From re-instrumenting to re-purposing farm support policies

Food production has been globally inefficient for many decades, with too many resources employed in agriculture in high-income countries and too few in numerous low-income countries where governments heavily taxed farm exports. Over recent decades policy instrument choices of advanced economies have moved away from mostly price support at the border to also domestic output and input price supports and then to somewhat-decoupled payments, to direct income payments to farmers, and to more-concerted payments to farmers for their co-provision of public goods. Even so, many agri-food policy instruments are far from economically optimal for attaining society’s stated objectives, and (according to our global modeling) their global economic welfare cost is still high. The paper concludes by outlining ways in which present farm supports could be re-purposed in high-income and emerging economies to achieve more-efficient, more-equitable, healthier and more environmentally friendlier outcomes.