Reframing Policy Regimes and the Future Resilience of Global Agriculture

Abstract

At the outset of this book, we argued that it was important that we study agricultural “policy regimes” rather than agricultural policy itself. Our reasoning was that our interest lies in the actual outcomes in terms of farming practice, industry arrangements, global trade linkages, technology assemblages, and agroecological relationships in particular countries and regions. It is a convenient fiction that these practices and arrangements are the direct result of the formal agricultural policy arrangements in each specific country. In reality, the formal policy process in each country (including not only agriculture, but also, in some cases, rural, environmental, trade, and social development policy) can be argued to be in constant interaction with wider global politics, geographically specific environmental and cultural dynamics, prevailing farm practices, and new technologies. To recognize this full assembly of dynamics that coordinate to determine actual farm practice, we use the term “policy regimes.” In neoliberalized economies such as New Zealand, there is even a strong sense in which devolved governance at the industry and sector level now operates within these regimes in the same way that formal agricultural policy does in European countries.

Citation

Almås, R. and Campbell, H. (2012), "Reframing Policy Regimes and the Future Resilience of Global Agriculture", Almås, R. and Campbell, H. (Ed.) Rethinking Agricultural Policy Regimes: Food Security, Climate Change and the Future Resilience of Global Agriculture (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 285-300. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-1922(2012)0000018015