Objectives of Agricultural

Policy
Jonna V. Domingo
BSA 3E ANSC
National and Sectoral Objectives

• Agriculture is not an island in the economy. Its ultimate objective

should be to support national development.
• Economic policy responds to national imperatives and to a social
and political vision. It is designed to promote the achievement of
societal aims that are not exclusively economic in character.
Fundamentally, it should be related to the promotion of human
development.
Importance of objectives in Agricultural
policy
Every industry needs rules to regulate itself
and avoid corruption, and agriculture is the same.
Agricultural policies around the world creates laws
and regulations to streamline operations and offer
assistance to farmers.
 Every policy has specific objectives to achieve.
These goals matter because they dictate the lives of
the farmers and ranchers who shape the agricultural
industry. Those who receive the most consequences
often have the least say in what goes into law.
That’s why so many people advocate for talking to
local lawmakers and letting them know what they
think, need and want.
 Regulations provide a foundation for citizens to build
on, but it’s impossible to achieve equal footing if the
framework is unstable. Even though legislators and
residents agree on some points, it doesn’t mean all those
aims will become laws. Continued advocacy is one thing
people can rely on to have their voices heard. Without it,
governments will continue doing what they think is best
instead of what citizens need.
 The objectives of agricultural policy are to uphold
fair processes for everyone in the industry, even if
it doesn't always turn out that way. Still, farmers
and ranchers can avoid defeat by questioning
unfair rules and proposing alternatives. The best
way to see widescale change is by fostering a
desire for it.
Specific objectives for agricultural sector

a) Ensuring that nutrition and other basic material

needs are met in rural areas
b) Contributing indirectly to the satisfaction of those
needs in urban areas
 Ways to achieve agricultural policy
objective
1. Improve agricultural policy performance to enhance
the sector’s long-term productivity growth
• Re-focus the policy package to improve food security
• Re-focus agrarian land policies from land distribution
to securing property rights through land governance
reforms
• Focus budgetary support on long-term structural
reform
• Re-orient agricultural knowledge systems
2. Re-orient the focus of agricultural education and
extension services to improve farm management
skills

• Adopt a holistic approach to risk management with

a policy focus on catastrophic risks

• Assess insurance and cash-transfer schemes that

can encourage adaptive decisions
3. Improve agricultural sector’s capacity to adapt to climate
change

Make climate-adaptation policy objectives consistent across

programmes and institutions

• Develop clear guidance on climate-adaptation “tagging”

• Make sure that new infrastructure projects are “climate-proof”

• Provide reliable climate information to farmers

• Encourage more efficient use of water

4. Improve agricultural institutions and governance
systems
• Strengthen institutional co-ordination between the DA
and other relevant departments and institutions that
implement programmes supporting agriculture
• Strengthen transparency and accountability of
publicly-funded programmes
• Accelerate efforts to build a solid policy-relevant
statistical system.
• Embed monitoring and evaluation mechanisms into
the policy process
Indicator of Economic Status or Rural Households
1. Income is a better indicator, for it takes into account the
prices farmers receive and their costs of production.
2. Real income adjusts net income levels for the rate of
inflation in order to measure the purchasing power of
rural households.
3. Production
Therefore, agriculture can make its effective contribution
to nutrition and other basic material needs by generating
more real income for rural households. This contribution,
in turn, depends on three factors, namely production, real
farmgate prices and non-farm employment in rural areas.
Principles of Agricultural policy
1.Economic sustainability. The strategy must find ways to
deliver real economic benefits to the rural sector. Although fiscal
discipline is important, this means, among other things, not simply
subjecting the sector to the fiscal retrenchment of a structural
adjustment program.
2.Social sustainability. The strategy must also improve the
economic well-being of lower income groups and other
disadvantaged groups of women. Otherwise it loses social viability
 Real prices are almost always beyond the control of farmers
themselves but can be influenced by policies.

Production is a function of the land area cultivated and

productivity, or unit yields. As limits on the availability of cultivated
land are reached, and sometimes exceeded, production increases in
the future increasingly depend on technology to deliver improvements
in productivity.

It should not be overlooked that the level of nutrition of a rural

family can also depend on the degree of control over production
exercised by women in the household.
3. Fiscal sustainability. Policies, programs and projects whose complete
sources of financing are not identified should not be undertaken. In an era of
increasing budgetary stringency in all governments, application of this principle
encourages a search for new sources of fiscal revenue and ways in which
beneficiaries of the policies, programs and projects can contribute to their
financing.
4. Institutional sustainability. Institutions created or supported by policy
should be robust and capable of eventually standing on their own. For example,
financial institutions which are just credit channels to farmers and ranchers, and
which do not have deposit raising capabilities of their own, are not likely to
survive over the long term.
5. Environmental sustainability. Policies should be
developed to bring about sustainable management of
forests and fisheries stocks and reduce to manageable
levels agricultural pollution of water sources and
degradation of soils. A major challenge for agricultural
policy in some countries is to slow or stop the expansion
of the agricultural frontier, the zone in which cultivation is
possible only by felling trees.
References
Norton, R. (2005). Agricultural Development
Policy[pdf]. Retrieved from
https://www.perlego.com/book/2750985/agricultural-
development-policy-concepts-and-experiences-pdf
OECD (2017), Agricultural Policies in the Philippines,
OECD Food and Agricultural Reviews, OECD Publishing,
Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264269088-en