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This report is an attempt to improve understanding of the dairy sector through an analysis of the trade and economic effects of the main policy measures (subsidies) applied to it. In particular, it examines the effects of both milk price support measures and milk quota systems. The removal of individual policy measures is modelled in order to assess the impact of international dairy trade liberalisation on production, consumption, trade, prices, income, and welfare.
The primary focus of this report is the impact of policies and reform in the OECD area, although the consequences for other economies are also examined. In addition, this report offers economic insights into the workings of complex dairy policy measures and provides a discussion of the potential of the dairy sector -- globally and in individual countries -- as it adjusts to liberal trading conditions.
The OECD has been working on water policy reform in the countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia for over 20 years. Three of the countries within the region, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine have signed Association Agreements with the European Union. These agreements provide a framework for deeper political ties and stronger economic links with the EU and include commitments for approximation towards EU legislation including the Water Framework Directive.
Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine have ambitious long-term strategic plans for their water sectors, which include fulfilment of requirements under the Association Agreements and international commitments including the Sustainable Development Goals. The water policy outlooks baseline the country policy framework and current performance and then define the long-term vision and aspirations to 2030. The outlooks aim to demonstrate the likelihood of the current policy framework to achieve the long-term objectives and desired future state of the water sector, and include identification of opportunities for improving policy coherence and policies that have the opportunity to improve the likelihood of success.
After decades of regulation and investment to reduce point source water pollution, OECD countries still face water quality challenges (e.g. eutrophication) from diffuse agricultural and urban sources of pollution, that is disperse pollution from surface runoff, soil filtration and atmospheric deposition. The relative lack of progress reflects the complexities of controlling multiple pollutants from multiple sources, their high spatial and temporal variability, associated transactions costs, and limited political acceptability of regulatory measures. This report outlines the water quality challenges facing OECD countries today, presents a range of policy instruments and innovative case studies of diffuse pollution control, and concludes with an integrated policy framework to tackle diffuse water pollution. An optimal approach will likely entail a mix of policy interventions reflecting the basic OECD principles of water quality management – pollution prevention, treatment at source, the polluter pays and beneficiary pays principles, equity, and policy coherence.
This digital government review asseses the state of data-driven policies and initiatives in the Swedish public sector. It explores the underlying institutional governance and co-ordination arrangements for digital government in the country, and their impact on policy implementation. It also discusses data-sharing and managing initiatives, data governance and open government data practices. The review looks at how Sweden could better share knowledge, promote innovation and improve collaboration both across the public sector and with external stakeholders. Finally, it highlights how the government can use data to build a closer relationship with citizens in order to address policy challenges, improve public service delivery, and, ultimately, strengthen public trust.
Recent digital innovations provide opportunities to deliver better policies for the agriculture sector by helping to overcome information gaps and asymmetries, lower policy-related transaction costs, and enable people with different preferences and incentives to work better together. Drawing on ten illustrative case studies and unique new data gathered via an OECD questionnaire on agri-environmental policy organisations' experiences with digital tools, this report explores opportunities to improve current agricultural and agri-environmental policies, and to deliver new, digitally enabled and information-rich policy approaches. It also considers challenges that organisations may face to make greater use of digital tools for policy, as well as new risks which increased use of digital tools may bring. The report provides practical advice on how policy makers can address challenges and mitigate risks to ensure digital opportunities for policy are realised in practice. Finally, the report briefly considers the broader regulatory and policy environment underpinning digitalisation of the agriculture sector, with the view to ensuring that use of digital tools for agricultural and agri-environmental policy remains coherent with the digitalisation of agriculture more generally.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is an important policy for the European Union and accounts for about 40% of the EU budget. Ever since its inception in 1958, the CAP has been regularly reviewed and adjusted to improve its performance and adapt to changing circumstances. At a time when the post-2013 future of the CAP is being discussed and major challenges such as food security and climate change lay ahead, it is important to review the impact of past reforms and to draw lessons for the design of future policies.
While the studies in these proceedings often take account of national and international market effects of agricultural policies, they tend to focus on the impact of policies on farms and at the regional and local levels. Today, the European Union is composed of very diverse regions that are affected very differently by any given farm policy, depending on the structural characteristics of the farms’ and regions’ economies.
This report collects papers presented at the OECD Workshop on Disaggregated Impacts of CAP Reforms, held in Paris in March 2010, which focused on recent reforms. In particular, it examined the implementation of the single payment scheme since 2005 and the transfer of funds between different measures. Special attention was also paid to reforms of the sugar and dairy sectors with respect to the quota system and the restructuring of both these industries. The papers also look at the impact of the new direct payment system on land use, production and income.
Groundwater has provided great benefits to agriculture irrigation in semi-arid OECD countries, but its intensive use beyond recharge in certain regions has depleted resources and generated significant negative environmental externalities. The report provides a characterisation of the diversity of groundwater systems, reviews policies in OECD countries, and proposes a package of recommendations to ensure that groundwater can sustain its services to agriculture and contribute to climate change adaptation.