Should the govt take a long-term approach to tackling agri crises?
The agricultural sector is facing more frequent and interconnected global shocks, with increasing economic impact.
Against this backdrop, global government support to agriculture has increased, exceeding $950 billion in 2025, up nearly 15% since 2023.
Today (Monday, November 2), the OECD has launched a report - Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2026 - which examines how governments are responding to these developments.
The report identifies opportunities to make agricultural support more effective, forward‑looking and better aligned with resilience, productivity, and sustainability.
Government support to agriculture increased by nearly 15%, or more than $121 billion, between 2023 and 2025.
According to the OECD, this increase has reversed a long‑term decline relative to production.
This comes as agriculture faces more frequent and interconnected global shocks, with increasing economic impact.
Yet, the OECD has found that while this calls for predictable and forward‑looking policies, governments often use reactive, short‑term measures in response to successive crises.
Not keeping pace
Agricultural productivity growth is slowing, while public investment in the systems that support long‑term resilience and productivity is failing to keep pace, according to the report.
Spending on general services such as infrastructure, research, and innovation averaged $118 billion annually in 2023‑2025, across the 56 countries covered.
However, it fell from 4.6% to 2.4% of agricultural production since the early 2000s.
The report indicates that investment in agricultural knowledge and innovation systems now amounts to around 0.5% of sector value, roughly half the level observed in 2000‑2002.
Consumer costs
The report outlines how agricultural support affects consumers as well as farmers.
Policies that raise domestic food prices mean consumers also bear part of the cost of agricultural support, outweighing direct support they receive in some countries.
Across the countries covered, consumers were implicitly taxed by an estimated $204 billion per year through agricultural support policies in 2023‑2025, equivalent to 4.4% of consumer spending at primary product prices.
What should governments do?
The OECD is urging governments to take a more pro-active preventative approach, rather than continuing to respond to crises after they have begun.
It outlines some measures which it considers important:
- Reduce distortive support and target policies more effectively;
- Reinforce risk preparedness to minimise the need for ad hoc crisis responses;
- Invest more in long-term resilience through research, innovation, and infrastructure;
- Better align agricultural policies with sustainability objectives.
The OECD has said that governments should reduce reliance on policies that distort production, prices and trade, while replacing them with targeted risk management tools and outcome‑orientated incentives.
The aim would be to improve the effectiveness of public spending while strengthening resilience, productivity and sustainability.
Also, the report suggests that governments should help agriculture anticipate, adapt and respond to future shocks.
"Stable and predictable policy frameworks and open international markets can strengthen resilience and help safeguard food security, reducing the need for short‑term, ad hoc support measures," the report stated.
In response to a question about the importance of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from Agriland, senior agricultural policy analyst for the OECD, Martin Von Lampe said: "Food security is a shared objective across OECD countries, but the EU has the additional challenge of finding how to combine national flexibility with joint action.
"The Common Agricultural Policy gives member states room to adapt support to their own farming systems, while common rules and objectives help preserve the single market and address shared EU objectives such as climate and sustainability.
"Getting that balance right matters as much as the amount spent. Targeting of interventions is also very important.
"In the EU, a large share of support is provided with only limited links to specific criteria, providing broad income support largely related to the size of each farm, irrespective of their income situation or support needs," he said.
The analyst explained that when governments face competing budget priorities, including defence, there are "opportunities to rethink" how existing agricultural support is used rather than only how much is spent.
Von Lampe stressed that the overall size of an agricultural budget is not, on its own, a good guide to how well it supports long-term food security.
"What matters most is how support is designed and delivered," he continued.
"OECD monitoring across more than 50 countries shows that a large share of agricultural support is still provided through market price support and payments tied to the production of specific commodities.
"These measures tend to be less effective at building long-term resilience than investments in innovation, knowledge systems, infrastructure and sustainable resource management, which strengthen the sector’s capacity to cope with shocks over time."
The OECD analyst has suggested that redirecting part of current support towards these public investments, and towards targeted, well-designed risk management tools, can help maintain or improve food security outcomes within tighter budget envelopes.
"Open and predictable trade also remains an important part of food security, as it helps countries absorb local production shocks," he said.
