Aid to agriculture from China and India has exceeded aid from OECD countries by EFE

© Reuters. Aid to agriculture from China and India has exceeded that of the OECD countries

Paris, Oct. 30 (.).- Aid to agriculture in the large growth countries, which are China and India, has exceeded that of the OECD members, which, although they have continued to increase in recent years in absolute terms, have lost relative weight.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) states in its annual report on agricultural aid published on Monday that this aid reached a record level of $851 billion annually in the period 2020-2022 in the 54 countries it reports on. compared with 696,000 million annually in 2017-2019.

This 22.3% increase is explained by the policies implemented in response to covid, inflationary pressures and the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If observed in a breakdown, aid to farmers increased by 20% in that period, and although it represented the largest part (74% of the total in the period 2020-2022), this percentage has decreased.

The reason is that the money given to consumers of agricultural products almost doubled, accounting for 13.5% of the total in the last three years, to try to mitigate the impact of the rising prices of many of them .

At the same time, some emerging economies (such as India or Argentina) implicitly taxed their producers with export taxes and other mechanisms to reduce domestic prices, units worth $179 billion annually in the triennium 2020-2023.

One of the most remarkable elements of the study is that agricultural support in the 11 developing countries in the sample of 54 analyzed became the majority package with 497,000 million dollars in the last triennium, since in 2000-2002 they did not represent more than 68,000 million.

China accounted for 36% of total aid

Among these emerging economies, China alone accounted for 36% of the total, while India accounted for 15%. The USA and the EU lagged behind with 14 and 13 percent respectively.

If the relative weight of aid is examined in relation to the value of agricultural production, in the period 2020-2022 it represented 20% globally for the 54 countries in the report, and this means a decrease compared to 29% in 2000-2002.

In the OECD countries, this percentage has fallen from 41% in 2000-2002 to 25% in 2020-2022, while in the 11 emerging economies it has increased from 13% to 17%.

For each country, the ceiling is set by Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, where aid to the agricultural sector amounted to between 72% and 83% of the value of production in the past three years, 16.5% in the EU (compared to 29.8% in 2000-2002), 14.4% in China (compared to 5.2%) or 8.9% in the US (compared to 19.5%).

There is the apparent paradox that in Argentina this support was negative in terms of the value of production (14.6%) and even more so in India (15%), which has to do with the fact that taxes there on agricultural prices to limit or prevent exports, was much more important than subsidies.

Based on the first estimates obtained for 2022, the authors of the study state that this is the second year in a row that support for farmers has been reduced in relation to their gross income.

This is due to more than a change in public policy in the direction of the sector towards a lower price subsidy, precisely in a context where these prices have increased and, in the case of certain products, have skyrocketed.

As well as evaluating the level of aid, the OECD records more than 600 measures to adapt agriculture in the 54 countries to the effects of climate change, insisting that there is an urgent need for others, but not so much to cope with short-term shocks. take into account how the situation will be in the medium and long term.

Because, according to his analysis, current policies reinforce existing production structures, which in many cases are outdated and “prevent the development of production systems.”