This book presents the European Common Agricultural Policy by tracing its crucial stages from its conception to the present days. It reconstructs the negotiating processes that have taken place at the political and institutional level over the years. At the same time, the book brings together the results of analyses made by agricultural policy scholars to propose solutions, and to evaluate the policies adopted and the results they produced. The book takes on a twofold objective: to understand how many of today’s problems have roots whose branches extend back in time, and to draw, from the lessons of history, useful insights for endowing the European Union with an ambitious agricultural and rural development policy, suited to the challenges ahead.