ABSTRACT
Agricultural policy in the European Union (EU) is primarily concerned with the incomes of farmers, as are the national policies of most industrialised countries. In the 1990s much attention was given to the need to recast the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for budgetary reasons, to enable a more rational use of resources in an interdependent world and for the future development of the Union. These changes were constrained by objections related primarily to incomes. Non-farm incomes help raise the total incomes of agricultural households to levels that in many countries, on average, compare favourably to national all-households averages, dispelling the myth that farmer households are particularly poor as a group. In an ideal world, information would be available to policy-makers and analysts on both the incomes from agricultural production at industry and farm-firm levels and the personal incomes of farmers and their households.
