OECD - Innovation, Productivity and Sustainability in Food and Agriculture

Since 2015, the OECD has published twelve OECD Food and Agricultural Reviews on Innovation, Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability, which were undertaken at the request of and in collaboration with national authorities. These reviews analyse the extent to which the policy environment improves innovation, productivity and sustainability in food and agriculture, using an analytical framework developed to that effect in the course of OECD work for the Committee for Agriculture and the G20.

This report presents the main findings from country reviews and related work on the impact of policies on agricultural productivity and sustainability, comparing the challenges and the policy environment for food and agriculture across reviewed countries. From that comparison, main policy lessons are drawn, illustrated by examples of good practices, which should be relevant for a wide set of countries.

Chapter 1 provides a stand-alone synthesis of the main findings from country reviews and related work. Chapters 2 to 7 contain more detailed, comparative information. Chapter 2 provides an overview of main productivity and sustainability challenges for food and agriculture in reviewed countries. Chapter 3 summarises findings on drivers of productivity and sustainability: innovation, structural change, and natural resource use and climate change. Chapters 4 to 6 discuss the extent to which agricultural policies, policies relating to the innovation system and the wider policy environment respectively facilitate innovation, productivity and sustainability in food and agriculture, and provide recommendations in these policy areas. Chapter 7 concludes with a discussion of policy coherence issues. Annex A contains the definition of concepts and indicators used in the report. Annex B contains an overview of reviewed countries, which contrasts their geographical and economic situation and the main characteristics of their food and agriculture system, including additional information on trends in agri-environmental performance. Annex C contains country-specific information on main opportunities and challenges for the national food and agriculture, and key recommendations for each policy area corresponding to main findings on policies in place as specified in their respective reviews.

This review was prepared by Catherine Moreddu and Guillaume Grure, with contributions from Morvarid Bagherzadeh, Dimitris Diakosavvas, Emily Gray, Shingo Kimura and Urszula Ziebinska. It also benefited from comments from other colleagues in the Trade and Agricultural Directorate and from countries delegates to the Working Party on Agricultural Policies and Markets. Martina Abderrahmane provided editorial assistance.

This document was declassified by the Working Party on Agricultural Policies and Markets on 25-26 March 2019.