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AGRICULTURAL POLICY

Please Note: I suggest that you skim-read this material first, before deciding whether or not you really need to download it as hard-copy. Some of these files are quite long and detailed, and contain more material than is strictly necessary for this short course. It is provided as reference material which may of use to you in the future, perhaps for dissertations or project work.

UK Policy Issues

• Cabinet Office Report to the Prime Minister on the State of the Countryside, February, 2000, in all its 109 page glory, telling us that rural areas are not that much different from urban areas, except more spaced out, and that there are wide differences in prosperity and welfare in the countryside, not all connected with agriculture. What a surprise.
• Commission on Future of Food and Farming (Sir Donald Curry), Report - Jan. 2002 -152 pages of closely reasoned argument as to why production support is both obsolete and counter-productive, with detailed suggestions as to what to put in its place.  One major omission from this document is the lack of any clear distinction between:
• compensation (necessary to offset the losses of support removal to the owners of farm assets)
• ongoing payments for public goods and services (landscape, wildlife, amenity etc. - the CARE (Conservation, Amenity, Recreation and Environmental) good payments
• support - necessary to preserve some sort of EU (UK) agricultural industry in the face of world competition and/or market power of supermarkets?
Otherwise, the report appears mostly sensible from an economist's point of view, and reasonably sensitive to the present condition of the industry - though not sufficiently to get the NFU's support.

• Chapter and verse, from the EU Commission, Factsheet on the Agenda 2000 reforms.

• Australian perspective on forthcoming WTO round - Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) briefing on policy issues for the Millenium Round.
• International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium (IATRC) commissioned paper 9: The URAA - an Evaluation, July 1994 - a lengthy and comprehensive evaluation of the URAA both in general and specifically with reference to the major developed countries, including chapters on the US, EU, Canada, Australia and NZ, Japan and Korea, Latin America. This is long - 98 pages - but does provide chapter and verse on the URAA as of July 1994.
• IATRC commissioned paper 12: an even longer (133 pages) documentation of the implementation of the URAA on a country by country basis, including the same countries as above, but also South Asia as well. Also includes, as the final two chapters, an "mid-term perspective on the implementation (Ch. 10), and a forward look to the 1999 Millenium round (chapter 11).
• OECD - Agricultural Policies in the OECD, 1999 report, on policy monitoring and evaluation - the comprehensive document (271 pages) on the agricultural policies of the OECD, including the latest estimates of each country's PSEs etc. for 1998.
• IATRC, Commissioned paper 18, November, 2001, The Current WTO Agricultural Negotiations: Options for Progress (A synthesis of previous papers idenitifying the key parameters of the 'millenium round' negotiating agenda) - 48 pages or so.
• Initial Negotiating Positions for the WTO Millenium Round: A summary of opening positions by a team from the Canadian Agrifood Trade research Network (CATRN) 41 pages.

• China's future prospects in grain trade - an assessment by Scott Rozelle (Univ. Calif. Davis), and Jikung Huang, Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Beijing, 1998
• World Grain Market prospects, from a North American perspective, by one of the world's serious Wise People - D. Gale Johnson, Chicago.
• Trade and Growth - what are the theories and evidence? - a paper from Terry Roe (Minnesota), 1999, with thoughts on the implications of commercial appropriation of biotechnology.
• Environment and World Agricultural Trade - emerging issues, a paper preprared by Ford Runge (Minnesota, 1998) for the OECD
• International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Dec., 1997: Assessment of World Food Situation, Issues and Prospects (36 pages).
• World Food Summit:  Five years on and what has been achieved?  A University of Minesota Staff Paper, Oct. 2001, by Willy Meyers (a major player in the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) - excellent analyst, accomplished and expert modeller, and all round sensible guy)

• Review of FAIR Act effects and the development of US policy, by Prof. Vince Smith (Montana) and Joe Glauber, Deputy Chief Economist, USDA, 1997. Concludes that, while FAIR might be a major chage in policy, this remains to be seen, meanwhile its actual effects on grain production and grain areas is likely to be limited.
• Harmonisation of US and Canadian grain policies - an assessment by Vince Smith, Montana and Dick Gray, University of Saskatchewan, 1997.
• US and Canadian livestock market harmonisation - paper by Young and Marsh (Montana State University) 1998.
• PLEASE SEE, ALSO, RECENT REFERENCES AT THE END OF THE US FARM POLICY PAGE.

• Official (Agriculture Canada) document on the state and rationale of current Canadian Agricultural Policy (1998) - summarises and explains, from an official perspective, the nature and rationale of current Canadian policy.
• Malting Barley and the integration of the US and Canadian Markets - policy issues paper from Montana and University of Saskatchewan, October, 1998.

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