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Working Lands Agri-Environmental Policy Options And Issues For The Next U.S. Farm Bill, Thomas Dobbs

Economics Staff Paper Series

U.S. farm legislation is due to be updated in 2007, to become effective with the 2008 crop year. Major questions surround the role of environmental or conservation provisions in the new Federal farm bill. In this paper, I first present some background on the evolution of U.S. 'agri-environmental policies'-policies encompassing conservation of agriculture's natural resources and agriculture's impact on the environment. I follow that with a brief discussion of the concept of' multifunctionality' in agriculture, a concept that increasingly is driving discussions of agri-environmental policy options in Europe and the U.S. The subsequent section of the paper contains discussion of …