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...

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...

The Russian government implemented a wheat export tax in February 2015 to reduce food inflationary pressures resulting from the rouble’s dramatic devaluation. This article discusses the causes of the rouble’s instability and volatility, and the effects of the export controls on domestic...

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...