European agriculture and international trade in historical perspective, 1945–2000

Carin Martiin and Juan Pan-Montojo

Chapter 8 in Commodity Chains under Pressure, 2025, pp 164-185 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter summarises the main political, technological, economic, institutional, and social elements that characterised the European agricultural sector from the end of the Second World War (WWII) to 2000: a time of socio-political and economic-organisational shocks and the beginning of a process of convergence towards a uniform agricultural model. The analysis is structured in three chronological phases: the reconstruction after the Second World War; the 1950s and 1960s; and the decades following the 1970s crisis when globalisation accelerated, and the division of Europe came to an end. Throughout the whole postwar period, a uniform paradigm of state and agribusiness-led modernisation came to prevail. The changes were set in motion by political decisions, socio-cultural transitions, technological transformations, and structural processes. The external shocks, public and corporate policies, social reactions and intended and unintended results of them all are embedded in the highly productive, capital-intensive, and socially and environmentally unsustainable agriculture of today.

Keywords: Agriculture; Europe; Twentieth century; Institutions; Modernisation; Food trade; Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035355297
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