Sustainable development of agriculture: policy formulation and assessment of constraints

Rasa Melnikienė, Ovidija Eičaitė, Artiom Volkov

Abstract


The theory of sustainable development has become a key concept according to which the European Union and other developed countries have been formulating the long term agricultural policy over the past few decades. Applying this theory into practice, the challenges which derive from the integrity of the objectives of sustainable development are being faced. The different achievements of various countries indicate that the effectiveness of sustainable development policy depends not only on how the various levels of institutions manage to reconcile environmental, social and economic objectives but also on whether the system of sustainability assessment immediately signalizes about the lack of implementation of the measures and creates the prerequisites for a timely policy review. This paper, by applying the different models of sustainable development, presents the principles for developing a system of sustainability assessment of agriculture with a focus on the identification of sustainability constraints arising in relation to insufficient reproduction of environmental, human and manmade capital. The system of sustainability assessment of agriculture in this paper is based on the interdependence of environmental, social and economic factors and aims to determine the causes of unsustainable development and allows to define the contribution and need for an intervention of the various levels of institutions in the implementation of sustainable agricultural development policy.

Keywords


sustainable development, agricultural policy, sustainability assessment, reproduction of capital

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.13165/VPA-18-17-2-06

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