal substitute?

Per capita potato consumption has more than doubled in Tunisia during the past three decades. An econometric analysis of potato demand suggests that the principal source of growth in consumption is an income effect. The demand elasticities also suggest that potatoes are substituted for traditional cereal staples when food price ratios change, at least in the short run. Consumer preferences for potatoes may be increasing due to demographic and cultural factors. These findings carry implications for national agricultural policy which seeks to achieve self-sufficiency in food production. More emphasis could be given to non-traditional foods such as potatoes. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.

Rural poverty in Peninsular Malaysia and the Malaysian national agricultural policy

SUMMARY The National Agricultural Policy was implemented to arrest the decline that agriculture experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to modernise and revitalise Malaysian agriculture and alleviate rural poverty while retaining labour in agriculture. This paper evaluates its likely effects on poverty among small‐scale padi farmers. The analysis is based on an evaluation of the strategies and programs that are being implemented as part of the policy. It is argued that the National Agricultural Policy will not alleviate poverty in the padi sub‐sector for three main reasons. Firstly, the strategies and programs currently being employed are essentially unchanged from those that were unsuccessfully employed in the past. Secondly, it is premised on a theoretical base which will not lead to the development of effective anti‐poverty strategies. And, finally, it is flawed by policy contradictions.

Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains: Years of Readjustment, 1920-1990

Grandiose plans for land retirement and expanded irrigation have been frequently proposed for the northern Great but they have not significantly affected agricultural practices in the region. Those major readjustments to farming methods that did occur in the region evolved out of local initiative in response to drought and depression during the 1920s. With some refinements but few amendments, procedures remain basically the same today. In Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, Mary Hargreaves reviews the changes in agricultural technology and farm management through the 1920s, the introduction of federal programs as drought and depression recurred in the 1930s, and the realignment of concerns from drought to marketing instability during the recovery years that followed. Drought remains a perennial problem in the region, which in this study includes the eastern two-thirds of Montana and the western half of the Dakotas. But instability of marketing has been a greater concern, according to Hargreaves, and marketing, not environmental factors, occasioned the land retirement programs of the 1950s and 1980s. Despite the economy and practicability of dry farming, the national agricultural policy of acreage restrictions since the 1930s has promoted the use of costly inputs and enabled higher-cost producers to continue competitive operation. Misconceptions and myths have too frequently entered into national land-use planning, Hargreaves writes. There are still those who see the Plains as a 'Great American Desert'; still those who look to irrigation as the only basis for successful agriculture there; and still those who cherish the small diversified homestead operation as the agrarian dream, regardless of the environment. Dry farming has proved successful in the northern Great Hargreaves contends. That success is measured not only by production but also by limited erosion. On its record, dry-land agriculture should not now fall prey to hyperbole, myth, or politics.

Reflections on the Principles of Sustainable Agricultural Development

Of the renewable resources of The Biosphere, agricultural land, including its water resources, is very high among the most important, because it is elemental for human and domestic-animal life. The stability and sustained fertility of the soil largely depend on both prevailing soil–climate conditions and on anthropogenic influences.There are strict limits to the human interference which soil substrates, ground, soil, and surface water, flora, fauna, and microorganisms, can tolerate under moderate, let alone subtropical and tropical, soil–climate conditions. Economic, social, and aesthetic, yield of agricultural resources is limited even where economically and technically optimal use is made of capital and labour. A ‘maximum sustainable yield’ varies as a function of the soil–climate location, the established land-use system, and the technology applied, but only as long as this yield is not exceeded is the enduring availability of the resource ensured.With the demand for land and energy to produce food and agricultural raw materials rising throughout the world, per caput food production continuing to fall (especially in Africa), and the cultivated area per caput declining worldwide, the urgent question for the long term is how to preserve the natural resources of water, soil, and vegetation cover, and how to arrest desertification, deforestation, salinization, soil degradation, and soil erosion.These reflections centre on the call for farming systems which are suited to given locations and do no harm to the environment, and also for sustainability of agricultural production—two aspects which have been badly neglected in the past. The necessary simultaneous tasks of developing farming systems and preserving resources, can be tackled only in relation to specific locations and in a conducive development ‘climate’, where appropriate general conditions prevail. As a rule, the microeconomic development options for coping with these tasks can be improved only at a supra-farm and community level, and require new, environmentally oriented national agricultural and rural development policies.

Dualism and Reform in China

According to the dual economy tradition of economic development models, less developed economies at an early stage of development are marked by a dichotomy between a modern sector, in which workers are hired at an institutional wage in numbers that rise with the growth of the industrial capital stock, and a traditional sector, in which workers subsist at an income level that is somewhat below the indus-

Common Agricultural Policy of the European Communities

The author is aiming at a complex analysis of the present problems of the EC agricultural programs, which have become a social problem since the 1950's. The specific development of agriculture, peculiarities of its production and realization as well as the pressure and political forces of farmers have enforced an extensive system of state regulations. In individual stages of the EEC building -up, agriculture played an important role and the common agricultural policy and common market represent the most elaborate systems of economic integration. In the parallelism of state regulations (national agricultural policies) and supra-state reglementation (common agricultural policy), agriculture has reached significant success concerning its self-sufficiency, export as well as the modernization of production structures. Along with this development there have been problems in regards to the economic effectiveness of production, agricultural surplus and unbearable expenses of budget financing the common agricultural policy. Even conflicts with other world exporters, especially with the US., have come. The article has three parts. The first part ,,State and supra-state regulation of agriculture, EEC integration", engages in the causes of state interventions and in the creation of an institutional framework. The second part, "Mechanism of common agricultural market", analyzed the principles of functioning for integrated agriculture. The last part is devoted to the problems of a common agricultural policy balance and reform concerning intervention and protection systems.

Growth and structural change in the Malaysian economy

Part 1 Malaysia's economic heritage: colonial transformation political background post-colonial change. Part 2 The new world economy: the post-war world international trade Third World debt. Part 3 Growth and the open economy: growth exports balance of payments. Part 4 Employment and income distribution: employment labour laws and policies income distribution wealth distribution. Part 5 Economic planning?: the colonial experience the alliance phase the NEP phase the fifth plan. Part 6 Industrialization: from ISI to EOI employment and wages heavy industrialization the industrial master plan. Part 7 The new economic policy: poverty reduction restructuring ownership. Part 8 Fiscal and debt problems: expenditure trends revenue trends budgetary deficits the fiscal-debt nexus public debt debt servicing. Part 9 Mahathir's new policies: look East policy 70 million population target national agricultural policy Malaysia incorporated privatization recent labour policies. Part 10 Predicaments and prospects: Malaysian experience ethnic issues political contradictions prospects transition?.

Planning for agriculture: the growing case for a conservation component

Both the Common Agricultural Policy and national agricultural planning policies are still geared heavily towards the maximization of production. This paper reviews the case for a conservation component in agricultural policy and assesses the impact of recent attempts to reconcile modern agriculture and conservation in the U.K. It concludes with some suggestions for the development of policy.

Characteristics and conflicts in Norwegian agriculture

This article raises the issue of the extent to which a single nation can develop a “national agricultural policy,” pursuing internal goals in agrarian development, goals that vary significantly from those of other industrialized countries. What are the conflicts arising from such a policy and how do these conflicts interfere with the general agricultural crisis of these countries? The Norwegian case is explored as an example of a blend of social-democratic and center-populist agricultural policies. The decision in 1975 by the Norwegian Parliament to establish the income level of farmers at the same level as workers is seen as an experiment. As agricultural policy, this new departure represented a deviation from the earlier policies of rationalization. The Social Democrats developed their new position as a result of internal and external pressure. A series of reforms financed by the new state incomes from oil production were undertaken, of which income equalization and a farm relief service were the most important. Most Norwegian farmers speak of the reform years as “the good years of escalation.” Equity was reached in 1982, but nevertheless several problems emerged: 1) the escalation of subsidized incomes led to overproduction and decreasing incomes from the market (after 1982), 2) the large budgetary transfers to agriculture caused a legitimation crisis, fueling the constituency of the right-wing Progress Party, 3) the large subsidies to agriculture contributed to the fiscal crisis of the state, 4) the problems mentioned above, contributed to the general crisis of the Norwegian Social Democracy which finds itself with dwindling support. The likely outcome of the present Norwegian farm crisis is the implementation of an agricultural policy that will protect the most vulnerable sector and open the more competitive sector to market forces.

Large Farms, Local Politics, and the International Arena: The Irish Tax Dispute of 1979

Irish farmers have traditionally supported the two major political parties in part in order to influence governments who made national farm policy. Ireland's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 shifted the locus of agricultural policy-making to the continent and changed the ability of Irish politicians to control the provision of goods and services to their constituents. The "large farmers" of County Meath were quick to see that their economic livelihoods demanded a redefinition of their political roles. The national tax dispute of 1979 established a pattern in Irish politics in which Irish commercial fanners have eschewed many of their former political roles and have joined ranks within the increasingly powerful national farmers' organization, the Irish Farmers' Association, in order to affect national and international agricultural and tax policy decisions. This Irish case is an example of an international phenomenon, namely, the erosion of the material bases of a decreasing population of family farmers and their strategies to influence policy determination by governments which had once accorded farmers more favored statuses.

Progress for food or food for progress?: the political economy of agricultural growth and development

Part I: Introduction Background Part II: Structures The Need for Food: Population Growth The Demand for Food Differential Sector Growth Incomes in Agriculture Productivity in Agriculture Employment Institutions Part III: Processes Trends in Production and Trade National Agricultural Policies Protectionism International Commodity Agreements National Planning International Aid International Planning? Part IV: Regions Tropical Africa North Africa and the Middle East Monsoon Asia Latin America The USSR and Eastern Europe Western and Southern Europe North America and Oceania Part V: Outlook Toward the Optional Society?

Rural development and the Fifth Malaysia Plan

The Fifth Malaysia Plan, 1986–1990, represents the fourth phase of Malaysia's Outline Perspective Plan, 1971–1990. Its strategies for the rural sector incorporate broadly technocratic policies outlined in the 1984 National Agricultural Policy (NAP). Maximization of farm incomes, and of the national income derived from agriculture, is to be based on ‘efficiency of production involving the judicious selection of economically remunerative crops and employing the most efficient technology’. The model for the efficient mode of agricultural production is the estate or plantation. The greatest challenge to this ‘modernization’ policy lies in the padi sector. Much of Malaysia's padi land remains low in productivity and many farms are too small to support a family. Although great advances have been made in padi production since 1950, poverty amongst padi households remains high and, since the mid-1970s, there has been an active withdrawal from the industry by substantial numbers of farmers. The problem facing Malaysian planners in the padi sector is that of reconciling the continuation of existing land ownership and inheritance patterns with the need for the creation of larger operating units to permit the use of modern technology and raise the incomes of those working them. In general the technical advances of the last 30 years have widened the income gap between larger and smaller farmers. Weaknesses of the plantation mode of production in the padi sector relate both to its methods per se and their inability to cope with inadequate production by very small farms or shares. With or without major land reforms, which are not on the Fifth Plan's agenda, there is an urgent need to reduce the number of households dependent on padi growing for their living.