The OECD Compendium of Agri-environmental Indicators provides the latest and most comprehensive set of agri-environmental indicators (AEIs) across 34 OECD countries from 1990 to 2010. It builds on 20 years of OECD work on developing AEIs. The AEIs in the report seek to: describe the current state and trends of environmental conditions in agriculture; highlight where hot spots are emerging; compare trends in performance across time and between countries; and provide a set of indicators and database which can be drawn on for: policy monitoring and evaluation; projecting future trends; and for developing green growth indicators.

The recent environmental performance of agriculture provides some encouraging signs that agriculture is capable of meeting future environmental challenges (). Evidence for OECD countries from 1990 to 2010 show improvements have been made in nutrient, pesticide, energy and water management, using less of these inputs per unit volume of output. Enhanced environmental performance has also flowed from the more widespread adoption of environmentally beneficial practices by farmers, such as conservation tillage, improved manure storage, soil nutrient testing, and drip irrigation.