What does the public want from agriculture and the countryside? A review of evidence and methods

Multifunctional agriculture attempts to establish a new balance between traditional commodity support and payment for the production of non-market goods and services that are increasingly demanded by the public. Supplying non-market goods presents particular problems for optimal policy design, not least the elicitation of consumer demand for those goods. The resulting configuration of support policy has potentially enormous implications for rural areas and yet surprisingly little is known about how the public would prefer public support to be allocated. This seems to have more to do with the political expediency than true public preferences. We review the evidence of consumer demand for non-market goods and consider the methodologies used for eliciting public preferences regarding the policy tradeoffs that are likely to characterise the agri-industry reform debate.