In the years before the Second World War agriculture in most European states was carried out on peasant or small family farms using technologies that relied mainly on organic inputs and local knowledge and skills, supplying products into a market that was partly local or national, partly international. The war applied a profound shock to this system. In some countries farms became battlefields, causing the extensive destruction of buildings, crops and livestock. In others, farmers had to respond to calls from the state for increased production to cope with the effects of wartime disruption of international trade. By the end of the war food was rationed when it was obtainable at all. Only fifteen years later the erstwhile enemies were planning ways of bringing about a single agricultural market across much of continental western Europe, as farmers mechanised, motorized, shed labour, invested capital, and adopted new technologies to increase output. This volume brings together scholars working on this period of dramatic technical, commercial and political change in agriculture, from the end of the Second World War to the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy in the early 1960s. Their work is structured around four themes: the changes in the international political order within which agriculture operated; the emergence of a range of different market regulation schemes that preceded the CAP; changes in technology and the extent to which they were promoted by state policy; and the impact of these political and technical changes on rural societies in western Europe.

This volume brings together scholars working on this period of dramatic technical, commercial and political change in agriculture, from the end of the Second World War to the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy in the early 1960s. Their work is structured around four themes: the changes in the international political order within which agri

The vast majority of the world's poorest households depend on farming for their livelihood. During the 1960s and 1970s, most developing countries imposed pro-urban and anti-agricultural policies, while many high-income countries restricted agricultural imports and subsidized their farmers. Both sets of policies inhibited economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Although progress has been made over the past two decades to reduce those policy biases, many trade- and welfare-reducing price distortions remain between agriculture and other sectors as well as within the agricultural sector of both rich and poor countries. Comprehensive empirical studies of the disarray in world agricultural markets first appeared approximately 20 years ago. Since then the OECD has provided estimates each year of market distortions in high-income countries, but there has been no comparable estimates for the world's developing countries. This volume is the first in a series (other volumes cover Africa, Asia, and Latin America) that not only fill that void for recent years but extend the estimates in a consistent and comparable way back in time--and provide analytical narratives for scores of countries that shed light on the evolving nature and extent of policy interventions over the past half-century. 'Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Europe's Transition Economies' provides an overview of the evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia that are transitioning away from central planning. The book includes country and subregional studies of the ten transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe that joined the European Union in 2004 or 2007, of seven other large member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and of Turkey. Together these countries comprise over 90 percent of the Europe and Central Asia region's population and GDP. Sectoral, trade, and exchange rate policies in the region have changed greatly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, but price distortions remain. The new empirical indicators in these country studies provide a strong evidence-based foundation for evaluating policy options in the years ahead.

The debate on agricultural policy in the EU has been very lively and politically prominent over the past months. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU has undergone major changes since it was first implemented at the end of the 1960s. Commentators suggest that the CAP changes made in the Agenda 2000 reform package were insufficient to address the problems facing the CAP in the coming years. These include enlargement, new trade negotiations and the demand by European society for a safe, sustainable agri-food system, to name but a few. This report highlights the most pressing challenges to creating a sustainable CAP for the 21st century. It focuses on strategic policy options that are closely linked to the CAP system to be "hands on"; but the report refrains from becoming too specific on policy details, focusing instead on the important strategic questions. It offers six recommendations for good governance, that aim to remove bureaucratic constraints from the food industry, yet strengthen consistency and good practice.