Markets that function well within a stable regulatory and policy environment are key to improving the productivity and sustainability of the food and agriculture sector. This report contains the main findings and policy lessons gained from a series of wide-ranging country reviews on how government policies can improve sectoral productivity and sustainability through their impact on innovation, structural change, natural resource use, and climate change. Improving the policy environment would require rolling back those policies that distort markets the most and retain farmers in uncompetitive and low-income activities, harm the environment, stifle innovation, slow structural and generational change, and weaken resilience.

Agriculture policy should focus instead on measures that facilitate the uptake of technologies and practices that use resources more efficiently and sustainably, and which contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Of equal importance are: a more collaborative approach, more effective governance systems, the development of long-term strategies, strengthened linkages between national and international actors, and comprehensive and coherent evaluation procedures. Public funding of food and agricultural research is also crucial, and private efforts need to be strengthened, including through public-private partnerships. Finally, improving overall policy coherence would contribute to building trust, and to increasing policy effectiveness at each step of the food and agriculture chain.

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.