The development of European agriculture over the 1990s presents a mixed picture as far as the environment is concerned. On the one hand, the trend towards more intensive and industrialised agriculture has continued, driving large-scale use of fertilisers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides, and the continued pollution of Europe's waters.

As a result, some of the sector's most pressing environmental problems remain as serious now as they were a decade ago. Moreover, the increasing competition in the sector has seen some farmland abandoned and jobs lost in marginal areas - farmland now accounts for 44% of the EU's land area, down from 49% in 1980.

On the other hand, the 1990s saw a number of new trends develop, driven probably in part by public unease which was strengthened by the arrival of BSE, or "mad cow disease". The amount of land devoted to organic agriculture, for example, is growing rapidly and is expected to reach 5-10% of the EU's farmland by 2005. The "agri-environment" measures within the EU's Common Agricultural Policy have also been adopted more quickly than predicted.

These positive trends, however, are only a beginning: while the share of the CAP's budget which is tied to environmental improvement doubled during the 1990s, for example, it is still only 10%. The overall view is of an industry which is becoming increasingly divided between marginal areas, supported by a variety of regulations and subsidies, and areas of highly intensive and unsustainable agriculture.