Agriculture and Public Goods

The aim of this book is analyzing the role of collective action in the provision of agri-environmental public goods through agriculture at EU level, as well as providing policy recommendations regarding agri-environmental strategies based on collective and collaborative approaches.

The European debate on the future orientation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is increasingly shaped by the role of agriculture in providing agri-environmental public goods, and there is a broad consensus that this approach will be particularly relevant in legitimating the EU policy intervention in agriculture in the future. Nevertheless, in the institutional and academic debate it is not clear to what extent collective action could be taken into consideration as a valuable alternative to market or state regulation to increase the environmental performance of agriculture, and to what extent it is possible to design and implement agricultural policies that incorporate a collective approachfor the provision of agri-environmental public goods.

Could collective action be an important driver of workable solutions regarding the provision of agri-environmental public goods through agriculture? Which are the main drivers that stimulate the participation of farmers into collective action? How can government stimulate collective action? At which level of government collective action can be better stimulated? What kinds of policies are necessary to promote collective action?

The book aims at addressing these questions by exploring, through participatory methods, two case studies of collective action for the provision of agri-environmental public goods that have been recently developed in Central Italy. The in-depth analysis of these case studies was completed with a critical review of the literature, in order to provide some insights to the theoretical development 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.