Agriculture has always attracted attention from governments, policy-makers and planners. As a globalized industry, any policy that has agriculture at its core must also be globalized. This book examines the policy and planning of agriculture, in the wake of the global crisis in capitalism, using this framework to examine the regulatory processes that intersect with agriculture while giving analytical emphasis to the capitalist accumulation process and the institutions of social regulation. Its three main objectives are: to outline a theoretical framework and approach for analyzing developments in capitalist agriculture in advanced industrial economies; to explore policy and planning issues and problems emanating from agriculture at the end of the 20th century and to review policy and planning processes and practice appropriate to the new structural conditions facing agriculture. The book concludes with an overview of policy and planning processes and addresses the political choices that are revealed as being required.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Policy for agriculture: policy as a political issue; agriculture and policy. Part 2 A globalization perspective: a globalized model - a first view; the internationalization of capital; the regulation of capital; social relations of production and consumption; episodes of capitalist development; emergent capacities of organizations; a globalization perspective - an extended view; technological and organizational foundations of production and consumption; internationalization of the environment; a global consumption culture; towards a globalization perspective on agriculture. Part 3 Economic processes and agriculture; industrialization of agriculture; agro-commodity production systems; concentration, centralization and key organizations; co-ordination, integration and power relations; agriculture and the wider division of labour; globalized agriculture and emerging contradictions. Part 4 Agriculture and regulation: regulatory concepts; regulation, state and agriculture; food regimes - historical patterns; conceptual aspects; food regimes and national agricultures. Part 5 The US model of agricultural regulation: agro-economic context: facilitative federalism and production expansion; adjusting producers and productive potential; concerns, conflicts and commitment; agricultural policy framework; agricultural policy process; agriculture and trade; farm crisis in the 1980s; intenationalizing the domestic policy reform process; decoupling and the environment. Part 6 The EC and the Common Agricultural Policy: post-war reconstruction and agriculture; the common agricultural policy - co-existence of national agricultures; policy objectives and the initial framework; common pricing and financing regimes; evolution of the CAP - mechanisms and assumptions; milk quotas; budget stabilisers; structural adjustment; regulatory tensions - national, inter-governmental and supranational; intensification, specialization and diversification; from the world's top food importer to the world's second food exporter; the grain substitutes issue; CAP and food industry - CAP and the environment; CAP in the 1990s. Part 7 New Zealand and Australia and regulation for export; food regimes - thesis and counter thesis; state-led export expansion of New Zealand's livestock industries; agricultural policy and farmer responses; from sectoral to general macroeconomic management of agriculture; changes in the agriculture-finance relation; global exporters; feedlots in Australia and global integration. Part 8 The GATT and agriculture: formation of the GATT system; building a technical and political framework for trade liberalization; the Uruguay round; assessment. Part 9 The politics of globalized agriculture: the globalization thesis; agricultural structure, agricultural policy and globalization. (Part contents).