Question

What are the reasons for and against treating agriculture differently from a legal and policy standpoint? (2) Should agriculture be exempted from environmental, labor, and antitrust laws?

Answer 1

1) Human expansion throughout the world caused that agriculture is a dominant form of land management globally. Human influence on the land is accelerating because of rapid population growth and increasing food requirements. To stress the interactions between society and the environment, the driving forces (D), pressures (P), states (S), impacts (I), and response (R) (DPSIR) framework approach was used for analyzing and assessing the influence of agriculture on land use, environment, and ecosystem services. The DPSIR model was used to identify a series of core indicators and to establish the nature of interactions between different driving forces, pressures, states, impacts, and responses. We assessed selected indicators at global, national, and local levels. Driving force indicators describe growing population trend and linking land‐use patterns. The driving forces exert pressure on the environment assessed by indicators describing development in fertilizer and pesticides consumption, by number of livestock, and by intensification joined growing release of ammonia and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, and water abstraction. The pressure reflects in the state of environment, mainly expressed by soil and water quality indicators. Negative changes in the state then have negative impacts on landscape, e.g., traditional landscape disappearance, biodiversity, climate, and ecosystem services. As a response, technological, economic, policy, or legislation measures are adopted.

Land cover and land‐use patterns on Earth reflect the interaction of human activities and the natural environment . Human population growth together with competitive land use causes land scarcity, conversion of wild lands to agriculture and other uses. As we can see, the anthropogenic factor has an important impact on land use and land cover changes. Given this human influence, especially during the past 100 years, the recent period has been called the Anthropocene Age . Human influence on the land and other natural resources is accelerating because of rapid population growth and increasing food requirements. The increasing agricultural intensity generates pressure not only on land resources but also across the whole environment. These factors make agriculture a top‐priority sector for both economic and environmental policy.

Comprehensive assessment of the agriculture is a challenging task. There are different possibilities and methods for such assessment. To stress the interactions between society and the environment, the DPSIR framework approach is used for analyzing and assessing the influence of agriculture on land use and environment with emphasis on Slovakia.

Agriculture is a special and problematic case not only in international trade regulation, but also in antitrust law. Special exemptions of the agricultural sector from the full application of competition rules can be found in most jurisdictions. This article discusses these exemptions as they exist in four jurisdictions - the USA, the EU, the UK and Israel - and compares between them and their rationales in each respective system. It shows how the exemption is a product of a country's political economy and ideology and of the role that agriculture has played in its history. The article refutes the claim that the Israeli exemption is simply an imitation of other jurisdictions by showing that none of the agricultural exemptions in these foreign jurisdictions is nearly as wide as that adopted and still maintained in Israel. Rather, this wide agricultural exemption is a result of mighty economic and political interests of the Labor Movement and its affiliated Kibbutz and Moshav agricultural cooperatives. Like in the EC, the exemption was also a part of a general agricultural policy that favored heavy involvement of the government in this sector and protection of farmers' interests, often at the expense of consumers. However, even after this policy has been changed and replaced by deregulation and free market policies, the agricultural lobby and other powerful commercial interests have managed to thwart government attempts to abolish or limit the exemption. It is also shown how this exemption may violate international trade agreements, such as GATT and bilateral FTAs. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible rationales for a special exemption for the agricultural sector and its desired confines and mechanics. Based on this normative analysis, the article proposes amendments to the existing exemptions in these four jurisdictions.