Faut-il une intervention publique pour stabiliser les marchés agricoles ? Revue des questions non résolues

[paper in French] The stabilization of agricultural markets and incomes is, with the support of farm income, one of the initial objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These two objectives have long been reached simultaneously thanks to price support mechanisms. However, the successive CAP reforms have progressively replaced these instruments by a system of payments more and more decoupled from production and prices. The evolution of the CAP thus questions its price stabilizing aspect, and one can wonder whether new risk managing instruments (insurance, future markets, credits, storage) should be facilitated by the public authority. This article looks over different issues concerning, first the evaluation of agricultural market risks and their economic impacts, second the strengths and weaknesses of private risk managing instruments, and third the need for, and possible forms of, a public intervention to stabilize agricultural incomes. The conclusion underlines the unsolved issues, which will have to be dealt within order to determine whether a public intervention is optimal or not.