Towards more evidence-based agricultural and food policies

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to provide insights into how scientific evidence can be used for policy making and to put evidence-based agriculture and food policies at the top of research and policy agendas. We illustrate how scientific evidence can be used in a targeted manner for better policy making and present an overview of the rich set of ex-ante and ex-post evaluation methods and tools that agricultural economists use for evaluating agricultural policies to provide evidence for policy decisions. We present insights into both established and new/emerging methods and approaches, including their advantages and disadvantages, and discuss their potential use for policy evaluation. We also discuss how methods and approaches should be combined and could be better targeted towards decision makers. The paper also discusses the crucial role of high-quality data in supporting the science–policy interface. Finally, we present an overview of papers in this special issue titled ‘Evidence-Based Agricultural and Food Policy: The Role of Research for Policy Making’.