The agriculture sector is shaped by laws, policies, and norms that can support or hinder the production and flow of goods and services. To create policies that lead to “enabling environments” benefiting all actors in the agricultural sector, policymakers must consider evidence from policy impacts and models.

Agricultural policy analyses and reforms seek the right balance of incentives so that smallholder producers, the private sector, and consumers all benefit from their involvement in agriculture.  For example, policies permitting fertilizer subsidies, while they facilitate access to inputs for producers in the short term, discourage the participation of manufacturers and input suppliers by setting prices too low to make a profit. In addition to encouraging investment in the sector, agricultural policy reform also considers the controls needed to ensure food safety.

The BASIS CRSP was the first CRSP to support research on land and credit policies and their impact on employment opportunities. It also conducted workshops on the intersections of agricultural policy, resource access, and human nutrition; on land and water issues; on rural finance, and on the effectiveness of policies to combat persistent poverty in Africa (1999-2004). Since then, other Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research and CRSPs have increasingly addressed policy issues in their research. Both SANREM and IPM have researched the impact of environmental policies on adoption of conservation-oriented and IPM practices; the Livestock-Climate Change Innovation Lab investigates policy issues related to livestock markets, risk reduction through insurance for small producers, livestock and wildlife interactions, and on the role of policy to influence climate change and livestock mitigation and adaptation efforts.