The Recent Trends of Portuguese Agriculture

摘要

New, challenging prospects are opening for rural development in the European Union. These are based on the most recent decisions for the European Common Agricultural Policy, a package of instruments to transfer funds, until 2013, from agricultural direct payments into the rural development budget. If we consider that the set of measures indicate a clear signal for the meaning attributed to rural development, we should also accept that we are facing the creation of a diversified context for agriculture and above all for the rural world. Before being able to enter in such detailed analyses we will observe the composition of agricultural accounts by sector, trying to understand the justification for this performance from both the internal perspective and the international markets trends. Along the last twenty years no target was clearly defined to find a link between the food processing and the agricultural production. We have seen that the recent CAP reforms can be also used to drive the future of Portuguese agriculture towards more sustainable pathways and we hope for their achievement. The impact of this adjustment on the regions shows an increasing tendency for asymmetric development characterised by growing population rates in the littoral areas and exodus from the hinterlands.