Les concours publics à l'agriculture française : un bilan des aides de 1990 à 1997[Official Assistance to French Agriculture: a Review of Aid from 1990 to 1997]

In 1997, overall spending on French agriculture (including the financing of social security for farmers)came to nearly 170 billion French francs. Some 73 billion French francs of this was in the form of aid concerning more directly the farms as production units. This aid, or "official productive agriculture assistance", was made up mainly of expenditure to support the different agricultural products. It was provided either in the form of price maintenance and market support, such as storage aid and aid to exports, or in the form of direct: produce payments, such as the per hectare aid for cereals introduced by the 1992 CAP reform. Official assistance for productive agriculture also includes the funding of agricultural supply management mechanisms, such as compensation for set-aside and the , cessation of dairy production. These measures are. designed to prevent surplus from depressing the markets and raising the cost of products support. Among the other expenditure are various forms of investment grants and agricultural installation aid, long-standing pillars of agricultural policy, and subsidies to off set the disadvantages of geographic location (in the mountains or disadvantaged areas). The average sum of official productive agriculture assistance has risen from 55,000 French francs per farm in 1990 to over 1 00,000 French francs today. This increase has been driven by both thedownturn in the number of farms and the upturn in direct produce payments resulting from the 1992 CAP reform