Abstract

The paper critically analyzes the trajectories of EU agricultural and rural policies, exploring their link to the economic, social, and environmental crises of the last few decades and drawing a balance of their outcomes. In doing so, the authors focus on ongoing patterns of agrarian change shedding light on the complex and multifaceted features of the European agri-food system, as characterized by the hybridization of diverse agricultural models and non-linear processes of rural differentiations. In this respect, EU agricultural and rural development policies, within the context of the ‘corporate-environmental food regime’, have played a key role. In particular, the article makes the point that the various attempts to reform EU agriculture and provide responses to the ecological crisis have produced an ‘institutional ambiguity’, which, in turn, reflects a range of unresolved tensions and conflicts underpinning the EU agri-food system, where discourses about sustainability are contended among actors with divergent interests and vision of rural development. Against this background, new general tendencies are emerging entailing both risk and opportunities for the building of a more sustainable EU agri-food system.

摘要

本文批判性地分析了欧盟农业和农村政策的轨迹，探讨了它们与过去几十年的经济、社会和环境危机的联系，并对其结果进行了权衡。在此过程中，作者重点研究了正在进行的农业变化模式，揭示了欧洲农业食品系统复杂且多方面的特征，其特点是多种农业模式的混合和农村分化的非线性过程。在这方面，欧盟农业和农村发展政策在“企业环境食品制度”的背景下发挥了关键作用。文章特别指出，改革欧盟农业和应对生态危机的各种尝试产生了“制度模糊性”，反过来，具有不同利益和农村发展愿景的行动者之间就可持续性展开了争论。在此背景下，新的总体趋势正在出现，这为建立更可持续的欧盟农业食品体系带来了风险和机遇。