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SEMINAR 1998 |
THE ARKLETON TRUST
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[CONTENTS] [NEXT PAGE] |
3.2.1. A shift from agricultural to rural preference in the CAPThe issue here is whether 'rural preference' could be a feasible potential replacement for 'agricultural preference' in the Treaty of Rome. It refers both to the balance between agriculture and other activities and occupations within rural space and to the issue of rural-urban balance. Many commentators favour a re-focusing of attention, away from agriculture and towards other activities in rural areas, and the subsuming of sectoral policies like agriculture within a more inclusive and integrated rural policy founded on over-arching goals of social, environmental and economic sustainability. If this is accepted, it might be argued that 'rural preference' should replace 'agricultural preference'. However, farmers' interest groups might resist a transference of resources away from those policy measures formerly directed at them toward measures under which the whole rural population, including those in villages and small towns in selected target rural areas, is the client group.The rural development aspect has been gaining some influence over the agricultural policy agenda since the late 1980s. Integrated rural development retained a strong position with the MacSharry reform of the CAP (1992). Experience with the LEADER programme is considered positive and the Cork Declaration (1996) brought proposals for radical changes and hence new challenges. Even if the process was set back somewhat with Agenda 2000, the circumstances suggest that rural development and agriculture are coming closer together. However, a word of caution is needed in the debate about shift of policy preferences towards rural development. There is a danger that shifting from agricultural support to rural development support could result in traversing from one type of distortionary payments to another. New types of budget expenditure need to be justified on different grounds, and more strongly. Conceptual differences between rural and urban visions of regional policy need to be considered carefully, and it is in the mutual interest of the rural and urban worlds that potential collisions between them are avoided.
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