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Can agricultural policies deliver sustainable food systems?
CIHEAM > AGENDAS > Can agricultural policies deliver sustainable food systems?

LECTURE

Jesús Antón, head of the Productivity – Sustainability – Resilience Benchmarking Unit of the OECD, examines the role of agricultural policies in transforming agrifood systems and the challenges involved in moving towards more sustainable production models.

GRABACIÓN

SUMMARY

Agricultural production has undergone significant transformation in recent decades, driven by productivity gains that have contributed to reducing malnutrition worldwide. However, food systems currently face a triple challenge: ensuring food security and adequate nutrition, improving livelihoods, and achieving environmental sustainability. Other challenges include geographical shifts in production, changing consumption patterns, increasing pressure on natural resources, and the need to strengthen climatic resilience.

This keynote lecture, delivered during the inauguration of the academic year 2026-2027 at CIHEAM Zaragoza, examined how agricultural policies are adapting to these emerging challenges. Drawing on evidence and analyses produced by the OECD, Antón explored the limitations of existing policy support frameworks and highlighted the need for a paradigm shift towards innovation-oriented policies capable of driving sustainable productivity growth. Achieving this will require capacity-building, improved governance, greater coordination across public policies and the development of indicators to measure progress towards more sustainable food systems.

SPEAKER

Jesús Antón is head of the Productivity-Sustainability-Resilience Benchmarking Unit in the Agriculture and Resource Policies Division in the OECD.

Antón has extensive  professional experience in agricultural policy issues and international economic analysis. Between 1998 and 2014, he held various positions as an economist at the OECD, working on agricultural policy issues and leading initiatives on agricultural risk management. From 2014 to 2017 he headed the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management hosted by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which worked with nine African countries. He returned to the OECD in 2017 as a senior economist.

Earlier in his career, he served as an advisor to the secretary general of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and lecturer in economics at the Comillas Pontifical University and the Complutense University of Madrid.

He has published extensively on a range of agricultural policy issues, particularly impact assessment, international trade, sustainable productivity, and resilience of agricultural systems.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the Autonomous University of Madrid, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a Master’s degree in Advanced European Studies, specialising in Economics and European Policies, from the College of Europe.

  • Date: 28 October 2026, 11:30h CET
  • Venue: Salón de Actos del CIHEAM Zaragoza (Av. Montañana 1005, Zaragoza, España)
  • Format: Hybrid
  • Language: Spanish with interpretation into English
  • Cycle: CIHEAM Zaragoza-Campus Dei Lecture Series