Environmental Implications of the Agricultural Sector and Policy Developments of the Recent Decade: A Case Study of OECD Countries

The agricultural sector as the main infrastructure for food security is one of the most important economic sectors of societies and its average share in the GDP of 161 countries studied in 2019 is about 11 percent. In parallel with the role of this sector in the provision of food security and employment of countries with negative side effects on basic resources and the environment, which led governments to reconsider their policies related to the agricultural sector. Governments can, willingly or unwillingly, affect the environmental sustainability of the agricultural sector in a variety of ways. This article focusing on non-systematic review approach and using the reports of authentic international institution (including FAO, OECD, WTO, etc.), deals with the implications of the agricultural sector and policy developments of the recent decade in the OECD member countries. The findings show that agricultural support policies tend to have a negative impact on the environment. Market price supports policies and payments based on output, and payments based on unconstrained variable input use found to be the most environmentally harmful. In contrast, fully decoupled support payments based on non-current crop area are the least harmful. Soil nutrient balance; Greenhouse gas emissions; Water abstraction for agricultural activities; and biodiversity of agricultural lands (crop diversity and homogeneity of landscapes) are among the key indicators that its improvement and deterioration helps to explain the relationship between agriculture and the environment and recent studies by OECD countries show significant gains in some of these indicators.