How Are Ecological Approaches Justified In Eu Agricultural Policy? A Textual Analysis Of Cap And Rural Development Discourses Across Six Eu Member States

"This paper explores what types of policy discourses are used by national policy makers to communicate the rationales of ecological farming practices in policy documents of the Rural Development Programmes (RDP) of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). A hybrid form of discourse analysis and content analysis is used to analyze both CAP and rural development discourses between six EU member states (MS) and across three different CAP periods. Findings indicate that over the whole period 2000-2020 ecological approaches are related with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominant sub-discourses: i) nature conservation in all considered EU MS (except in Sweden); ii) agri-ruralism (including Sweden). The neomercantilist discourse becomes more and more prominent over time, appearing in third position in the two last CAP periods of 2007-2013 and 2014-2020. Agroecology and organic farming are among the most frequently mentioned types of farming system cluster."