Agriculture and the Evolution of Agricultural Policies in the Mediterranean Partner Countries: Putting a Retrospective Overview in Context with Future Prospects

Konstadinos Mattas, Konstantinos Galanopoulos () and George Baourakis
Additional contact information
Konstadinos Mattas: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Konstantinos Galanopoulos: Democritus University of Thrace
George Baourakis: MAICh

Chapter Chapter 6 in Sustainable Agricultural Development, 2015, pp 145-169 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter provides a brief description of the main characteristics of the agricultural sectors in the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs), together with a short retrospective overview of the evolution of national agro-food policies, in an attempt to highlight the changes that occurred in the agro-food policy agendas in recent years. In this respect, some insights to the future evolution of natural agricultural policies are also made. Although agriculture constitutes a crucial element of the national economies of MPCs and remains a major source of employment in most cases, MPCs are faced with low self-sufficiency rates even for staple food and a large reliance on food imports. In the past, national agro-food policy agendas have traditionally relied on intervention, subsidisation and protectionism in order to protect domestic produce, but their effectiveness on increasing agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty remained questionable. During the last decades, most MPCs gradually began adopting a reform process that resulted in a more liberalised agricultural sector. These structural adjustments have indeed led to decreased levels of support, but evidence thus far, does not show compelling progress in productivity/competitiveness which is a necessity in order to increase food security and alleviate poverty in rural areas. Today, the EU is called to play a critical role in assisting the reform process. The EU would need to strengthen its relations with the region and introduce mechanisms to support the modernisation of agricultural sectors. Specific policies for assisting cooperation in research and rural development should become a priority.

Keywords: Agricultural Sector; High Unemployment Rate; Revealed Comparative Advantage; Producer Subsidy; Capita Export (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:comchp:978-3-319-17813-4_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319178134

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-17813-4_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Cooperative Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().