Their agricultural policies reflect the heterogeneity of the roles that agriculture plays in their economies. Irrespective of the structural differences across countries, they share a set of common goals that drive their agricultural policies: enabling the economic viability of the agricultural sector and rural areas more generally, producing enough and nutritious food to cater to the needs of growing and more affluent global populations, and improving the long-term environmental sustainability of food production. Policy approaches attach different weights to these shared goals.
Collectively, the countries covered in this report transferred an annual average of US$601 billion (€450b) to agricultural producers in the years 2012-14, as measured by the OECD Producer Support Estimate (PSE), and they spent an additional US$135b (€103b) on general services that support the overall functioning of the sector.
Average levels of support to agricultural producers in OECD countries and in emerging economies are converging: emerging economies, on average, have passed from taxing their agriculture in the 1990s to providing significant levels of support, while the historically very high level of support across the OECD area, on average, has declined. In recent years some large emerging economies have begun to reach the average level of support provided by OECD countries. Across all 49 countries covered in this report, 18% of gross farm receipts in 2014 stem from public policies that support farmers.
For the OECD area as a whole, gradual progress has also been made in moving away from policy instruments such as market price support and input subsidies and towards policies that do not directly influence farm production decisions.
This has occurred to different degrees and at different speeds, with changes particularly slow in the group of countries with the highest levels of support and protection. Some steps have been made towards addressing expressed long-term priorities such as environmental sustainability, innovation and risk management.
Those efforts should be reinforced. At the same time, some emerging economies are moving in the opposite direction, increasing the use of price and production-linked support policies. Across all 49 countries, 67% of support to farmers is directly linked to prices, output, or input use without constraints.
