ABSTRACT
The period since 1985 has been one of remarkable change in domestic agricultural policy. Domestic reforms then allowed countries to bring agriculture within the scope of trade policy reforms, generally involving the removal of non-tariff barriers and the setting of low fixed tariffs against imports. This chapter highlights some of the reforms in countries other than the European Union and the US, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada and Japan. Each shows aspects of the reform that spread over the 1990s to include most of the industrialized world. The idea of a new paradigm for agricultural policy was explored explicitly by Coleman, Skogstad and Atkinson. The main characteristic of the "multifunctional" paradigm is that agriculture is viewed as a provider of public goods in addition to, and in many ways more important than its role as a producer of raw materials for the food industry.
