In recent years, and despite continuous growth in production, there have been encouraging signs that the agriculture sector in OECD countries is capable of improving how it addresses environmental challenges if appropriate policies are in place. Farmers in many OECD countries have made changes in their management of nutrients, pesticides, energy and water, using less inputs per unit of land. Good progress has also been made in adoption of more environmentally beneficial practices, such as conservation tillage, improved manure storage, or soil nutrient testing. However, important challenges remain, including mitigating the impacts on biodiversity, water resources and soil health.
Agriculture and sustainability
The agriculture sector faces the triple challenge of providing sufficient and nutritious food for an increasing global population, while at the same time preserving the environment and natural resources for future generations and maintaining sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. Policies have a key role to play in tackling these challenges, while addressing mounting pressures from climate change and other risk factors.
Key messages
Since 1990, the overall carbon intensity of agriculture has declined in the OECD, with agricultural production having increased five times more than GHG emissions. This is mostly due to innovations that have enabled greater production from the same amount of agricultural inputs through improved breeds and better fertiliser management. That said, greater efforts are needed to effectively reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. This will involve efforts to reduce on-farm emissions through more efficient practices and new technologies, as well as to lower indirect emissions from land-use change via enhanced protection of natural land and ecosystem restoration as well as to foster carbon sequester in biomass and soils.
Reforms in many OECD countries have been undertaken to decouple government support to farmers from production, and to encourage more sustainable agricultural practices through better targeted programmes and production constraints. That said, these reforms remain debated and have not been undertaken everywhere. Furthermore, public investment into R&D, which is key to developing more sustainable production practices, has declined as as a share of total support to the sector, from 16% in the early 2000s to 12.5% in 2020-22.
The OECD Agri-Environmental Indicators, updated annually, monitor environmental progress in agriculture in all OECD member and key partner countries. The most recent data show that, despite some progress, major challenges for environmental sustainability remain. Nitrogen surpluses are continuing to increase in several OECD countries, while farmland bird populations (an indicator of biodiversity) are on the decline, and the contribution of agriculture to freshwater use and contamination is still high relative to other sectors. Addressing these challenges will require co-operation among farmers, policymakers and other actors in the agri-food value chain.
Context
Agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the OECD have increased overall in the past 15 years, but not in all countries
For the OECD as a whole, total agricultural GHG emissions have increased by 3.8% over the past 15 years, from 1.45 billion tonnes in 2004-2006 to 1.51 billion tonnes in 2018-2020. That said, progress is uneven across countries; of the 38 OECD countries, 17 have succeeded in reducing emissions in the sector, mostly due to improvements in nutrient efficiency. Methane from livestock sources and rice production continues to account for roughly half of all GHG emissions in the sector; the other half took the form of nitrous oxides originating mainly from the application of organic and inorganic fertilisers.
Productivity gains have seen agricultural production increase by more than emissions, reducing the GHG emissions intensity of the sector
Over the past thirty years, agricultural production has grown on average at a rate of 1% per year across the OECD. This is ten times larger than the average growth rate for GHG emissions, which illustrate the important role of production efficiency gains. Structural changes in the sector, as well as development and adoption of new technologies and practices, have supported this partial decoupling of production from GHG emissions. However, productivity growth has not supported equally all environmental sustainability dimensions over that period, as increased water withdrawals and biodiversity losses have also been observed.
