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In most OECD countries, farm household incomes figure prominently among the wide and growing range of concerns described as motivating policy interventions in agriculture. The first part of this report provides an overview of the income situation of farm households and examines the influence of agricultural and of tax and social security policies on them. The second part investigates more specifically how efficient some of the most commonly used policy interventions are at transferring income to farm households.
This report looks at farm management practices with green growth potential, from farmer-led innovations (such as those directly linked to soil and water, Integrated Pest Management, organic farming) to science-led technologies (such as biotechnology and precision agriculture). Global food demand can only be met in a sustainable way if new forms of agricultural production and innovative technologies can be unlocked to increase the productivity, stability, and resilience of production systems with goals beyond just raising yields, including saving water and energy, reducing risk, improving product quality, protecting the environment and climate change mitigation.
This study examines the broad range of factors driving farm management decisions that can improve the environment, including drawing on the experiences of OECD countries. It identifies policy options that would contribute to a sustainable and resilient agricultural sector in the context of climate change.
Land is a key input into agricultural production and the agricultural sector remains the main user of rural land in most OECD countries. How land is managed in agriculture, and the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses, are likely to have implications not only for the provision of food, but also for the supply of public goods such as rural amenities, as well as for the quantity and quality of water. Changes in agricultural, agri-environmental, land-use, and regional policies – together with factors such as climate and demographic changes – increasingly affect land use and management choices. This report examines the impact of several policies on farmland conversion using a combination of economic analysis and empirical case studies.
OECD governments pay out around USD 6 billion a year to support the fisheries sector. Some of this expenditure is provided to help ensure the effective management of fisheries through the provision of research, administrative and enforcement services. However, its effects on economic profitability and resource sustainability are open to debate. Such support has often been linked to over-fishing and over-capitalisation, and its reform may lead to improved economic, environmental and social outcomes. This report analyses the impacts of such transfers from a sustainable development perspective by addressing the economic, environmental and social dimensions of financial transfers. Through this innovative focus, this study will deepen policy makers’ understanding of the complex issues at play in the fisheries sector — a sector that is characterised by ongoing concerns regarding economic profitability, community resilience, and resource sustainability.
This book gathers the proceedings of an OECD Workshop that took place in April 2004 in Paris, on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing -- a worldwide problem which is increasing in scale. The aim of the workshop was to better understand the social and economic factors that drive IUU fishing in order to identify more effective methods to combat this evil and propose new ways to deal with it.
The fish on your plate may have been caught by a high-tech trawler, trapped by a lone fisher, farmed along with tons of others, or even stolen by pirates. It may have been captured in the South Atlantic, landed in Europe, and processed in China. Globalisation, North-South relations, changing attitudes and lifestyles, and the way we manage natural resources all influence fisheries.
This book uses the expertise of the OECD to assess these issues, and describes the challenges facing those who work in the industry. Apart from the fishers themselves and their families, it also draws on the points of view of NGOs, government specialists, scientists and independent experts.
This book includes StatLinks, URLs under graphs and tables linking to Excel® spreadsheets showing the underlying data
"We at International Aquafeed would recommend this to anyone involved in marine fishing and even to those in aquaculture to and aqua policy development as a foundation document for future decision-making. Well done Patrick Love."
-The Aquaculturists Blog
Much has been done over the years to improve fisheries management in OECD countries. Ongoing problems of over-fishing, overcapacity and the economic crisis intensify the need for reform. Although there is a general consensus on the importance of a successful fisheries management, the effort levels and effectiveness of policy reforms have differed among OECD countries. This study examines the factors that facilitate reform, as well as the difficulties countries face in the process of reform. It provides an overview of domestic reform experiences in Norway, Mexico, Iceland, New Zealand and Korea.
Concerns about sustainability and the effectiveness of fisheries management on the part of the public have resulted in demand from NGOs, retailers and consumers for assurances that the food they purchase has been sustainably produced. This has led to a number of private entities responding to this demand by establishing eco-labels and certification schemes that claim to provide credible information to the consumer. These labels intend to serve the interest of fishers and processors who need to transmit positive information to the consumer to maintain their markets, and serve consumers by providing information not elsewhere available.
This report considers the growing trend in information requirements for seafood products in general, and in particular to the distinct sustainability features of wild capture fisheries and aquaculture. This work refers primarily to privately-driven certification schemes which have become an established feature of the market for eco-labels in fisheries and aquaculture. The report focuses on private eco-labelling and analyzes the economics of certification schemes, discusses key issues at the interface between public authorities, private labelling schemes, business operators and consumers. Finally, main findings and messages to policy makers are addressed.
Some 500 million USD are spent annually on fisheries development projects. But fisheries access agreements and trade policies are sometimes applied in ways that dampen developing countries' ability to benefit fully from their rich marine resources. Also, many development projects do not pay sufficient regard to the sustainability issues that are a key for the future of the fishing sector. This publication, a compilation of papers from the Workshop on Policy Coherence for Development in Fisheries, addresses these issues.
For OECD and non-OECD countries alike, the global fisheries situation poses topical questions of coherence between development and fisheries in a number of policy areas. This publication examines these questions and proposes a framework for in-depth analysis of coherence issues in five main policy areas where fisheries and development policies interact, namely environmental, technology, economic, social, and governance policies. The framework is illustrated with ten concrete country and regional case studies, analysing issues that range from international fishing agreements and the relationship between industrial and artisanal fishing fleets to fisheries trade and development policies, as well as fisheries development and poverty reduction.
The Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) and the OECD Fisheries Division are working with regional organisations to help them address the question of policy coherence. This book provides not only an analytical framework adapted to the local context, but also an action framework based on the facts and realities in the field in order to improve the coherence of fisheries policies.
This publication highlights the main conclusions of the Fishing for Development joint meeting, held in Paris in April 2014. The meeting was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB) to initiate a dialogue between the fisheries and development policy communities from member and partner countries and organizations of the OECD. It brought together delegates to the OECD Fisheries Committee and OECD Development Assistance Committee, representatives of partner developing countries invited by FAO, as well as experts and representatives from FAO, WB, non-governmental organizations and regional organizations. The meeting focused on issues central to promoting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in developing, emerging and developed countries alike.
This publication also includes the background papers originally prepared to provide context for the issues addressed. It identifies questions for a future work agenda on policy coherence in fisheries and aquaculture, and makes evident the strong need for further dialogue between the fisheries and development communities at global and regional scales.
Highly publicised outbreaks of food-borne diseases have put food safety at the heart of a topical debate. Demands for increased food safety regulation and stricter enforcement have gained momentum. In fact, consumer concerns go well beyond basic food safety. The quality of food and how it is produced, animal welfare, the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), hormones and other growth promoters, cultural preferences, resource sustainability and protection of the environment have all become major issues in the public debate over regulation of the food industry. The issues are complex and the required policy response remains unclear. With the strengthening of international rules, increased trade in consumer food products and the growing use of biotechnology, trade conflicts over food regulatory issues and their reform could become more common. The economic stakes are high and such disputes are likely to remain a priority in the future trade agenda. This report examines the trade conflicts arising from food safety and quality issues. It summarises the key international agreements, illustrates the range and nature of current disputes, reviews the potential contributions of economic analysis to conflict resolution, and identifies areas requiring further analysis.
This report, prepared by FAO and the OECD with inputs from IFPRI, IFAD, the World Bank and WTO, has been submitted to the G20 Presidency of the Argentine Republic in response to the Presidency’s request for information on future trends and challenges faced by global agriculture, with a special focus on the role of soils in promoting food security and the measures that could be undertaken to facilitate sustainable soil management.
As part of the OECD Green Growth Strategy, this new series aims to provide in-depth reviews of the green growth issues faced by different sectors. The agriculture and fisheries sectors have an important role to play in contributing to greener growth, in particular through facilitating the uptake of green technologies and management practices and reducing waste in the food chain. This will involve a range of policies, including: the reform of environmentally harmful subsidies that distort efficient resource use; freer international trade; shifting towards targeted policies that will support poor and vulnerable farmers; rewarding the provision of ecosystem services; and encouraging R&D, technologies and management practices that improve the productivity of resource use. Framing appropriate “greening” policies is also a major governance issue which requires examining the incentives and disincentives generated by policies, as well as the regulatory and institutional framework more broadly.
Foodborne disease caused by microbiological hazards and chemical contaminants continues to be a growing public health concern, according to the World Health Organisation. This report provides information on the incidence and costs of foodborne disease, which represent a significant economic burden on consumers, the food industry and governments. There is a need to improve interdisciplinary approaches in order to better understand public health issues and their economic consequences. This will also allow policy makers to design appropriate prevention strategies to lower the risk
Knowledge investment supporting the adoption of environmentally friendly farm practices is a key driver behind innovation processes in agriculture, yet impact evaluations and financial assessments of existing initiatives remain scarce despite dramatic changes in orientation, organisation and intervention. This report examines the role, performance and impact of farm advisory services, training and extension initiatives in the OECD area to foster green growth in agriculture. Based on a series of case studies, the report discusses a range of methodological issues and the merits of the different types of providers, and identifies best practices in sustainable agricultural management.
This report reviews economic concepts of innovation, research and development (R&D), productivity and competitiveness, and their linkages. It then discusses evidence on developments in productivity and competitiveness in the agricultural and food processing sectors and on the relationship between agricultural productivity and farm size, factor intensity, farm specialisation, human capital, consumer demand, the natural environment, investments in general infrastructures and R&D, regulations, and agricultural policies. It describes developments in public and private investments in agricultural R&D and outlines their positive impact on productivity growth. Finally, it suggests an “innovation systems” approach would help understand better how innovation translates into productivity growth.
On the surface there is agreement, sustainable development refers to a broad set of issues, going beyond the relationship between the economy and the environment to encompass human and social concerns. Scratch the surface and you open a Pandora's box of differing notions of sustainability and means of achieving it. How can progress towards sustainable development be measured then? The major difficulty in developing indicators to track progress towards sustainable development is not the lack of data but rather the lack of frameworks to organise and synthesize existing information. This volume brings together a number of approaches to this question pursued in academia, national administrations and international organisations, as presented at an expert workshop held at the OECD headquarters in September 1999. These approaches include developments of the traditional national accounts system, construction of synthetic measures of sustainability such as "genuine savings", physical measures of material flows, and selections of indicators based on variants of the "pressure, state, response" model. This volume also reviews a number of initiatives undertaken within the OECD to monitor trends in the sustainability of specific sectors and sub-national areas.