Environmental policies for agricultural pollution control

Book abstract:

This book explores the relationship between agricultural pollution and water quality and considers the opportunities for and challenges to improved policies and practices designed to create environmentally friendly agricultural production. The five contributors are professionals within the fields of agricultural economics and rural sociology and based mainly in the United States where they have been able to draw upon comprehensive environmental data to illustrate the significance of these problems.

Chapter 1 provides the background to agricultural pollutants and the kinds of damage they can cause. The contributors Horan and Shortle outline in Chapter 2 the major environmental instruments for agriculture and review the specialised theory of non-point pollution control that has emerged to help guide choices. Indirect approaches to reducing pollution including education programmes, research and development and others are covered in Chapter 3. Discussion moves on in Chapter 4 to empirical methods for analysing environmental policies for agriculture. Chapters 5 and 6 examine respectively the North American and European experiences in controlling water pollution from agriculture. The impact of international trade on the environment is addressed in the concluding chapter and indications are given as to the way forward in evaluating objectively the extent of that damage.

This book will be suitable for researchers, advanced students, lecturers and policy makers in the fields of agricultural and environmental economics, and environmental sciences.

D.G. Abler and J.S. Shortle are both with the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, College of Agricultural Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, USA.