Authors: Reidar Almås, Centre for Rural Research, Trondheim, Norway and Hugh Campbell, University of Otago, Duneden, New Zealand (Eds):

This is the first book to try and understand global agricultural policy in the light of new shocks like the World Food Crisis of 2008-2011. This book provides the first discussion of the new term ‘neo-productivism’ in the context of European agricultural policy, and introduces the concept of resilience to discussion of global agricultural policy. This book provides a reframing of the old stalemate between neoliberal and multifunctional approaches to agricultural policy by confronting new challenges around the World Food Crisis, climate change, and resilience.
For many decades debates about the future of Developed World agriculture policy have been dominated by a long political conflict between European/Multifunctional policy regimes and the global trend towards trade liberalisation. The stalemate that had emerged between these two positions by 2000 has now been dramatically reconfigured. This book argues that there are four reasons why this area of policy has now reopened to wider debate. First, the World Food Crisis of 2008-2011 has signalled a potential end to the era of cheap food. The emergence of Climate Change as a core policy concern has shifted key targets for agricultural policy. New trends towards ‘neoproductivist’ agricultural policy have emerged to challenge multifunctional approaches to agriculture. Finally, new academic ideas around resilience of food chains and relevant policy interventions have challenged established approaches to achieving agricultural sustainability. This book evaluates how these new policy challenges are having an impact on specific agricultural policy regimes as well as what future lessons might be learnt from key policy experiments around neoliberalism and multifunctionality. Case studies are drawn from: Norway, Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.
Prominent contributors include scholars with an international reputation in the field of agricultural policy, agricultural history and rural sociology.
 
Chapters and contributing Authors:
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