The agreement to decouple EU direct farm payments from production and introduce the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) was formally made by the Council of Agricultural Ministers in June 2003. Due to concerns raised, the SPS provided Member States the scope to retain some coupled support and this option...

The agreement to decouple EU direct farm payments from production and introduce the Single Payment Scheme (SPS) was formally made by the Council of Agricultural Ministers in June 2003. Due to concerns raised, the SPS provided Member States the scope to retain some coupled support and this option...

The paper analyses the land use behaviour of Scottish land managers and the factors influencing it in the current context of the EU rural land use policies. The analysis employs a frequently used behavioural economics method, namely structural equation modelling (SEM). Central to the empirical...

This paper analyses factors influencing Scottish dairy farmers’ intentions to change size of business in response to milk quota abolition. The analysis uses structural equation modelling and is based on survey data collected in 2009 through telephone interviews with 533 farmers. Results...

If one observe aggregated cattle figures for Scotland for more than a century it is possible to perceive that that cattle numbers seem to react strongly to agricultural policy (e.g., livestock subsidies before 1973, UK becoming part to the European Community). The purpose the paper is to provide...

With the possible exception of nuclear technology, few scientific breakthroughs have generated the level of emotive debate that has surrounded the roll-out of agricultural biotechnology. Initial discussion about the environmental impacts of agricultural genetic modification, are now frequently...

One of the aims of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to increase the competitiveness of farmers through increasing their exposure to markets. An aspect of competitiveness is the gains in economic efficiency. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to estimate indicators of farm...