Policy Assistance Series 7 - Rethinking Public Policy in Agriculture

Abstract

In this report FAO establishes, based on contemporary and historical precedents, the need for developing countries to adopt policies that ensure strong complimentarity between targeted publicsector interventions and private sector roles. The report provides a wide range of examples and highlights three important lessons. First, in all the now developed countries, governments, at the early stages of economic development, supported agriculture through, inter alia, price stabilization and provision of inputs such as seeds and fertilizer. The same strategy was successfully employed recently by countries such as Chile and India.