Norway is performing unevenly across its four agricultural policy objectives. While Norway enjoys a high level of food security and is meeting its aim of maintaining agricultural production across the country, both environmental performance and the efficient creation of value added along the food chain are compromised by support policies linked to production levels.

Policies for the Future of Farming and Food in the European Union applies the OECD Productivity, Sustainability and Resilience (PSR) analytical framework along with the latest data from the OECD Agri-Environmental Indicators to benchmark the sustainable productivity performance of the EU’s agricultural sector and to identify the main challenges ahead.

The Netherlands has built an agricultural sector that is a world leader in productivity and competitiveness. Policies for the Future of Farming and Food in the Netherlands takes stock of the current situation in the agriculture sector.

Spain has a dynamic and competitive agro-food sector. However, higher productivity has not always reduced environmental pressures. Policies for the Future of Farming and Food in Spain undertakes a thorough examination of the Spanish agro-food sector.

This is the fourth Environmental Performance Review of Norway. It provides an independent, evidence-based evaluation of the country’s environmental performance over the past decade.

Changes in market organisation, climatic conditions and societal demands on food quality, animal welfare and environmental quality have created new conditions for farming families as well as for researchers and policy makers. New social, technical and economic solutions are needed for farming and rural areas. This book presents new perspectives for farms, farm products and rural areas, many of which were collectively developed by coalitions of farmers, farmer representatives, researchers, civilians and/or policy makers. Contributions are made from those involved in crop and animal production worldwide offering sections on natural resources management, development of sustainable rural systems, future perspectives for farming families, knowledge systems in transition and learning processes in multi-stakeholder processes. This unique collection of contributions, presenting insights from bio-physical as well as social sciences, shows where practice meets analysis and reflection and offers new perspectives for rural areas throughout the world.

Through international case studies, this book evaluates how various policy challenges are having an impact on specific agricultural policy regimes, and what future lessons might be learnt from key policy experiments around neoliberalism and multifunctionality.