Overview

The Agricultural Outlook is a collaborative effort of the OECD in Paris and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations in Rome. Its main purpose is to produce an updated annual 10-year assessment of global commodity markets that includes analysis of recent developments and emerging issues, bringing together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both Organisations. The projections for production, consumption, stocks, trade and prices described and analysed in this report cover the years 2007 to 2016. The projections are presented in the Statistical Annex. They reflect many specific assumptions concerning key external factors such as macroeconomic performance, agricultural and trade policies, and trends in technologies as well as consumer preferences. The projections do not take account of weather shocks and related impacts on crop yields and livestock production, nor are changes considered to agricultural and trade policies – anticipated or otherwise – that have yet to be adopted by legislation or international agreements. Such deviations from these assumptions constitute some of the important uncertainties in the Outlook, the potential impacts of which are also assessed in this report.