ABSTRACT
Few expect the restructuring of European agriculture to be either a quick or painless affair. Reducing over-capacity in any industry or sector requires a redistribution of income, wealth and power; it renders old skills and practices redundant and demands the development of new ones. It creates losers. These must be ‘bought-off’ or coerced if adjustment is to proceed. In some cases, the losers or potential losers of large-scale restructuring have been able to organise themselves politically in order to slow down the process or put it off altogether (Olson 1982). In agriculture the influence of the farm lobby in the post war period has meant that under a protectionist CAP agricultural adjustment is long overdue. There has been a failure to reallocate some of the land, labour and capital now held in productive farming into uses that, arguably, would bring greater benefits for society.
