Despite ongoing growth in agricultural production, OECD countries have shown that targeted policies and improved practices can help reduce the sector’s environmental impact. Many farmers have adopted more efficient approaches to managing nutrients, pesticides, water, and energy, using fewer inputs per unit of land while maintaining productivity. Environmentally friendly techniques such as conservation tillage, improved manure management, and soil testing are becoming more common. Still, significant challenges persist, particularly when it comes to protecting biodiversity, conserving water resources, and maintaining healthy soils.
Agriculture and sustainability
Agriculture plays a critical role in feeding a growing global population, but faces a triple challenge: ensuring food and nutrition security, preserving the environment and safeguarding natural resources for future generations, and supporting sustainable rural livelihoods. Effective agricultural policies are essential to meet these challenges, especially in the face of increasing climate pressures and other emerging risks.
Key messages
The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of agricultural production in OECD countries has declined over time. Since 1990, agricultural output has grown substantially faster than GHG emissions. largely thanks to innovations. These advances have enabled greater production using the same amount of inputs. However, progress has slowed in the past decade, and total agricultural emissions are now rising again. To reverse this trend, continued effort is needed to reduce on-farm emissions through sustainable practices and new technologies. Lowering indirect emissions from land-use change, enhancing natural ecosystem protection and restoration, and boosting carbon sequestration in soils and biomass are also key to long-term climate goals.
Over the past decades, many OECD countries have reformed agricultural policies to decouple government support to farmers from production, and to promote more sustainable agricultural practices through better-targeted programmes and production limits. However, these reforms have not been undertaken everywhere. Furthermore, they are still subject to debate and their implementation remains uneven. In addition, public investment in agricultural research and development, crucial for advancing sustainable production practices, has declined as a share of total support, dropping from 16% in the early 2000s to 12.5% in 2020–22. Strengthening investment in innovation and accelerating policy reform will be key to tackling the sector’s environmental challenges.
Monitoring the environmental performance of agriculture depends on strong data collection and analysis. The OECD Agri-Environmental Indicators, updated annually, track progress across all OECD member and key partner countries. While there have been improvements in certain indicators, recent data reveal persistent challenges: nitrogen surpluses are rising in several OECD countries, farmland bird populations, a key biodiversity indicator, are declining, and agriculture remains a major contributor to freshwater use and pollution. Tackling these challenges will require sustained investment in data, alongside stronger collaboration among farmers, policymakers, and stakeholders across the agri-food value chain.
Context
Agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are rising across the OECD, but some countries are making progress
Over the past decade, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture in OECD countries have increased by 4.3%, rising from 1.45 billion tonnes in 2009–2011 to 1.51 billion tonnes in 2019–2021. However, the trend is not uniform: 17 out of 38 OECD countries have managed to reduce emissions from the sector, largely thanks to improved nutrient management and efficiency. Methane emissions from livestock and rice production remain the largest contributors, accounting for around half of all agricultural GHG emissions. The other half consists mainly of nitrous oxide emissions resulting from the use of organic and inorganic fertilisers.
Productivity gains have helped increase production with decreased GHG emission intensity in agriculture, but environmental trade-offs remain
Over the past 30 years, agricultural production in OECD countries has grown by an average of 1% per year, roughly ten times greater than the growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This reflects the positive impact of efficiency gains, structural transformation, and the adoption of new technologies and sustainable practices. These changes have helped partially decouple production from emissions. However, not all aspects of environmental sustainability have seen similar improvements. Increased water use and biodiversity loss have accompanied productivity growth, underscoring the need for a more balanced approach to sustainable agriculture.
