Agriculture and the Polluter Pays Principle

This book addresses the application of the polluter pays principle to agricultural activities in a number of nations in the EU and North America. It was developed as a follow-up to the XVIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law (Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2006). The polluter pays principle requires that a polluter bear the expense of preventing, controlling, and cleaning up pollution. Agricultural practices result in both benefits and burdens to the environment. These practices often provide attractive rural landscapes and preserve valued habitats, but emissions from agricultural operations - livestock wastes, agricultural chemicals - may pollute the water, air, and soils or degrade the habitat and landscape. The time is opportune, therefore, to evaluate the application of the polluter pays principle to agricultural activities. Application of the principle to agriculture has raised particular difficulties, in part because the diffuse nature of emissions from agriculture poses regulatory obstacles and in part because agriculture is sometimes exempt from environmental controls that apply to other industries. Society's recent focus on environmental harms from agriculture, however, suggests that lawmakers may enact more stringent regulation.