Shifting transhumances : migration patterns in Mediterranean pastoralism

Abstract

The EU's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) accounts for about 40% of the overall EU budget. After its initial mandate to recover agriculture and food production in Europe in the aftermath of the II World War, CAP has been reformed through time to better take into account different aspects of European rural livelihoods. Subsidies from such policy have come to contribute filling the gap between harsher living conditions for EU rural dwellers (ie. lower access to basic services) and to compensate the rural-urban income divide (ie. rural workers in EU gain as an average about 60% of their urban peers – EU, 2011). Since the 1990s reforms have reframed the CAP 'welfare system' within a more multifunctional perspective; 2013 reform indicates that agriculture aims not only at delivering high quality food but also helps to manage our environment and fight climate change.