There is a lack of knowledge about the effectiveness and efficiency of soil conservation policies in agriculture and there is a little understanding of how policy measures should be designed to encourage farmers to adopt soil conservation practices. This paper analyses institutional settings surrounding agricultural soil management in ten European countries based on the Institutions of Sustainability (IoS) framework. This framework considers the interdependencies between ecological and social systems, taking into account environmental conditions, farming practices impacting on soil conservation, different types of actors, policies, institutions and governance structures. The purpose of this paper is to describe the analytical framework and the methodology that all case studies are based on, present and discuss compared findings, outline implications for successful soil conservation policy and draw conclusions on the methodological approach. The case studies focused on the main soil degradation types occurring across Europe which are addressed by a broad range of mandatory and incentive policies. The findings highlight the following issues: (i) the need to design policies that target the locally most common soil threats and processes in the light of agricultural management; (ii) the need to take farming management constraints into consideration, (iii) the need for good communication and cooperation both between agricultural and environmental authorities as well as between governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders; (iv) the necessary mix of mandatory and incentive instruments and (v) the need for data and monitoring systems allowing the evaluation of the effectiveness of policies and soil conservation practices.

Six of the soil degradation processes recognised at European Union (EU) level are closely linked to agriculture. Soil degradation implies a need for protection, maintenance and improvement of soil quality. However, due to the public good characteristics of soil quality, the market does not sufficiently assure its provision. Thus, policy intervention is required to reach desired levels of soil quality through appropriate practices. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of EU policies that have scope for addressing soil degradation in agriculture. To this aim, EU legislation and legislative proposals along with related evaluations and research projects were analysed with the intervention logic approach.To date, soil protection is not a specific objective of EU legislation but features in some policies as a secondary objective. Pursuing other environmental objectives contributes to some extent to soil quality, although not always effectively. The most important EU environmental directives for soil quality are the Nitrates Directive and the Water Framework Directive.Under the Common Agricultural Policy, the compulsory requirement to keep land in good agricultural and environmental condition plays an important role in soil protection and conservation. Rural development policy, in particular agri-environment measures, offers Member States or regions options for encouraging farmers to achieve environmental quality beyond a predefined reference level.Overall, the study indicates that the existing EU policies have the potential to address all recognised soil degradation processes across the EU. Nevertheless, they should be well targeted and require appropriate farm management in order to reach desired levels of soil quality.

This paper revisits the literature on farm restructuring in the CEECs by analysing the variations in farm performance in the Czech Republic a decade after the start of the transition process. It identifies seven clusters of farms that differ in their productivity and profitability usng data from 1998 and 1999. The analysis reveals that the vast majority of farms are unprofitable, and there is no strong evidence that individual farms perform better than corporate farms. In fact, there are large numbers of individual farms that are loss‐making on their agricultural activity with low factor productivity. Producer co‐operatives and limited liability companies suffer from debts inherited from the reform process. Future restructuring is likely to occur in all clusters rather than affecting just corporate farms.

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