agriculture policy brief
Overcoming evidence gaps on food systems
April 2023
To transform food systems, sound evidence is needed as the basis for effective policy action. vidence is needed on the extent, characteristics and drivers of issues; on the effectiveness of E different policy instruments (including synergies and trade-offs); and on how policy proposals affect stakeholders, including impacts on citizens’ values and preferences. o explore this topic, three deep dives across OECD countries were undertaken focussing on T food insecurity and food assistance programmes, gender and food systems, and environmental impacts along food supply chains. These studies demonstrated considerable evidence gaps, but also identified roadmaps to overcome these. cross the deep dives, some common lessons emerge. Governments should be proactive A about investing in evidence, especially since public data often has an added value over private alternatives. However, evidence-gathering should ideally focus on what is needed to inform more targeted and more effective policies. In particular, rigorous evaluation is essential to adjust policies over time and enable cross-country learning.
What’s the issue? There is broad agreement on the need to transform food systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, effective policy action is hampered by evidence gaps, which are defined here as the gap between the evidence policy makers need to decide on a course of action, and the actual evidence available to them. Such gaps may exist regarding the extent, characteristics and drivers of issues; these gaps make it difficult to know how serious problems are or their cause. For example, gender data is often not collected, making it hard to assess the contribution of women to farming, food manufacturing, and food services businesses, as well as the challenges they face. In many cases, the problem is not an absolute lack of evidence, but rather that available evidence is not sufficiently detailed. For example, evidence might have insufficient geospatial granularity, may not be disaggregated across socio-economic groups, or may not have the right frequency or time horizon. Similarly, evidence may exist but may be fragmented across different public or private actors. Another problem can be that evidence is generated using different methodologies, making it difficult to compare across countries, across different groups of people, or over time. Studying the impact of nutrition policy, for example, is made complicated by the lack of disaggregated data by socio-economic groups.
www.oecd.org/food-systems
There are also evidence gaps regarding the effectiveness of different policy instruments and their synergies and trade-offs. This, in turn, makes it difficult to know how ambitious policy makers can be, which initiatives can be undertaken, and what the likely effects on other policy objectives will be. For example, while it is well understood that a sizeable share of global food production is either lost in the supply chain or wasted at the household level, surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of possible policy interventions to address food loss and waste, as well as about possible synergies and trade-offs with other objectives. There may be evidence gaps around interests and values, e.g. on how a proposed initiative affects different stakeholders, or which food systems objectives citizens value most. Policy makers will never have perfect information. Collecting further data and evidence comes at a cost, takes time, and requires technical expertise that may not always be available. Postponing a policy decision until more information is available can also be costly. Pragmatism is needed.
tad.contact@oecd.org
@OECDagriculture