Scientists have found that consumers influence public policy formulation through demand and that the focus on consumers' viewpoints in agricultural public policymaking generates successful policies and programs.
Agriculture is a demanding and resourceful industry. However, the industry faces multiple challenges, of which consumer behavior is the most identifiable. Policies are required to reverse the challenges experienced in agriculture. Nonetheless, in policymaking, the self-improving relationship between evidence and search is absent.
A recent scientific article published in January 2020 in the journal Revista de Política Agrícola, found that end consumers are the dominant stakeholders of most agriculture public policy. Consumers play the most imperative role in the decision-making process of public policy in agriculture, specifically in areas of public policy formulation like demand and choice and policy evaluation. Additionally, consumers’ confidence, attitudes, emotions, culture, and consumer's willingness to pay are imperative to the implementation and adherence to policy.
Although there are many limitations to this review, the researchers confirmed that consumers, as actors in public policy, are crucial to policy creation in the field of agriculture, as well as in the achievement of high-level sustainable agricultural public policy. The researchers further recommend empirical research to specifically investigate consumers as actors in formulating public policies.
Original Study:
LOUIS, T. J. S. & FILHO, M. X. P (2020). The consumer in the process of building agricultural public policies. Revista de Política Agrícola, n. 1, p. 14, 2020. ISSN: 2317-224X.