Many international organisations, including the European Parliament, see reducing food loss and waste as a priority. They argue that this will increase the efficiency of resource use and have beneficial environmental effects. This paper asserts that the scale of the problem has been overstated...

After protracted negotiations, the EC Ministers of Agriculture agreed on a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy on July 1st. Will this reform solve the fundamental problems plaguing the common agricultural market? Is it compatible with the GATT?

Before the European summit in February 1988, EC agricultural policy was being criticized by almost all those affected. Farmers complained about low incomes and the lack of prospects, consumers and taxpayers about the high cost of agricultural support, politicians about spending commitments that...

Farming worldwide and national agricultural policies are in a profound crisis. Farmers everywhere are complaining about inadequate incomes. A large proportion of farms are threatened on both sides of the Atlantic, in the EC no less than in the USA. This situation has coincided with a period of...

That the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Community is in need of reform is by now commonly accepted. But all moves for a reform on the political level have been postponed until after the French elections in the spring, a fact which highlights the political problems. Is there a real...

The recent announcement of the French Government's decision to support the French agriculture this spring by direct income transfers to the tune of ffr 4.6 bn brings home the fact that some national governments need national autonomy in agricultural policy. Regrettably it seems to foreshadow an...

Much criticism notwithstanding, the essentials of the common agricultural policy have up to now scarcely been changed. What kind of basic changes would have to be introduced for a new agricultural policy to become also politically acceptable? The following article suggests alternatives to the...

Joint decisions each year on agricultural prices by the Council of Ministers of Agriculture are a requisite of the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy. It is however more and more difficult to reach joint decisions on these prices. Divergencies of national aims and economic starting...

Direct payments were originally justified as a mechanism to compensate farmers for the income loss incurred due to reduced intervention prices. However, this rationale is not valid any more, and a new justification for basic income support by granting basic decoupled direct payments has been...