How farms are structured in the EU has become the focus of increasing attention as a result of growing political concern over trends in farm consolidation and farmland concentration. This political interest has focused on different elements of structural change in EU agriculture. For some, the focus has been on land grabbing and the rise of large-scale land deals; for others, it is safeguarding the position of the family farm; for some, it is opposition to industrial farming and the growth of ‘mega’ farms; for others, it is defence of small farms, often seen as integral to food sovereignty; for some, the issue is generational renewal; while yet others focus on the decline in the overall number of farms. Common to all is the view that current patterns of farm structural change should be halted or even reversed.
Interestingly, this view is at variance with the objectives set out for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the Treaty of Rome and repeated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.… Read the rest