Agriculture and Public Goods

The debate on the future orientation of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is increasingly shaped by the role of agriculture in providing public goods, and there is a broad consensus that this approach will be particularly relevant in legitimating the policy intervention in agriculture in the future.

In the context of this debate, it is not clear to what extent collective action could be taken into consideration as a valuable alternative to market or state regulation in contributing to the provision of public goods, and to what extent it is possible to design and implement agricultural policies that incorporate a collective and collaborative approach between different stakeholders in rural areas.

Through an in depth analysis two case studies in Italy, the book provides insights to both the policy and the theoretical debate on the role of collective action for the public goods associated to agriculture.

Introduction. - 1. Agriculture and public goods. - 2. The role of collective action. - 3. Collective agri-environmental strategies. - 4. The project Custody of the Territory in Media Valle del Serchio (Tuscany). - 5. The agri-environmental agreement in Valdaso (Marche). - 6. Collective action for public goods: institutional and policy innovation. - Conclusions. - Appendix: methodology. - Epistemological approach. - Participatory methods: an overview. - Data collection and analysis: Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA). - Overview of the RRA methods. - Grounded theory and analysis of the qualitative data. - Strengths and limitations of the proposed methodology. - The Interviews.