Policies and Measures for Multifunctional Agriculture: Experts' Insight

Multifunctionality of agriculture is with the growing importance in agricultural policies. The main argument behind multifunctionality is that agricultural production and thus, the whole agricultural sector has multiple roles, not just to produce food and fiber, but also to provide several non-market commodities. Although agricultural policies in Europe set more and more emphasis on the importance of these non-commodity outputs it is hard to find policy measures designed directly for multifunctionality. The aim of our study is to find out actual and preferred policy measures in order to improve and/or to maintain the multifunctional role of agriculture. We have interviewed 24 Finnish experts about multifunctional agriculture and agricultural policy related issues, by using applied policy Delphi method. The results show, that a wider role of agriculture is highly acknowledged among Finnish experts. However, in its broadest definition, no undivided acceptance for the concept of multifunctionality was found. The policy measures part gives evidence that also the current policy measures included in the EU's Common Agricultural Policy have elements that improve multifunctionality, especially those in the agri-environmental support scheme. Yet, there is a need for targeted measures based on different national, regional and local agricultural conditions. In addition, the implementation of these measures needs more cooperation between different sector policies as well as among the different operators in the whole supply chain