The new Rural Development Regulation of the EU reflects the shift of attention within rural areas from agricultural production towards rural development and embraces both, farmers and non-farm residents. While agricultural production is required to comply with environmental standards, rural...

In order to stimulate organic farming governments generally use a mix of temporary hectare payments and provision of public services for stimulating the development of the organic sector. In this paper a conceptual model is developed for determining a socially optimal hectare payment for any...