ABOUT
AgIncentives: An international Consortium for Measuring the Policy Environment for Agriculture
The pattern of incentives to agriculture is continuously changing. Assistance to agriculture is provided by a wide range of measures, and protection rates vary in response to explicit changes in policy as well as movements in world agricultural prices. We need regular monitoring of developments in agricultural incentives to allow fact-based analysis of the policy impacts. To understand the impact of policy on agricultural returns in any country, we require information on that country’s policy measures. But the collective impact of countries’ policies may influence world prices of affected agrifood commodities. So, to understand the full impacts of intervention, we need estimates of country-specific distortions and those in the countries covering a large share of global production.
Monitoring agricultural incentives on a continuing basis is a task beyond the capability of any one organization. Current Consortium members include OECD, FAO, the Inter-American Development Bank, The World Bank, and IFPRI. We stand ready to welcome any other institution with a continuing commitment to measuring agricultural incentives.
The institutions measuring agricultural incentives use a combination of two main methodologies: indirect measurement of incidence or direct measurement of policies. With heterogeneity in the methodologies utilized and different data sets being employed, it has been difficult for policy makers to correctly measure and interpret the impact of their policy designs.
But this data is difficult to access due to heterogenous formats or unavailability.
Our Mission
Our mission is to bring together the findings from the organizations active in this field on a continuing basis to develop a global view of incentives, and to shine a light on incentives in some of the smaller economies where distortions to agricultural incentives have particularly strong impacts on the poor and vulnerable communities.
Our Goals
The AgIncentives Consortium aims to create a community of practice, to provide a harmonized and consolidated database, and to provide a forum for discussion aimed at raising the quality and coverage of available measures. Our database brings together data from member organizations, often presented elsewhere in a different format, respecting the Intellectual Property Rights of all contributors.
In the initial phase of the Consortium, we provided only one measure of agricultural incentives—the Nominal Rate of Protection—which measured the extent to which policies created gaps between domestic and world prices and hence influenced the decisions of both producers and consumers. Discussions between members have allowed us to provide a new set of measures—Nominal Rates of Assistance—that also capture the impacts of support measures such as the subsidies to inputs and outputs.
How we work
The consortium is governed by a Consortium Board, and a Technical Working Group. The Board decides on the policy issues such as the measures to be published and the approaches to be used.
The Technical Working Group (TWG), consisting of representative(s) of each of the participating organizations, ensures that technical solutions adopted in building the platform are efficient in ensuring compatibility with the systems of participating organizations, while also avoiding duplication of material between the Consortium platform and the dissemination tools of the international organizations. With this framework in place, IFPRI takes the lead in collecting the data from members, harmonizing, and converting them into the format needed for the database. These data are then reviewed by TWG members prior to release.
TWG members work closely together to:
- Provide data and calculate indicators according to the standards agreed upon by the Consortium. Ensure that data and associated metadata are provided in most efficient and standardized way considering IT solutions adopted by each contributing organization.
- Identify data problems and inconsistencies and propose steps to resolve them.
- Identify quality data presentation tools and ensure that presentation of data on the website is user friendly.
Who we are
Consortium Board Members
| Organization | Members | Alternate |
| FAO | David Laborde, FAO | Marco Sanchez Castillo, FAO |
| IADB | Carmine Paolo De Salvo, IADB | Gonzalo Munoz, IADB |
| IFPRI | Rob Vos, IFPRI | Will Martin, IFPRI |
| OECD | Guillaume Gruère, OECD | Martin Von Lampe, OECD |
| World Bank | Madhur Gautam, World Bank | Ghada Elabed, World Bank |
Technical Working Group
| Organization | Members | Alternate |
| FAO | Valentina Pernechele, FAO | Juan Jose Egas, FAO |
| IADB | Olga Shik, IADB | Gonzalo Rondinone, IADB |
| IFPRI | Will Martin, IFPRI | Abdullah Mamun, IFPRI |
| OECD | Florence Bossard, OECD | Martin von Lampe, OECD Jibran Punthakey, OECD |
| World Bank | Ghada Elabed, World Bank | Joshua Gill, World Bank Mansur Ahmed, World Bank |
Web Team
| Organization | Members |
| IFPRI | Abdullah Mamun, IFPRI Soonho Kim, IFPRI Swati Malhotra, IFPRI Will Martin, IFPRI |