A policy perspective on the sustainability of production environments: toward a land theory of value

This article considers policy issues to maintain and improve agricultural productivity, while at the same time protecting environmental benefits and minimizing the environmental damages of modern agricultural production methods. The study is divided into four parts. Part I provides a basic description of the agricultural production process as a dynamic flow, producing not only commodities but environmental advantages and disadvantages (damages). Part II discusses the research agendas that have influenced this production process, and the conflicts between traditional commodity-oriented research and the newer environmental research agenda. Part III takes up the common ground uniting these two agendas: a concern for the uses of land and the effects of this use on both commodity and environmental flows. Part IV offers some specific recommendations for reforms in land policy and targeting at the national level, the farm level, and the implications of these reforms for agricultural research systems. -from Author