Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2026

Executive Summary

Agricultural support increased by 15% in the past two years, against a backdrop of increasing global risks

This 2026 Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation report provides the latest figures on government support to agriculture, along with an in-depth analysis of agricultural policies. The report includes Egypt and Peru for the first time, increasing coverage to 56 countries.

As shocks become more frequent and interconnected, policy responses remain largely reactive

The agricultural sector is operating in a context of more frequent and interconnected global shocks, with increasing economic impact. Most recently, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime corridor linking Gulf energy producers with global markets, has added pressure to markets for agricultural inputs and, indirectly, products. These pressures are intensifying volatility in agricultural markets and exposing vulnerabilities in food systems. While these developments call for predictable, forward-looking policies that strengthen resilience, sustainability and risk management, recent experience shows that governments often use reactive, short-term measures in response to successive crises. In 2025-26, more than 30 emergency responses have been identified across countries in response to extreme weather events and natural disasters alone.

Against this backdrop, total support to the sector, which averaged USD 885 billion per year in 2023‑25, increased to a new high at more than USD 950 billion in 2025, USD 121 billion or nearly 15% above 2023. Increases in emerging economies are driven primarily by higher market price support, while in OECD countries, the increase is predominantly budgetary payments, including significant ad hoc disaster support. This increase in support has reversed decades of declines relative to production. Between 2023 and 2025, relative support to the sector in the 56 countries covered in the report has jumped from 17.6% of production value to 19.1%.

Existing policies are not fully aligned with this complex risk environment

Public support to agriculture continues to be based largely on policies that alter market prices. Such price-altering policies reduce farmers’ responsiveness to changing production and market conditions. Despite longstanding recognition of their distorting effects, these and other policies that incentivise the production of certain commodities or the use of certain inputs continue to account for a large share of total support: in 2023-25, nearly half of all support provided to the sector has come in potentially most distorting forms. Large variation in relative support levels across countries and commodities compounds the negative effect of market distortions on the resilience of the sector including through its effects on global markets and trade.

During 2023‑25, support to individual farmers averaged USD 661 billion per year across all countries measured, about 13% of farm revenues. However, support is unevenly distributed across countries. In some countries, such as Norway and Switzerland, support represents around 50% of gross farm receipts, indicating strong dependence of farm incomes on policy. By contrast, in countries such as Viet Nam and Argentina, policies depress domestic prices below world price levels, resulting in transfers from farmers to consumers equal to more than 10% of farm receipts in those countries. In the newly covered countries Egypt and Peru, producer support accounts for 12.6% and 6.4% of farm receipts, respectively.

Emerging economies are playing an increasingly important role in shaping global support patterns as they account for a growing share of both production (67%) and government support (58%). This matters because they tend to rely more heavily on policies that raise or lower domestic prices relative to prevailing world prices (market price support – MPS) or other potentially most distorting forms of support, notably for input use without constraints. These policies contribute to rigid agricultural production systems and greater variability in measured support, with stronger impacts on the incentives of both producers and consumers. As a result, they reduce the sector’s capacity to adjust to shocks and evolving risks.

Support also varies significantly across commodities. Products such as sugar, rapeseed, maize and milk receive particularly high levels of attention, while others are less targeted. Within countries, support is often concentrated on a limited number of commodities, creating large differences in incentives across production activities.

The uneven application of most distorting forms of support across countries and commodities, further reduces resource-use efficiency. While some countries have reduced production-linked support, more work remains to be done. Overall, the global policy landscape remains poorly aligned with the need for a more resilient and efficient agricultural sector that can handle evolving risks proactively.

Public investment is not keeping pace with the need for sector transformation

Strengthening resilience and sustainable productivity growth are the best response to systemic risks. Resilience enables farmers to manage shocks, while productivity growth supports long-term profitability and – if targeted well – environmental performance. However, investments in the conditions that underpin these outcomes have not kept pace and productivity growth is slowing. Globally, total factor productivity growth declined from 1.8% per year between 1991 and 2000 to 0.8% between 2014 and 2023.

This productivity slowdown coincides with a relative decline in investment in public goods. Expenditures on general services (which includes things like infrastructure, research and development, and innovation) averaged USD 118 billion annually in 2023‑25. However, as a share of the value of agricultural production, general services fell from 4.6% in 2000‑02 to 2.4% in 2023–25. This indicates that spending on general services is rising in absolute terms but declining relative to sector size, and declining as a share of overall support. Spending on general services is most concentrated in infrastructure, mainly for irrigation, (47%, around USD 55 billion), with agricultural knowledge and innovation systems representing 23%, around USD 27 billion.

While some countries prioritise public spending on transformative investments – for example, Switzerland allocates more than 4% of production value to public investments in knowledge and innovation – most invest considerably less. On average, public investment in knowledge and innovation systems amounts to only 0.5% of sector value, roughly half the level observed in 2000‑02, although this is complemented by private sector innovation investments. This highlights a structural imbalance between short-term support and long-term resilience.

Consumers continue to bear a large share of policy costs

Consumers are significantly affected by agricultural policies, primarily through their impact on food prices. In most countries, agricultural support policies raise domestic prices above international levels for some or all commodities, which reduces consumers’ purchasing power. In contrast, direct support to consumers remains limited in comparison. On average in 2023‑25, consumers bore an implicit tax of around USD 204 billion per year, equivalent to 4.4% of their spending measured at primary product prices.

This reflects the dominance of price-based policies, which generate transfers from consumers to producers. While some countries lower domestic prices for the benefit of consumers, these cases are less common. Overall, consumers remain net contributors to agricultural support. Patterns differ across country groups: in OECD countries, transfers are relatively stable and partly offset by budgetary support, while in emerging economies they are larger and more volatile. As a whole, direct support to consumers offsets only a small share of the effects of rising prices.

Well-designed targeting and conditionality may help achieve environmental outcomes

A large share of support is delivered through instruments that are not linked to specific environmental outcomes. Conditionality may improve the performance of existing programmes, but attaching environmental conditions to support that targets other objectives is less effective than implementing policies that directly target such objectives.

In 2023-25, efforts to link support to farming requirements motivated by environmental and other objectives have been increasing, but the use of programmes targeted to such outcomes remains limited in most countries and the effectiveness of mandatory constraints has been mixed. About 5.7% of support to farmers is based on their taking voluntary environmental action. An additional 15% of support requires compliance with existing regulations or complementing rules. Nearly four-fifths of transfers to farmers are provided without such farming requirements. Reliance on MPS limits governments’ ability to pursue those objectives through agricultural support.

Future-proof policies for more efficient, sustainable and resilient agriculture

Improving the alignment between current policy approaches and the challenges facing modern agriculture would bring significant benefits. Current approaches – continued reliance on production- and price-linked support, insufficient investment in public goods, significant costs borne by consumers and limited progress in linking support to outcomes – highlight important areas where policies can evolve. Addressing modern challenges require a shift from reactive interventions towards a more coherent and system-wide policy framework.

This report provides an assessment of policies and recommendations for improvement to each of the countries covered. Across 29 country chapters (the European Union (EU) is considered as a whole), more than 150 specific, constructive and actionable recommendations are made based on OECD data and research. These country-specific recommendations point towards the following general directions for policy action:

• Rebalancing incentives towards more efficient and less distortive measures is a priority. Border measures and subsidies linked to output or variable input use can distort markets and trade and are often poorly suited for current objectives. Reducing reliance on these measures and replacing them with more targeted policies such as tailored payments with strong environmental conditions, risk management tools and outcome-oriented instruments would improve policy effectiveness, while better aligning policies with long-term productivity, resilience and sustainability objectives.

• At the same time, strengthening the foundations of the sector is essential. Long-term performance depends on the strength of the systems that support farming. Scaling up investment in innovation, knowledge and advisory systems, infrastructure, and governance capacity can enhance sustainable productivity growth, improve soil health, increase resilience to shocks and support the adoption and diffusion of new technologies and practices across the sector.

• There is also a need to align policies more closely with sustainability objectives. When support is provided to achieve sustainability objectives, it should move beyond limited or implicit conditions towards greater use of measurable and outcome-based approaches, including incentives and regulations that support sustainable resource use and the reduction of negative environmental impacts. Strengthening monitoring, reporting and evaluation systems is critical to ensuring that support delivers tangible environmental results.

• Finally, governments need to reinforce systemic risk management policies to minimise the need for short-term, ad-hoc responses to crises. Supporting farmers’ capacity to anticipate, adapt and respond to changing conditions – while maintaining stable and predictable policy environments and open international markets – is essential for managing risk and ensuring food security in an uncertain global environment.

These four recommendations provide a clear pathway for policy reform: shift away from supporting production through distorted price signals towards supporting economic, environmental and system performance through better-targeted policies, stronger enabling systems and clearer links between policy design and outcomes. Moving in this direction will help agricultural systems navigate an increasingly complex and