Agriculture and Environmental Policy: Recent United States and Australian Developments

Agricultural development in both the United States and Australia has led to suboptimal levels of environmental degradation, While both countries face similar forms of agricultural environmental degradation, the different resource endowment and population distributions have resulted in a different incidence of the costs of these problems. Increasing demand for environmental services and better information on off-site damages have led to increasing demand for reform of agricultural, rural development, and environmental progmms to eliminate biases against practices viewed as more environmental y compatible, Although Australia and the United States have many political and cultural features in common, their re-sponse to similar forms of environmental degra-dation often differs. These differences can be used to examine the factors shaping environmental pol-icy. Differences between U.S. and Australian ag-ricultural and rural-development policies, resource endowments, attitudes toward environmental qual