ISLAMABAD: A new World Bank report says that repurposing current agricultural public policies could deliver multiple benefits for people, the planet and the economy. It further adds that climate change is not a distant threat and is already adversely affecting agriculture.

The report titled “Repurposing Agricultural Policies and Support: Options to Transform Agriculture and Food Systems for Better Health of People, Economies and Health”, issued the other day, revealed that investing in climate-smart innovations that both increase agricultural productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

These could reduce overall emissions from agriculture by more than 40 per cent, restore 105 million hectares of agricultural land to natural habitats, and reduce the cost of healthy foods, thereby also contributing to better nutritional outcomes.

To achieve this, concerted action is needed, including support to low- and middle-income countries, facing fiscal constraints, to review current policies and prioritise green investments, emphasised the report which was jointly prepared by the World Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Emissions from green output is believed to double by 2040

Repurposing support toward investments that are targeted at productivity-enhancing and emissions-reducing technologies holds the greatest potential for delivering “triple wins” for a healthy planet, economy, and people, says the report released this week.

From the macroeconomic perspective, this repurposing also has the strongest positive impact on real national income and structural transformation; that is, reducing agricultural employment as labor transitions to other sectors of the economy. Policies that lead to the development of new technologies with higher private productivity also have the advantage of not requiring concerted action.

The report says that current support for agriculture distributes much of its benefits to the relatively well-off and generates substantial inefficiency and inequity by excluding efficient producers from developing countries.

Countries that choose to adopt more productive and lower-emission technologies will tend to gain market share, avoiding the problems of carbon leakage that plague approaches based on the use of current technologies.

Notwithstanding the impressive results from the repurposing, current agricultural support measures need to be carefully scrutinised in individual country contexts.

The “triple win” scenario considered in the report is based on investing only about 29pc (around $70 billion) of current domestic support for agriculture, but the volume repurposed need not be limited to this level.

There is great potential for achieving major gains on these fronts by repurposing support towards public investments that facilitate the widespread adoption of productivity-enhancing and emission-reducing technologies for agri-food systems by excluding efficient producers from developing countries.

The agri-food system contributes about a third of the world’s total anthropogenic GHG emissions. About two-thirds of these, or about 22pc of the total, are generated on farms, from agricultural production and land-use change; the rest come from pre- and post-production activities in the broader agri-food system.

Published in Dawn, January 30th, 2022