Law, Agriculture, and the Environment: Stimulating Production While Respecting Nature

Presented at the seminar on 'Environmental Protection and Rational Management of Natural Resources' in Meknes in June 1987, this paper interrogates the capacity of law to reconcile the imperative of stimulating agricultural production with the requirements of environmental protection, from a comparative law perspective. The author starts from the historically ambivalent relationship between agriculture and nature: while agriculture long benefited from natural generosity, it has in recent decades — under the effect of misdirected economic incentives and demographic pressure — become one of the principal sources of natural equilibrium degradation, soil and water pollution, and biodiversity destruction. The legal analysis focuses on economic incentives (subsidies, grants, tax advantages, subsidised credit) in comparative agricultural law, demonstrating that they are 'a double-edged weapon': capable of encouraging nature-friendly production if well targeted, but capable of generating lasting negative environmental impacts if dispensed indiscriminately. The author calls for a reform of Moroccan agricultural law making the granting of economic incentives conditional upon compliance with explicit environmental standards, using law as a lever for transforming agricultural practices towards production models integrating ecological sustainability as a condition of long-term productivity.