Government policy for agriculture and rural areas.

This chapter deals with the problems agriculture and the rural economy faces and the policies used to tackle them. Following an introduction to the various steps in the policy process, specific problems and policies as they affect agriculture are discussed. These fall into two groups. First, there are policies of government to tackle general problems and which use agriculture in an instrumental way to achieve a policy aim. Second, there are policies to deal with problems arising from the economic characteristics of the agricultural industry itself - the intrinsic problems of agriculture.