This book edition is an effort to present topics of agricultural policy and specifically the policy of agricultural products. The decision to publish it was not easy but it was deemed necessary because there are not enough books with this content in our university publications.
The content of the book is aimed at agriculture students and its main purpose is to introduce them to the concepts of agricultural policy. The topics are presented with the utmost clarity and with examples, both theoretical and practical, in order to be understood by every reader who has basic knowledge of Agricultural Economics.
The book is divided into nine chapters, each dealing with a specific unit of related topics, but all together they form a continuity so that the various topics are interconnected.
The first chapter, which is also the Introduction, provides the complete definition of agricultural policy and clarifies the subject of Agricultural Product Policy. In the same chapter, the objectives and the necessity of agricultural policy and the policy of agricultural products are determined in order to clarify their role in Agricultural Economics. Finally, the main problems of the agricultural sector are presented in order to understand the contribution of the policy of agricultural products.
The second chapter presents in detail the most common policy measures that have been and are being implemented as policy in agricultural products. The measures are analyzed and the form and mechanism of their operation are presented in order to show their impact on their application subject.
The third chapter relates to the expression of the policy of agricultural products in the European Union and specifically to the Common Market Organizations (CMOs) of agricultural products. The mechanisms of their operation are described, as well as the support measures for the mechanisms. In this chapter, although there are forms of policy that have been abolished, they nevertheless give an idea of the policy measures that have been implemented in the past and the objectives of these measures.
The fourth chapter presents the bodies of agricultural policy, that is, the organizations and individuals, national and international, that are responsible for the exercise of agricultural policy.
The stages and design of agricultural policy measures are analyzed in detail in the fifth chapter. The proper design of a policy is of particular importance as it requires a series of elements and analyses and a series of priorities in order to achieve the most efficient agricultural policy plan for a specific agricultural product.
The estimation of the cost and the results of a measure or combination of measures is the subject of the sixth chapter. This chapter describes and presents methods and techniques for estimating costs and benefits from the implementation of various agricultural policy measures, whether they are applied individually or as a whole. The importance of this chapter lies in the fact that it includes representative methods that can be applied to almost all known policy measures with some modifications.
In the last three chapters, seventh, eighth, and ninth, the policies that have been implemented in three agricultural products are described. The historical reference to the implemented policies was deemed necessary to present both policy measures and their goals and results that are no longer applied today and played a significant role in the evolution of agricultural policy