Global policy trends: a focus on water and technology

During September–October 2025, FAPDA tracked 1 632 policy actions.  Among these, 686 were new policy decisions covering 50 broad topics and 166 countries, territories and regional economic communities, reflecting widespread government responses to pressing challenges in agrifood systems.

Conservation and management of natural resources policies dominated and, within this category, renewable energy and energy efficiency measures were particularly prominent. A trend emerging, as observed from the FAPDA tracking, is the growing importance of policies encouraging the adoption of technologies to strengthen the resilience of agrifood systems against challenges such as extreme weather, degradation of natural resources, with water efficiency methods ranking at the top.

POLICY FOCUS

Emerging trends in technology and innovation policies

About 3 000 policy decisions issued since the beginning of 2025 reveal that technology has been adopted across a comprehensive enabling environment towards boosting sustainable agrifood production, capacity building and institutional development, and data governance.

Water takes center stage among technology implementations

Water scarcity has remained a particular critical concern that urged the adoption of polices scaling technological solutions to boost adaptability, diversification and resiliency. Various policy innovations have often been experimental in nature and responding to local contexts, enabled by the securing of climate finances and investment initiatives across local and multilateral organizations.

The Near East region has been proactive with the United Arab Emirates pledging AED 8 million (around USD 2.2 million) through a competition to encourage water-efficient agricultural technologies and accelerated intellectual property registration for green inventions to position the country as a global hub for clean technology and innovation. The country also operates a national Geospatial Data Platform to improve land/water management, targeting two percent groundwater reduction in agriculture and 8–13 percent increase in unconventional water use by 2027. Saudi Arabia, in partnership with South Korea, has launched a Smart Agriculture Complex integrating artificial intelligence to regulate water, Internet of Things systems to monitor crops and vertical farming to raise productivity on limited arable land.

Across North Africa and Central Asia, governments have deployed innovation to confront water scarcity by targeting efficiency in production and mitigation strategies. Uzbekistan has initiated the roll-out of drip irrigation for rice across six regions from 2026, targeting a 50 percent reduction in water use. In Kazakhstan, the government has unveiled a digital modernization agenda which includes a unified digital platform of water resources, a new Water Code and the establishment of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation. Morocco has expanded subsidies for solar and drip irrigation to cover more than 51 000 hectares, while Tunisia's TEC EAU project has tested several technological options in desert regions to offset declining rainfall. Viet Nam has decided to advance the One Million Hectares of High Quality Low Emission Rice project in pilot areas reporting better yields and lower emission by reducing the use of seeds, chemical fertilizer and pesticides, and irrigation water by up to half. The practice requires draining fields several times per crop cycle (known as AWD), although irrigation capacity was cited as a limiting factor for wider adoption. Iraq and Papua New Guinea jointly secured over USD 100 million in funds from climate financial institutions to partly deploy technology to respectively improve irrigation and strengthen their deforestation frameworks.

Governments have increasingly adopted digital and automation tools to deliver modern institutional systems that provide early warnings, manage operations, improve oversight and strengthen market integrity.

In West and North Africa and across Asia, countries have advanced digitalization to improve accountability, tracking and monitoring. Nigeria integrated data from 774 soil testing laboratories for digital soil data management and precision fertilizer recommendations through the Nigerian Farmers Soil Health Scheme (NFSHS). Mozambique has digitalized all agricultural financing programmes to limit counterfeit inputs and enhance transparency by requiring actors in the seed chain to register on national platforms to access funds. It also introduced the Forest Information System (SIF), a digital platform to automate and transparently manage national forest resources to combat illegal practices. In India, the ongoing development of Smart and Integrated Fishing Harbours links producers to safer and more transparent markets. Bhutan launched the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, a digital platform to help policymakers with decision-making and planning, particularly around the use of limited arable land. China also has unveiled an Implementation Plan for the Food Industry Digital Transformation, targeting 80 percent of key enterprises in the agrifood sector to achieve digital management integration by 2027.

Example of building early warnings and efficient response to emerging risks: Oman’s testing drones for locust surveillance, Lebanon employing aerial monitoring and AI to detect illegal forest activity. The Philippines has deployed three new technologies to manage African Swine Fever (ASF), including a rapid DNA extraction kit, a real-time detection kit for farmers, and a mobile biocontainment laboratory for on-site diagnosis.

In Europe and North America, technology trends have focused particularly on traceability and energy security to help channel investments towards policies encouraging self-sufficiency and resilience. Austria's subsidy programme supports photovoltaic and energy storage projects using European-made components, while Spain has explicitly allowed agricultural land with solar panels (agrivoltaics) to receive subsidies under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, provided agriculture remains the primary use. In Ireland, the Sustainable All Over Life Wood (SAOLWood) project has built a national database to track the environmental footprint of wood products. Canada has led the Seed Regulatory Modernisation (SRM) process, introducing digital seed-tagging and traceability reforms. Ukraine has advanced the digitalization of its fisheries sector through the e-Fishery system, targeting full-service digitalization to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

REGIONAL AND COUNTRY HIGHLIGHTS

The charts in this section provide additional evidence on the broad distribution and focus of new policy activity across regions and countries.

Top policy themes by region

At the regional level, producer oriented policies have been dominated by conservation efforts. Particularly noteworthy is the passing of the 60-country threshold in September 2025 that allows the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement to entry into force in January 2026. Other country level initiatives include Taiwan, Province of China signing its first memorandum of understanding on carbon credit cooperation under the Paris Agreement framework with Paraguay.

Trade and macroeconomic policies, while less dominant globally than in recent periods, have shifted from reactive geopolitical responses to proactive domestic agendas. Denmark prohibited clothing and footwear imports containing excessive per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), while Ethiopia extended its internal combustion vehicle import ban to gasoline and diesel trucks in October 2025, both prioritizing national environmental and health objectives.

In North America, however, trade policies remained closely intertwined with geopolitical trends. Despite October’s federal shutdown, the United States of America unveiled a USD 20 billion support for Argentina, drawing American farmers’ scrutiny as Argentina temporarily lowered agricultural export duties and displaced American soybean producers in Chinese markets. The United States of America also banned fish imports from 240 commercial fisheries across 46 nations failing marine mammals protection standards. Meanwhile, Taiwan Province of China committed USD 10.4 billion to purchase American agricultural products (including corn, soybeans, wheat, and beef) through 2029, reflecting continued geopolitical alignments through trade.

Consumer protection and food safety initiatives have dominated new consumer oriented policies. Georgia adopted new food safety regulations effective January 2026, addressing food-contact materials and aligning with European Union standards. Brazil introduced clean cooking gas subsidies for low-income families and the European Commission launched infringement procedures against Estonia and Austria for incorrectly transposing the Drinking Water Directive.

The European Union also faced broader implementation and coordination challenges. Member States diluted pharmaceutical groundwater caps proposals, and the deforestation linked import ban was postponed for a second time. Nevertheless, the European Parliament approved new binding food waste reduction targets to come into force by 2030.

The Food and Agriculture Policy Decision Analysis (FAPDA) is a global policy intelligence platform tracking agrifood-related policy actions across 211 countries and territories, and over 30 regional economic communities. Updated daily, it contains over 40 000 policy documents, including 13 600 long-term policy frameworks (visions, strategies, plans, policy orientations, etc.) and more than 27 500 short-term national policy decisions.

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