CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL-ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ANALYSIS

The knowledge base necessary to support informed agricultural-environmental policy involves many disciplines. This article presents a conceptual framework for agricultural-environmental policy analysis based on integration of disciplinary knowledge. The framework demonstrates that, with suitably coordinated data collection and research design activities, policy analysis can be conducted on the basis of disciplinary research. In other words, interdisciplinary data collection rather than interdisciplinary research is needed. Current publicly financed data generation efforts could serve agricultural-environmental policy needs if disciplinary expertise were used to ensure compatibility with disciplinary requirements while coordinating efforts so as to allow data integration for subsequent policy analysis.