Agricultural statistics for environmental monitoring and policy

A number of key challenges confront agricultural statisticians, economists and policy analysts concerned with environmental monitoring and policy analysis, in particular to: improve the availability and the quality of data; enhance the dialogue between economists, statisticians and policy analysts; and produce policy relevant and analytically sound agri-environmental indicators (AEIs). In its policy and indicators work on agriculture and the environment. the OECD has been addressing these challenges, and the paper describes how the OECD has started to develop a set of AEIs. After the introduction the paper describes the overall policy context of OECD work on agriculture and the environment. Thirdly, it sets out the objectives and framework for the OECD AEI work. Fourthly, it provides a brief overview of recent AEI work in OECD countries. Fifthly, the paper examines recent progress in developing the OECD set of AEIs, and finally, outlines future developments in AEI work.