Public support mechanisms for agriculture
in many cases hinder the transformation towards healthier, more
sustainable, equitable, and efficient food systems, thus actively
steering us away from meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and
targets of the Paris Agreement.
This report sets out the
compelling case for repurposing harmful agricultural producer support to
reverse this situation, by optimizing the use of scarce public
resources, strengthening economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,
and ultimately driving a food systems transformation that can support
global sustainable development commitments.
The report provides
policymakers with an updated estimate of past and current agricultural
producer support for 88 countries, projected up until 2030. The trends
emerging from the analysis are a clear call for action at country,
regional and global levels to phase out the most distortive,
environmentally and socially harmful support, such as price incentives
and coupled subsidies, and redirecting it towards investments in public
goods and services for agriculture, such as research and development and
infrastructure, as well as decoupled fiscal subsidies.