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Soil degradation can have serious negative impacts on agricultural production and the environment. However, it is only since the 1980s that awareness on the negative impacts of agricultural intensification on water and soil resources has been expressed in agricultural policies and soil conservation interventions (see Louwagie et al., in this volume). Although in some regions soil conservation practices have been applied for centuries (eg olive terraces in the Mediterranean), in other regions (in particular in Northwest Europe) soil conservation practices are only recently introduced through agricultural policies. For example, only in the late 1990s attention was given for the first time to protecting soil quality and controlling soil erosion in the ‘Code of Good Agricultural Practice’in the UK (Boardman, 2003). Until the 1980s, agricultural policies in Europe were based on a production paradigm. Governments supported agriculture with subsidies and technical advice to increase domestic food production for food security reasons. By the early 1980s, however, concern about overproduction, burgeoning costs of support, and environmental damage associated with intensive farming, questioned the validity of continuing the predominantly production regime. A new paradigm emerged which focused on the multi-functionality of agriculture and the importance of non-market environmental goods and services associated with agriculture (Banks and Marsden, 2000). The problems associated with intensive agriculture such as overproduction, diffuse pollution, soil degradation and loss of wildlife, as well as the World Trade Organization negotiations, have led to a …