The capitalisation of agricultural techniques has placed heavy pressure on the expertise of West Germany's enterprise owners, and it is a general rule nowadays that competence in running a farm is closely related to the farmer's amount and mode of specialist training. Government-inspired agricultural policies in West Germany have never been in full accord with the economic rationale of productive efficiency and free competition. Since 1957 farming in West Germany has been greatly affected by the policies of the EEC. It can be argued strongly that the vast amounts of money spent on subsidising production are using up finance which could otherwise be directed to improving the farming structures of the EEC's backward rural regions. Heavily disadvantaged both by its generally unfavourable physical conditions and by the various detrimental effects of its historic legacy, farming in West Germany places an overriding demand for sweeping structural improvements.