@article{Young:171934,
      recid = {171934},
      author = {Young, Mike},
      title = {First or Second Best Solutions? Looking back on Australian  Agri-Environmental Policy from 2020},
      address = {2000-01},
      number = {411-2016-25760},
      pages = {10},
      year = {2000},
      abstract = {Drawing on statements emerging from Europe and North  America, what might an economic historian write  about
agri-environmental policy in 2020? Reflecting on the  last 20 years, the historian might report
• The emergence  of environmental assurance systems as a way to gain access  to international markets;
• The emergence of environmental  NGOs as sought-after drivers of agricultural - not  environmental - policy;
• The major international debate  about the extent of Australian agricultural subsidies and  European insistence
that Australian agricultural  externalities, because of failure to internalise  environmental externalities, was one
of the most subsidised  agricultural industries in the world;
• The embarrassing  flaw that emerged in national “cost-sharing” and  “investment-sharing” policies;
• The impact of a series of  AARES papers that led to the introduction of rural  landscape stewardship payments
and the removal of 50% of  the Australian agricultural and pastoral landscape from  production;
• A change in COAG focus from water allocation  to water quality and the impact of agriculture practices  on
other sectors;
• The mess we ended up in because we  granted the environment an absolute rather than prior right  in the
definition of water rights, fishing rights and  pollution rights;
• The huge “Kyoto” debates we had when  NFF suddenly realised that greenhouse gas emissions  from
agriculture were greater than those from the transport  industry;
• The rediscovery of regulation as the most  cost-effective way to manage catchment scale problems  not
efficiently internalised through paddock scale farm  management;
• The impacts of the national attempt to define  duty of care for each industry and each region which  emerged
from the National Land and Water Resources Audit’s  findings; and
• The re-emergence of tax policy as a vehicle  for delivery of incentives to the farm industry.
In short,  the two decades from 2000 to 2020 were the decades when  agri-politicians became environmental
spokespeople. A  footnote on page 10 of the economic historian’s paper  observed some new institutional and
academic arrangements.  In the “now” leading universities, faculties were organised  along trans-disciplinary lines.
AARES had merged with  several other societies. In 2020, it was no longer possible  to obtain a B. Ag. Ec. from an
Australasian University.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/171934},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.171934},
}