Agricultural policy

Agricultural policy is a part of the general economic and social policy, which is mainly focused on agriculture and its associated industries and population groups.

It can be generally and comprehensively defined as the set of all efforts and measures that aim to shape the regulatory framework for the agricultural sector and to influence the course of economic processes in the agricultural sector.

The following are the agricultural policy is described in general. The agricultural policies at the various levels are the subject of separate articles.

Organization

Agricultural policy can be divided into:

  • Agri-environmental policy,
  • Agricultural Social Policy,
  • Policy on agricultural structures and
  • Agricultural market and price policy.
  • Agricultural policy of the Länder, cantons
  • Agricultural policy of the States ( agricultural policy in Germany, Swiss agricultural policy )
  • Agricultural policy in states collars European level ( see the EU Common Agricultural Policy)
  • Agricultural policy at the international level (WTO, OECD, FAO).
  • State agencies and legislative bodies at the various decision-making levels ( eg parliament, government, administration)
  • Semi - State bodies (eg Chamber of Agriculture )
  • Under certain circumstances, private organizations and associations, provided that these specific tasks are delegated by law or regulation.

These include a variety of organizations and associations which act in different shapes and some with considerable weight on the process of political decision-making. These include in particular professional associations, such as farmers' associations, and other interest groups.

Design options

Basically, the following starting points for state influence can be distinguished:

Designing legal and institutional framework within which the economic process takes place ( governance ). In the area of ​​agricultural policy, the governance refers in particular to:

  • The design of the legal framework for the individual farm businesses and households (eg ownership and use rights to land, inheritance, labor relations, social security, control system, etc.)
  • The design of the legal framework for relations between individual enterprises ( cooperatives, producer groups, cooperation, etc.).
  • The development of legal and institutional framework for the action on the product and factor markets ( market orders, lease rights, agricultural credit institutions, etc. )

Influence on the course of the economic process under the existing regulatory framework ( process policy). In the agricultural sector are particularly important:

  • Agricultural price stabilization and support through border measures (tariffs, levies ) and internal market interventions ( fixing minimum prices )
  • Product and factor bound agricultural subsidies
  • Direct Volume Control ( quota, quota)
  • Direct income transfers.

Acquisition of certain activities by the state ( provision of public goods ). In agriculture, government services are offered in the following areas:

  • Training and consultation
  • Agricultural Research
  • Development of rural infrastructure ( land improvement, land clearing, road construction, etc.)

History of Ideas

The intellectual history of agricultural policy at their predecessors in the 16th an 18th centuries. With the Hausväterliteratur the first descriptions of the conditions on the farms and practical advice on all aspects of daily life emerged. This economic issues will, however, only marginally. In contrast, the camera lists considered agriculture especially from the fiscal side, ie from the national economic point of view. The German cameralism led to the promotion of farmer -being and domains as sources of revenue. In contrast, mercantilism encouraged the trade.

Intellectual history in the mid -18th century had made ​​the Enlightenment. Rationalism and physiocracy brought forth liberalism and thus the classical school of modern economics by its founder Adam Smith. Economic policy basic idea is then no longer the state subsidy of the economy as in mercantilism, but the " unleashing " of the individual economic agents, thus the productive forces of the economy can flourish. This principle also applies to agriculture, hereafter occupies no special position. In contrast, Freiherr vom Stein sat for a retention of the Bauer protection and Friedrich List called "educational duties " for the German industry, but also meant that the industry should be promoted for the sake of agriculture. Other basic concepts had the romance that moved instead of the national idea, the individual at the center. History of ideas, it has its origin in the so-called fundamental theory whose main representative Justus Moser, an opponent of rationalism to -earth peasant - based conservative people sought renewal ( "Patriotic Fantasies ", 1787). Science History Moser has done through his systematic, inductive work a fundamental contribution to future agricultural policy. Extent that there is to economics connections than the high estimate of the peasantry from socio-political reasons, coincide with the economic ideas of the Physiocrats. They were (for example, Adam Müller, Ernst Moritz Arndt ) formed by the Romantics to a Bauerntumsideologie who sees the keeper of the basic values ​​of society as a whole in a free peasantry.

End of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century pioneering contributions to the development of the agricultural and general economics were made: According to Adam Smith developed in 1806 Albrecht Daniel Thaer - the founder of the farm teaching - his ideas of agriculture as one for " net income " aspiring businesses. Thomas Robert Malthus published his law of population in 1798, David Ricardo in 1817 his theory of rent and in 1826 appeared Thünen's " The isolated state in relation to agriculture and national economy ," a work which contains a foundation of microeconomic theory.

When the mid-19th century worsened the situation of agriculture, the widespread belief that liberal economic policies for agriculture constituted a danger. The difficult situation of agriculture was understood because of the prevailing social distress as a social problem, such as by Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, who joined " as the basis of a German social policy natural history of the German people " for a conservative social structure in his down to earth. This period also saw the founding of the German Farmers' Associations and the Raiffeisen cooperatives falls. 1879 was finally introduced with the introduction of grain duties a protection policy for agriculture, this conceded a reasoned by agricultural ideologies special position ( interventionism ).

The general economists began at this time to engage in social policy and founded in 1872 the "Association for Social Policy ", instead of, inter alia, studies of the rural states. These socio-politically oriented school, even as a historical school - in contrast to the classic - called, is connected with names like Georg Hanssen, Wilhelm Roscher, August Meitzen, John Conrad, Georg Friedrich Knapp, Buchberger and Sering. Around the turn of the century began between representatives of the protectionist agricultural policy and liberal economists such as Adolph Wagner, Gustav von Schmoller and Lujo Brentano a fundamental debate about agricultural or industrial country, which was then modified later should the question, get that promotion of agriculture.

In the socialist agricultural theories, there are different ideas. While Marxism / Leninism conceived the peasantry as a transitional stage to a industrially organized agriculture cooperative with large enterprises, the revisionists were of the special position of agriculture. Accordingly, the family peasant farm is therefore superior because agricultural production in contrast to the industry is an organic process.

In National Socialism eventually agriculture was particularly encouraged in the context of self-sufficiency policy. The blood - and - soil ideology inflated to farmers blood source of the nation, see also Agriculture and Food in the German Reich.

With the introduction of the social market economy in the Federal Republic of Germany was accompanied by a regulatory policy discussion in the agricultural policy in the early 1950s. Main representatives on the one hand a liberal position with price stabilization inward and free trade to the outside ( neoliberal agricultural policy, represented in particular by Henry Niehaus ), and on the other side a protectionist orientation with significant intervention in market activities ( this: There are two opposing views were expressed direction was Heinz Haushofer ). After a long political discussion ultimately a decision for a more protectionist direction of agricultural policy has been made and was reflected in the market organizations created at that time for most agricultural products.

When the mid-1950s loomed a strong need for adaptation of agriculture in the wake of rapid economic growth, there was a controversial debate about the need for agricultural structural change and the rural income disparity. Most scientific agricultural politicians held a solution of agricultural problems through market- driven adjustment of enterprises and increase the productivity of factors possible; especially leaders of agricultural interest groups, however, kept constant production and support measures for necessary and desirable because of the natural and economic inferiority of agriculture. An intermediate result was this discussion with the adoption of the Agriculture Act in 1955, in which the need for support of the agricultural sector was emphasized. Over time, the interpretation of the contents of this Act is, however, continuously adapted to the changing conditions and insights.

The fundamentally different conceptions of the above two schools of thought, however, still determine the general agricultural policy discussion and lead to a juxtaposition of Stützungs and adaptation policies.

Increasingly influenced the ecology discussion the values ​​and positional relationships in the field of agricultural policy; agricultural dumping is criticized.

35002
de