Agricultural support in 56 countries exceeded $950 billion in 2025, increasing almost 15% in two years. The OECD warns that assistance increasingly cushions successive crises while investment in knowledge, innovation and infrastructure fails to keep pace with the sector’s expansion. Consumers also bear the costs of agricultural policy, primarily through higher commodity prices.
Published on November 2, Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2026 identifies a change in policy direction. After declining relative to production value for many years, support has recently increased again: from 17.6% in 2023 to 19.1% in 2025.
This is not simply a matter of larger budget payments. The OECD also counts benefits from keeping domestic prices above international reference levels, which food buyers partly finance. The report covers 38 OECD members, five other EU countries and 13 emerging economies, including Egypt and Peru for the first time.
Record support extends beyond subsidies
Positive agricultural support averaged around $885 billion annually in 2023–2025. Of this, $661 billion went to individual producers, $118 billion to general services such as infrastructure, research and inspection, and approximately $106 billion to budgetary transfers to consumers.
In 2025 the total exceeded $950 billion, $121 billion more than two years earlier. These are nominal values and the latest year’s data are provisional. They should not be described as global direct farm payments: they cover selected countries and a much broader range of instruments.
Composition of positive agricultural support, 2023–2025 average
USD billion per year
Transfers can also run in the opposite direction. In some countries, government policy holds prices below international levels, imposing costs on farmers and benefiting buyers. This negative market price support averaged around $151 billion a year in 2023–2025.
After accounting for it, net producer support was approximately $510 billion annually and the net Total Support Estimate (TSE) around $734 billion. The $885 billion and $734 billion figures therefore describe different measures of the same system. The former does not deduct transfers borne by producers through negative price support.
Consumers pay through prices
The OECD estimates that agricultural policy imposed a net cost on consumers of approximately $204 billion annually in 2023–2025, equivalent to 4.4% of expenditure measured at farm-gate prices. In 2025 the cost reached roughly $269 billion and the ratio 5.7%.
This does not mean supermarket bills were that much higher. The indicator concerns agricultural commodities, whereas retail prices also include processing, transport, distribution, energy and taxes. Nor does it measure food inflation or forecast its future rate.
The mechanism mainly operates through trade barriers and other arrangements supporting domestic prices. Farmers receive higher prices, while buyers pay more. Budget-funded assistance to consumers only partly offsets that effect.
The distinction matters for processors. Farm income support need not lower input costs for dairies, meat processors or oil producers. When it relies on price support, it can raise those costs. This follows from the design of the OECD’s described instruments, rather than a separate estimate of their effect on company margins.
Research receives a fraction of production value
The OECD’s main concern is the allocation of spending. General-service funding is growing in dollar terms but declining relative to the sector’s size: from 4.6% of agricultural production value in 2000–2002 to 2.4% in 2023–2025.
Of almost $118 billion in annual general-service spending, around $55.3 billion went to developing and maintaining infrastructure, mainly irrigation. Knowledge and innovation systems received approximately $26.7 billion. Public stockholding cost $13.8 billion, marketing and promotion $10.1 billion, and inspection and control $9.5 billion.
General-service expenditure, 2023–2025 average
USD billion per year
Public spending on knowledge and innovation systems represented only about 0.5% of the production value analysed, roughly half the ratio at the start of the century. The figures do not capture all business innovation: the OECD notes that private investment complements public funding.
National differences are substantial. In Switzerland, public knowledge and innovation expenditure exceeds 4% of agricultural production value. That ratio should not automatically be applied to economies with different production scales, farm structures and operating costs.
Productivity growth has more than halved
The declining relative weight of long-term investment coincides with slower productivity growth. Average annual global total factor productivity (TFP) growth fell from 1.8% in 1991–2000 to 0.8% in 2014–2023.
TFP measures output relative to combined inputs. Growth means the sector produces more through better technology, organisation and resource use, rather than simply employing more land, labour or fertiliser. Slower TFP growth means weaker efficiency gains, rather than falling output.
Average annual total factor productivity growth
Percent per year
The coincidence does not establish that declining relative public investment explains the entire slowdown. Weather, resource degradation and economic conditions also affect outcomes. The OECD nevertheless argues that stronger research, advisory and technology-adoption systems are needed to improve profitability while reducing environmental pressure.
EU producer support approaches $120 billion
Net EU producer support reached around $119.6 billion in 2025, against $102.3 billion in 2024 and $100.7 billion in 2023. The annual increase was therefore approximately 17% in nominal dollar terms. This is not a direct measure of changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget: the indicator includes price support, while dollar values also reflect exchange rates.
Support averaged 17.4% of EU farms’ gross receipts in 2023–2025, rising to 18.2% in 2025. The denominator is receipts, rather than farmers’ profits.
EU net Producer Support Estimate (PSE)
USD billion
Total EU sector support, including general services and consumer transfers, was approximately $137.8 billion in 2025. Budgetary expenditure under the separate Total Budgetary Support Estimate (TBSE) reached around $100.6 billion. The difference illustrates why agricultural support and subsidy spending are not interchangeable terms.
Over the longer term, the EU has reduced reliance on price support. It accounted for approximately 28% of producer assistance in 2023–2025, compared with 46% in 2000–2002. Beef and veal, poultry and rice producers still benefit particularly strongly.
EU general-service expenditure averaged around $15.5 billion annually, or 2.9% of production value. Knowledge and innovation systems received approximately $8.3 billion a year, roughly 1.5% of production value, above the average for all countries studied.
Poland: stronger eco-scheme demand reduces payment rates
The report’s Polish section illustrates the consequences of fixed programme budgets. Demand for most area-based eco-schemes exceeded available funding, resulting in lower payment rates.
The OECD also describes changes linked to the February 21, 2025 legislation: social conditionality, an eco-scheme for pre-basic or certified seed, and two fruit-and-vegetable interventions involving advice and knowledge exchange. Payment limits, rates for crop groups and land-eligibility rules also changed.
Credit guarantees were used alongside these measures. From mid-2024 to end-2025, 1,029 guarantees worth EUR 166 million secured EUR 223 million in loans. The OECD reports utilisation equivalent to 27.2% of programmed funds. Guarantees and loans should not be added together because they describe security and financing for the same operations.
Within Poland’s planned 2023–2027 CAP budget, coupled income support totalled EUR 2.599 billion, or 10.3% of the plan. Sectoral interventions were worth EUR 129.1 million, approximately 0.5%. These are multi-year planned amounts based on sources available in April 2026, rather than annual disbursements.
Assistance after disasters and animal disease
Poland introduced a broad set of measures in 2025 following drought, excessive rainfall, frost, hail and storms in 2024–2025, worth nearly EUR 180 million. They included direct assistance, refunds of the third and fourth 2024 agricultural-tax instalments, preferential loans and family support.
The report separately lists EUR 14.8 million in EU assistance after severe frost in April and May 2025, supplemented by EUR 29.6 million in national funding. This targeted affected orchard, bush-fruit and strawberry producers.
Producers of poultry, hatching and table eggs, and meat affected by 2021–2023 avian-influenza outbreaks were allocated EUR 14 million from the EU agricultural reserve and an equal national contribution. These sums are not added to the overall disaster-instrument figure: the report lists them separately but does not establish a fully non-overlapping total of all payments.
The Polish example reflects a wider trend. In the reporting cycle, the OECD identified more than 30 emergency responses to extreme weather and natural disasters. Such measures can protect farm liquidity but do not replace investment that reduces future losses.
Support for sugar and maize, negative net transfers for milk
Support also varies by commodity. Across the 56 countries, net transfers allocated to raw sugar equalled approximately 21% of that commodity’s gross receipts in 2023–2025. The ratios were 18% for maize and 12% for rapeseed.
Milk recorded −12%, oats −5% and sunflower −4%. A negative aggregate means policy-related burdens on producers exceeded the support attributed to the commodity.
Net transfers for selected commodities, 2023–2025 average
Percent of gross receipts for the commodity
This is not a ranking of subsidies for Polish farms. It combines different national policies. For milk, positive support in some countries coexists with policies lowering producer prices elsewhere, so the aggregate can conceal large transfers in both directions.
The OECD warns that strong commodity preferences can entrench production patterns despite changing conditions. Where assistance largely determines profitability, farms may find it harder to switch production even when markets, weather or water availability favour a change.
Support should reduce future losses
Almost half of positive support in 2023–2025 took forms the OECD considers potentially most distorting to production and trade: market price support, output-linked payments and assistance for variable inputs without appropriate constraints.
The organisation recommends gradually shifting resources towards more precisely defined objectives, including research, advice, infrastructure, soil protection and risk management. Environmental support should be assessed against measurable outcomes, while crisis-assistance rules should be known before damage occurs.
Predictability helps farms and food companies plan investment, purchases and contracts. Reliance on decisions taken only after drought or a price collapse complicates future cash-flow assessments. This is an economic implication of the model described, rather than a forecast for individual industries’ finances.
A measurement limitation remains: price support can increase simply because the domestic–international price gap changes, without a new subsidy programme. Dollar-denominated figures also respond to exchange rates. Record support therefore indicates the scale of agricultural-policy transfers, but does not establish an equivalent increase in budget payments or farm incomes.
Source: OECD (2026), Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2026: Enhancing resilience in a world of interconnected risks, DOI: 10.1787/2c7f3be1-en. Based on the Executive Summary, Chapter 1, Table 1.B.3 (p. 62), EU chapter, Table 12.1 (p. 269) and Poland section (p. 301). Charts: CEO calculations based on OECD data. 2025 figures are provisional.
This article is an independent analysis of an OECD publication made available under CC BY 4.0. Its opinions and arguments do not represent the official views of the OECD or its member countries. Original Polish article, November 2, 2026.
