Agricultural policies and rural landscape: Some insights from theoretical and empirical literature | Politiques agricoles et paysage rural : quelques traits saillants de la littérature théorique et empirique

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International audience

English. This chapter deals with the role of agriculture and agricultural policies concerning rural landscapes. More specifically, rural landscapes in many European countries have been transformed by the modification of agricultural practices in the wake of new public incentive mechanisms. Changes in the Common Agricultural Policy have played a decisive role in a succession of reforms revolving around issues that were initially purely economic in nature before gradually evolving to integrate agricultural activities’ environmental and social dimensions. In this context, acknowledging agriculture’s multifunctional nature – through the provision of many environmental services – means attributing a crucial role to rural landscapes. We first discuss the conditions which underlie the environmental services that rural landscapes, partially shaped by agricultural activities, provide. Then, we emphasise the need to analyse the relationship between landscape provision and agricultural activities to correctly estimate the total economic values associated with these services (role of non-trade functions of agriculture), so as to reveal social demand. Finally, from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, we analyse the role of public intervention tools for safeguarding the provision of environmental services by rural landscapes, and more generally to facilitate the development of agricultural non-trade functions.