This paper aims to question the rationale for choosing agricultural subsidies as efficient incentive mechanisms for the provision of environmental services by agriculture with a special emphasis on rural landscapes. We emphasise the need to resort to both the demand side and supply side aspects of agricultural multifunctionality. First, we underline the importance of resorting to the concept of jointness when analysing the conditions in which the provision of environmental services by rural landscapes is achieved as well as the operational limits of such a concept. Second, we analyse the difficulties that the evaluation of social demand for the rural landscapes which are associated with agricultural activities brings about. In particular, the problems for quantifying the economic values that are attached to the spatial attributes of these landscapes are mentioned.