The book analyses agricultural economics and food policy in New Zealand, where farming produce has been by far the main export commodity. Farming exports' importance, together with the need to diversify exports away from a former colonial relationship with the UK, makes liberalising agricultural trade a major concern for New Zealand. Farmers, themselves, have influenced, significantly, policy development and implementation through their organisation, Federated Farmers. After World War II farmers at first encouraged Government financial support for farming and by the 1980s farming was highly subsidised. Farmers recognised in the 1980s that New Zealand's economic problems demanded reduced Government intervention and accepted ending farming subsidies. New Zealand then encouraged, globally, 'farming without subsidies'. New Zealand projected an image of environmental cleanliness and greenness in support of its exporting but into the 21st century wrestled to maintain thatimage because farming impacted on water quality and climate change emissions.

Thoroughly analyzes an organization exerting influence on behalf of a rural community Explains the broad range of pressures on rural communities The first comprehensive history of Federated Farmers

Autorentext

David Hall completed a career in space science and retired from his post as Director of Science at the British National Space Centre before he studied Humanities and History at the Open University, UK, graduating in 2010. He moved to New Zealand in 2011 and completed a PhD at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 2016. An adaptation of his dissertation was published by Palgrave in 2017, entitled Emerging from an Entrenched Colonial Economy: New Zealand Primary Production, Britain and EEC, 1945-1975. At Victoria University he tutored courses on North American history and Modern European history. His forthcoming book, New Zealand's Invisible Women, is on the role of farm wives in New Zealand. ****

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Coming Together to Work Collectively.- Chapter 3: Struggling Towards a Unified Organisation.- Chapter 4: Emerging from wartime conditions.- Chapter 5: Impact nationally and internationally.- Chapter 6: Farming anxieties and a more favourable Government.- Chapter 7: The weakening relationship with the UK and market diversification.- Chapter 8: Growing farmer influence on Government.- Chapter 9: Domestic matters for meat, dairy and agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s.- Chapter 10: Wool: prosperity then reform .- Chapter 11: Impact of the European Economic Community (EEC).- Chapter 12: Encouraging Government support for farming.- Chapter 13: Subsidisation keeps growing.- Chapter 14: Subsidies at their maximum and their death.- Chapter 15: A comprehensive strategy for agricultural economics and food policy.- Chapter 16: Enforced change in farming practices.- Chapter 17: Reforming their own organization.- Chapter 18: Producer Boards' reform.- Chapter 19: Reform to reduce farming costs.- Chapter 20: Environment.- Chapter 21: Water Quality - 'clean and green' versus 'dirty dairying'.- Chapter 22: Farming and Mori, New Zealand's indigenous people.- Chapter 23: Difficult times in the new millennium.- Chapter 24: Increasing pressures on farming from the outside world.- Chapter 25: Trade Agreements.- Chapter 26: Future Agricultural Economics and Food Policy? <p