A review of global policy trends in 2025

The ongoing priority for the policy intelligence efforts within the Agrifood Economics and Policy Division (ESA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is to provide key insights on global emerging trends, identify best practices and windows of opportunity for effective implementation and coherent tracking of global policy initiatives.

Over the course of 2025, the Food and Agriculture Policy Decision Analysis (FAPDA) recorded and added 3 815 new policy actions to its database. Among these, 3 714 were new policy decisions and consistent policy efforts across 206 countries, territories and regional economic communities.

The chart below displays how the global policy landscape evolved during 2025 with regard to four broad policy themes of interest: climate change mitigation and adaptation in agrifood systems; bioeconomy for sustainable food and agriculture; healthy diets for all; and food loss and waste. Global policy actions related to healthy diets and food loss and waste saw a steady amount of focus from governments, but significantly less than the other two themes. This edition of Agrifood Policy Highlights focuses on exploring key trends within climate change mitigation and adaptation in agrifood systems, as well as healthy diets for all. Future editions will tackle the other two topics in more depth.

POLICY FOCUS

Climate change mitigation and adaptation in agrifood systems

Across 2025, policy action on climate change mitigation and adaptation in agrifood systems followed a broadly recognisable cycle, with measures early in the year aimed at proactively increasing resilience and reducing systemic vulnerability. Late-year actions shifted towards governing scarce natural resources, enforcing compliance and scaling support in reaction to shocks and deadlines. This sequencing was reinforced by early-year legislative and multilateral milestones, such as the ratification of the High Seas Treaty, and by significant mid-year programming adjustments. For example, Indonesia proposed to raise the 2026 agriculture budget from IDR 13.75 trillion (USD 859 million) to IDR 44.64 trillion (USD 2.79 billion) framing the maneuver explicitly to "future-proof" the country's agrifood system against external threats, including "climate disruptions" that make dependence on food imports risky.

Specific examples of foundational policies during the first half of the year included biosecurity and sanitary preparedness, applied farmer support and innovation. For example, Saudi Arabia launched an artificial intelligence animal health platform to strengthen real-time disease surveillance and prevention capacity, while climate-smart research and technology priorities were reinforced through initiatives such as China’s smart agriculture action plan and Morocco’s rollout of Jawahir, a drought-tolerant durum wheat variety designed for climate extremes. In the second half of the year, priorities moved more visibly toward regulatory execution and scaling mechanisms: Ghana enacted major fisheries reforms, including expanding the inshore exclusion zone to protect breeding grounds and tightening penalties against illegal fishing; Kenya advanced payments for ecosystem services to reward forest stewardship for individual residents and landowners who actively participate in conservation efforts near forested areas; and Namibia accelerated compliance steps for the European Union deforestation regulation which was meant to come into force on 1 January 2026 and it has since been delayed to the end of the year. Türkiye launched a USD 600 million Flood and Drought Management Project in September to construct infrastructure addressing escalating climate threats to agricultural land. However, budget allocations to implement long-term adaptation and resilience goals faced significant competition during the second half of the year as governments devised policy actions to counteract trade shocks: Thailand prepared subsidies and soft loans totalling THB 200 billion (USD 6.13 million) to cushion the impact of tariffs imposed by the United States of America, while Canada announced a CAD 5 billion (USD 3.65 billion) Strategic Response Fund framed around tariffs and trade disruptions, including support for agricultural producers and market diversification.

Healthy diets for all

Global efforts to promote healthy diets have been a constant part of the policy agenda even if not generally treated as a top-tier priority during 2025. The majority of measures announced or implemented aimed at nudging consumption patterns, tightening standards and framing public health concerns, especially with regard to obesity and noncommunicable diseases.

The strongest signal came from multilateral mobilisation around the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Paris 2025 Summit, where close to USD 28 billion in nutrition funding was announced and over 400 commitments were registered on the Nutrition Accountability Framework, alongside renewed emphasis on accountability and cross-sector collaboration.

Across countries, the policy mix was mainly proactive in orientation, aiming to strengthen food environment rules and accessibility to healthy food rather than respond to single shocks. Regulatory efforts focused on shaping consumption, particularly among younger populations: Kenya published the Kenya Nutrient Profile Model to underpin future front-of-pack warning labels, restrict marketing of unhealthy products to children and guide public food procurement standards; Spain removed ultra-processed foods from menus in hospitals and nursing homes; Kazakhstan and Hungary tightened controls on energy drinks through age-based sales bans; and Singapore signalled further scaling of its Nutri-Grade approach by planning to expand labelling to additional high-sodium and high-fat food categories by mid-2027. Costa Rica also elevated political salience by recognising obesity as a chronic disease of public health importance.

Implementation detail and stakeholder cooperation were clearest in measures aimed at improving diet quality and service delivery. The United Republic of Tanzania advanced large-scale fortification of staple foods, while Mozambique adopted a fortification regulation explicitly framed around compliance, monitoring and standards. System-wide approaches also stood out: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland launched the Good Food Cycle framework with ten outcomes and transparency partnerships with major food companies; Mauritius launched a five-year obesity roadmap alongside fiscal measures including doubled taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages; and Ethiopia paired ambitious 2030 nutrition targets with a multistakeholder monitoring push linked to its N4G commitments. In small island contexts, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands linked local fruit and vegetable production to school meals and nutrition education with concrete delivery mechanisms.

REGIONAL AND COUNTRY HIGHLIGHTS

The global agrifood policy landscape remained active throughout 2025, with notable momentum among major actors and regional blocs in North America, Europe and Asia. Despite headlines dominated by unilateral moves and geopolitical tension, cooperation remained an indispensable feature of how countries addressed risks in food security, trade and sustainability.

Regional blocs used coordination to set direction. For example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit process reaffirmed collective priorities on scaling smart agriculture, feasible greenhouse gas mitigation options for smallholders and sustainable protein innovation, while maintaining the ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve as a standing mechanism for crisis response. Cooperation was structured around the revised ASEAN–Japan MIDORI Cooperation Plan, adopted as a practical platform to accelerate decarbonisation and digitalisation in agriculture and forestry and aligned with ASEAN’s 2026–2030 planning and budget cycles.

In Africa, the African Union’s Kampala Summit set a shared CAADP implementation track for 2026–2035, anchored in measurable continent-wide targets, including a 45% increase in agrifood output through sustainable practices, a 50% reduction in post-harvest losses, a tripling of intra-African agrifood trade, more local processing (raise the share of locally processed food to 35% of agrifood GDP), better nutrition (target stunting, wasting and overweight reduction of 25% and ensure 60% of population can afford a healthy diet), advance inclusivity (reduce number of people living in extreme poverty by 50%) and building resilient agrifood systems (target 30% of agricultural land under sustainable management and 40% of households protected from shocks), backed by a financing ambition to mobilise USD 100 billion (and ensure that 10% of annual public expenditure is allocated to agrifood systems and that at least 15% of Agrifood GDP is reinvested annually in the sector).

In Latin America, the Andean Community and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) formalised cooperation to establish a regional observatory designed to strengthen evidence, comparability and policy coherence across Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, supporting coordination on issues such as sanitary performance and market access.

Cooperation also manifested itself through multilateral rule-based channels. Ocean governance, in particular, advanced on two complementary tracks: the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies entered into force on 15 September 2025, establishing binding rules to curb harmful subsidies linked to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, overfished stocks and unregulated high seas fishing, backed by a WTO Fish Fund to help developing countries implement obligations. Just days later, the High Seas Treaty on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) reached the 60-ratification threshold on 19 September 2025, triggering a 120-day countdown to entry into force, strengthening the legal basis for coordinated conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction.

Within countries, several policies demonstrated structured, multistakeholder engagement to accelerate consultation into shared implementation efforts through co-design (e.g. Canada’s seed regulation modernisation), systemic thinking (e.g. the Good Food Cycle), ecosystem building for value chains (e.g. Nigeria’s soybean strategy) and community partnerships for resilience infrastructure (e.g. Yemen’s local water works).

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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