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Spending smarter on food and agriculture

Making public spending more effective with FAO's policy optimization tool

Year of publication 2024

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 4 p.

Author FAO

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet

Synopsis (short abstract) FAO’s Policy Optimization Tool (PolOpT) empowers governments to reallocate their public budgets on food and agriculture, repurposing limited resources into powerful drivers of change to achieve more agricultural transformation, and better food security and nutrition in an era of tight fiscal constraints.PolOpT uses advanced modelling techniques to generate tailored country spending scenarios, showing governments and policymakers insights into optimizing spending across key areas like extension services, fertilizer subsidies, irrigation, mechanization, electrification, rural roads, R&D, and seed subsidies to maximize socioeconomic benefits.Tested in countries like Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda, PolOpT has shown remarkable potential: lifting hundreds of thousands of rural people out of poverty, creating thousands of rural jobs, making healthy diets affordable for millions, and boosting agrifood output by optimizing agrifood budgets.The tool doesn’t stop at socioeconomic transformation. In 2025, PolOpT will also integrate climate, biodiversity and land-restoration goals, reallocating agrifood spending to factor in global environmental commitments like the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, Nationally Determined Contributions, National Adaption Plans, and efforts to combat desertification, among others. With PolOpT, governments can better navigate fiscal pressures on the public purse while achieving transformative impacts through smarter, more strategic spending on food and agriculture.

Language English

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