Lessons for US Agri-environmental Policy from the French Contrat Territorial d’Exploitation

Jean Michel Basquin and Thomas Dobbs ()
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Jean Michel Basquin: Department of Economics, South Dakota State University
Thomas Dobbs: Department of Economics, South Dakota State University

No 200501, Research Reports from South Dakota State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The Contrat Territorial d’Exploitation (CTE) (Territorial Contract of Farming) is an agrienvironmental program that was enacted in France in 1999 under the Loi d’Orientation Agricole (LOA) (Law of Agricultural Orientation). The CTE, which evolved into Contrat d’Agriculture Durable (Contract of Sustainable Agriculture) in 2003, strives to integrate sustainable rural development policy and agri-environmental policy. The program targets conservation of the French environment, rural economy, and rural population while taking the specificity of each region into consideration. The stakes and objectives of the CTE include a socio-economic component and an environmental and territorial component. The Conservation Security Program (CSP) is a European-style agri-environmental program that was created as part of the 2002 U.S. Farm Bill. It is multi-functional in nature, but as currently legislated has little emphasis on the rural development function. In the current paper, we analyze the CTE, as implemented in the Midi-Pyrénnées region of the southwest of France, to determine possible lessons for the U.S.’s CSP, should the CSP later be broadened to have some explicit focus on rural development. This analysis was done using a conceptual framework inspired by previous work by Billetti et al. on the integration of sustainable rural development and agri-environmental policy, Dobbs and Pretty on agriculture’s multifunctionality, Falconer, Dupraz, and Whitby on transactions costs, and Cornelia Flora on interactions between agroecosystems and rural communities. Among the potential lessons that U.S. agri-environmental policy can take from the French CTE with regard to sustainable rural development are: the need for agri-environmental policy and rural development policy to work hand in hand; the need to address human capital as a resource concern; the need to integrate the different types of capital in implementing agrienvironmental schemes; the need to find and maintain balance between top-down and bottom-up philosophies/strategies; the importance of collective action in achieving environmental goals of a particular region; and the importance of incentives for producers to explore commodity and product innovations that are likely to foster sustainable rural development.

Keywords: Agricultural Land; farmland; Cropland; CRP Land Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-10
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sda:rerepo:200501

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