This book deals with the important topic of policies for sustainable agriculture, since food insecurity is a growing concern for policy makers and will affect the quality of life and well-being of generations to come. The authors provide a theoretical background to the concept of sustainable agriculture including its recent developments; monitor the current state of sustainability in agriculture in different regions of the world; and evaluate current agricultural policies to propose new solutions. They show practical ways of sustainability measurement that could be applied to different regions. The book takes into account sustainability indicators based on economic, social and environmental aspects and discusses the trade-offs between these three dimensions. It also answers the question of whether current agricultural policies contribute to balancing between the goals of agriculture---that of not just providing food but of contributing to the greater good---and how policies differ and have evolved across the world. Finally, it puts together the best practices of sustainability for the use of policymakers. The book pays particular attention to least developed countries where hunger and malnutrition are high, but where productivity should not come at the expense of environmental and social goals.
This book is of use to a wide readership of policy makers, professionals and academics in the social and environmental sciences interested in the improvement of human life through sustainable agricultural policy implementation.
Author(s): Bazyli Czyżewski, Łukasz Kryszak
Series: Human Well-Being Research and Policy Making
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 263
City: Cham
Introduction
Contents
Chapter 1: Definitions and Origins of the Concept of Sustainable Agriculture
1.1 Towards Pluralism or Synthesis?
1.2 The Background to the Concept of Sustainable Agriculture: Systemic Approach
1.3 Market Treadmill as a Trigger to Move into Sustainable Agriculture
1.4 How Does Sustainable Agriculture Solve the Treadmill Issue?
1.5 Implications of Sustainable Agriculture for Land Rent Theory
Chapter 2: Integrating Three Dimensions of Agricultural Sustainability
2.1 Workable Approaches to Integrating the Environmental Dimension into the Concept of Sustainability
2.1.1 How to Deal with the Trade-Offs Implied by the Sustainable Agriculture Definition?
2.1.2 Major Approaches to Computing Eco-efficiency
2.1.3 Regressing Eco-efficiency and Its Potential Drivers
2.2 How to Integrate the Socio-economic Dimension into the Eco-efficiency Concept?
2.2.1 Economic Dimension of Sustainability
2.2.2 Social Dimension of Sustainability
Chapter 3: How Sustainable Is Agriculture Worldwide?
3.1 Agricultural Sustainability as a Multi-dimensional System
3.1.1 Economic Dimension of Agricultural Sustainability
3.1.2 Social Resilience
3.1.3 Environmental Aspects
3.1.4 Inputs of Agricultural Production
3.1.5 Institutional Background
3.2 Determining Clusters of Countries with Similar Agricultural Models
3.3 How to Improve the Sustainability of Agriculture in Different Parts of the World?
3.3.1 Methodology of Computing Integrated Efficiency Scores
3.3.2 Facing Decreasing Returns to Scale
3.3.3 Potential for Optimization in the Use of Inputs and the Production of Outputs
3.3.4 How Are the Slacks Values Changing?
3.3.5 Global Gains from the Integrated Efficiency Improvement
3.3.6 The Evolution of Integrated Efficiency Change
Chapter 4: Approaching Agri-Environmental Policy Effectiveness
4.1 Impact of Agriculture on the Environment: In the Quest for Global Mitigation Strategy
4.2 How Effective Were Former Policies and How Effective Are Current Policies: The European Union Case
4.3 Why Analyses of Policy Effectiveness Fail to Produce Clear-Cut Results: Premises for Adopting the Pareto-Inefficiencies Cr...
4.3.1 Cost-Effectiveness and Cost-Benefits Analysis
4.3.2 Complexity Effect
4.3.3 Result Based Measures: A Remedy for the Low Effectiveness of Agri-Environmental Policies?
4.4 Why Is an Optimal Supply of Goods Impossible to Achieve?
4.4.1 Theoretical Issues
4.4.2 Implementation Issues
4.4.3 The Case of Small-Scale Field Crop Farms in Poland
4.5 Dilemmas of Effective Policy Designing: Synergies and Trade-Offs
4.5.1 Direct GHG Emissions
4.5.2 Carbon Sequestration
4.5.3 Bioenergy
4.5.4 Biodiversity and Landscape Public Goods
4.5.4.1 Tradable Permits
4.5.4.2 Contractual Nature Conservation and Conditionality of Direct Area Payments
4.5.4.3 Offsetting Policies
4.5.5 Dual Development in Agriculture
Chapter 5: Cost-Effectiveness Assessment of Environmental Expenditures in Different Regions of the World: Slack-Based Approach
5.1 In Search of the Holistic Approach to Policy Assessment
5.2 Environmental Policy Impact on Inefficiency Slacks
5.2.1 Global Perspective
5.2.2 Cluster Perspective
5.2.3 EU FADN Analysis
5.2.4 Impact of Uncontrollable Policy Variable on the Integrated Efficiency Score
Chapter 6: Evolution of Agri-Environmental Schemes Worldwide. Comparing the Agricultural Policy of the EU, the US and the Peop...
6.1 A General Description of Agricultural Policies
6.1.1 The EU Common Agricultural Policy
6.1.2 Farm Bills in the United States
6.1.3 Agricultural Policy in China
6.2 The Structure and Development of Financial Support for Agricultural Sector
6.3 Major Problems of Implementing Agricultural Policy: Capitalization of Subsidies, Distributional Inequalities, and Ageing
6.3.1 Capitalisation of Subsidies in Farmland Prices
6.3.2 Inequalities
6.3.3 Ageing
Chapter 7: Building Effective Sustainable Agriculture Policy: Conclusions
7.1 Lessons Learned for Different Agricultural Models: European Union, the USA and China
7.2 Measuring Policy Effectiveness: Integrated Efficiency Gains
7.3 Directional Solutions to Sustainable Agriculture Problems and Their Side Effects
7.4 Systemic Solution
Appendix
References
