Measuring the impacts of repurposing agricultural support on global agriculture

Abstract

Vast amounts of resources are spent on support to agriculture, with questionable results for agriculture, for national incomes, for nutrition and for the environment. Is it possible to repurpose some of this support in ways that will bring about better outcomes? This study uses detailed modeling of the links between support, emissions and other outcomes to examine several different potential approaches. Simply removing or rearranging support seems not to be sufficient. While removing subsidies can reduce emissions, these reductions are slight relative to current emission levels, while removing border measures may increase emissions by increasing global demand and reallocating production. More comprehensive reforms, such as allocating more resources to R&D that results in lower emissions and higher efficiency, could have much more favorable impacts. Approaches that use conditionality to move producers to lower-emission production approaches can also play a role, although, if these involve lower productivity, they may put greater pressure on land use change and its associated emissions.