FAO.org

06 Jun 2019

On 6 May, the FARM Foundation (Fondation pour l’agriculture et la ruralité dans le monde) launched a new initiative, the “Observatory of agricultural support in the world”, during a conference held at Crédit Agricole headquarters in Paris. The aim of the Observatory is to provide synthetic indicators and analytical tools for comparing, monitoring and evaluating the agricultural policies around the world, and particularly in Africa.

 

MAFAP is a key data provider for this new initiative. The first report, presented by the FARM Director during the conference, aggregates and analyses estimates of policy support to agriculture computed by different organizations, including indicators of price incentives for relevant value chains and public expenditure in agriculture computed by MAFAP for selected sub-Saharan African countries.

The round table involved representatives from IRAM (Institute for research and application of development methods), AgriCord, University of Lomé and OECD, in addition to MAFAP. The discussion drew some key messages for Africa, including the declining budgetary support to the agricultural sector, the persistent focus on trade and market distorting policies against investments on general sector services, as well as issues of policy coherence between stated objectives and policy interventions, particularly on the agricultural transformation agenda.

There is large scope for cooperation between the FARM Foundation and the Ag-Incentives Consortium, on results dissemination and policy dialogue, as well as production of policy monitoring indicators in additional countries, not yet covered by the Ag-Incentives initiative, such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries.

 

See the presentation of the FARM report: http://www.fondation-farm.org/zoe/doc/pdfconfsoutien.pdf

See the FARM website here.