Valuing Agriculture: Balancing Competing Objectives in the Policy Process

In an era of increasing emphasis on free trade and market deregulation, agricultural policy in advanced industrialized countries remains an anomaly, with many countries continuing to intervene in markets for farm produce. Since the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations the scrutiny of these interventions has made clear that governments have a range of objectives for their agricultural policies, some unrelated to economic factors. Concern about the future of rural communities, preservation of the countryside, the environment, food safety and animal welfare goals feature to varying degrees in agricultural policy settings. This paper explores the values influencing the formulation of agricultural policy and proposes a policy map of the combination of values reflected in particular policy settings. The map can give a better understanding of why particular policy approaches emerge in some polities and not others.