ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the ways that income is measured in the context of agricultural policy. It will soon be obvious that emphasis in official monitoring by the European Union (EU) up to the present has fallen almost completely on the income derived from agricultural productive activity. The chapter reviews the various aggregate indicators employed by the EU and UK, the general methodology underlying them and the pictures they describe. It then goes on to give a similar treatment to the microeconomic measures. Even in the absence of an agricultural policy with specific income aims, an account of the economic activities of the agricultural industry would have to be made. Aggregate economic accounts for agriculture have been published within the European Union since 1964, and from 1969 onwards the six original Member States adopted the common definitions and procedures of the EU’s Economic Accounts for Agriculture.
