Linkages between agricultural policies, productivity and environmental sustainability

Abstract

Increasing sustainable productivity growth in the food and agriculture sector is a common goal of all OECD and G20 countries. At the same time, an important policy question for many governments is how the current set of agricultural policies affects both productivity growth and environmental performance of the sector. Despite the high relevance of this issue, empirical evidence on the effects of specific types of agricultural support policies on productivity and environmental sustainability is relatively scarce. The present paper seeks to reduce this gap by analyzing the impact of agricultural support policies on sustainable productivity. Drawing on observational data and configurational methods of analysis, our results show that countries achieve high sustainable productivity if livestock density is low and agricultural support payments are either not coupled to production or if such payments have environmental constraints attached.