Enabling the Business of Agriculture

The world will need to feed 9 billion people by 2050. This rapid rise in population will require farmers to increase agricultural production by at least 50 percent. Smart and balanced regulations and policies, along with responsible investments, will be crucial if the needed food supply is to be sustainably produced and distributed.


In addition, one-third of the world’s workforce is engaged in agriculture, and 750 million poor, equivalent to about two-thirds of the global poor, work in agriculture. Clearly, if poverty is to be eradicated, more efficient agricultural value chains which can generate more on and off-farm jobs will need to be in place.

An enabling environment for the business of agriculture is, thus, critical for addressing the challenges ahead. Policies, regulations, institutions, infrastructure, support services and market conditions together shape what is often referred to as the enabling business environment. In many ways, their configuration, interaction and capacity generate the climate or scenario in which the range of value chain participants operate and grow. Improved knowledge and understanding of this business environment leads to formulating better strategies that make business transactions more efficient, facilitate entrepreneurship, increase investment, and enhance market competitiveness and growth.

Enabling the Business of Agriculture
The Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project focuses on identifying and monitoring regulations that negatively affect agriculture and agribusiness markets. EBA aims to inform and encourage policy decisions that support inclusive participation in agricultural value chains and foster an environment that is conducive to local and regional businesses in agriculture.

Eighteen indicators, covering six topics, have been developed to address aspects related to production inputs and market enablers that facilitate farmers, firms and producers to sell their goods and services. The indicators developed and measured in this year’s report cover the following topics:
- Seed
- Fertilizer
- Machinery
- Finance
- Transport
*- Markets

Four additional topics are under development and will be included in next year’s report. These are: Information and Communication Technology (ICT); Land; Water; and Livestock.

Two overarching themes—gender and environmental sustainability—have been explored to ensure that the indicators being developed encourage inclusive and sustainable practices.

The EBA indicators are of two types in nature. De jure or “legal” indicators stem directly from reading the laws and regulations in order to measure relevant aspects of regulatory quality. De facto or “time and motion” indicators reflect the efficiency of a country’s regulatory environment, such as the number of procedures and the time and cost to certify seed for sale in the domestic market, register fertilizer products or export agricultural goods. All indicators use specific rules that are applied equally across countries to ensure that the data are comparable.


Current data and analysis are available for 40 countries.
The EBA project is being scaled up to cover more than 60 countries in next year’s edition. Countries to be added include Armenia, Benin, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, India, Italy, Republic of Korea, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Senegal, Serbia, Thailand, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.

EBA is a joint project of the World Bank’s Agriculture Global Practice and Global Indicators Group The Agriculture Global Practice defines the World Bank’s strategic direction in agriculture, develops and deploys expertise globally, delivers integrated solutions while capturing and leveraging knowledge effectively for maximum development impact needed to end poverty and boost shared prosperity. The Global Indicators Group, which is part of the World Bank’s Development Economics network, produces global datasets that document and explore the relationship between business environment reforms and key development outcomes. The group’s products include the Doing Business report; Women, Business and the Law; Enterprise Surveys; and Subnational Doing Business, amongst others.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the most frequently asked questions about the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project.
What is Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA)?
Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) is a World Bank Group initiative that focuses on identifying and monitoring regulations and policies that affect agriculture and agribusiness markets. The project aims to inform and encourage policy decisions that support inclusive participation in agricultural value chains and foster an environment that is conducive to local and regional business in agriculture.

Why is the World Bank Group supporting EBA?

The world will need to feed 9 billion people by 2050. This rapid rise in population will require farmers to increase agricultural production by at least 50 percent. The bulk of the expected increase in global food demand will be driven by urban markets in developing countries, offering local and regional players a huge opportunity to supply these markets. Smart and balanced regulations and policies, along with responsible investments, will be crucial for unleashing growth in the vital agribusiness sector and ensuring that the needed food supply is sustainably produced and distributed. Measuring the regulatory framework and other associated variables will enable a better understanding and management of countries’ enabling environment. Ultimately, this represents an important step in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
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What topics does the project cover?

EBA developed six scored topics, namely seed, fertilizer, machinery, markets, transport and finance, and defined good practices used to assign scores.
Five more topics are still under development. The scope of two topics - land and information and communication technology (ICT) - is being restructured. Two new topical areas have been developed during 2014- 2015 - water and livestock. And two cross-cutting themes—gender and environmental sustainability—have been introduced and analyzed in Enabling the Business of Agriculture 2016 report.

What does EBA not measure?

Many elements that shape a country’s enabling environment are not captured by EBA indicators. Broader macro-level aspects pertaining to the political, social and economic spheres of a country, for example, shape the climate of its economy, but are not now an area that EBA covers.

Policies, institutions, infrastructure and support services—many shaping a country’s capacity to implement and enforce its regulatory framework—are also key determinants of the enabling environment that Enabling the Business of Agriculture 2016 has not targeted. Other variables characterizing the market—such as prices, stock market trends, government expenditures or investments—are not directly comparable and require a methodology outside the scope of EBA’s current capacity. While EBA is interested in expanding into these areas, they are not covered by this report’s indicators.

Much activity in rural areas, from employment to production and the sale of goods, happens through informal channels. The complexity of regulations, and the time and cost they impose, could be reasons for this, as could the quality of institutions, extension services and physical infrastructure. The current focus of indicators presented in this report is on measuring official laws and regulations and not these other areas.

Benchmarking has its benefits and limitations. Quantitative data and benchmarks can be very effective in stimulating debate about policy, enhancing the ability of policy makers to assess progress over time and making meaningful international comparisons. However, the need of using assumptions in order to ensure global coverage and comparability across countries can come at the expense of generality and discount some context specific information. To address some of these limitations, and fully understand what package of regulatory reforms is most effective in a country and how these issues are shaped by the context, it is critical to collect data consistently over a number of years as well as to combine global benchmarks with context specific information.

How does EBA treat land issues?

Securing access to land is critical for millions of poor people. Land and associated real estate is in many contexts a households’ most important asset. How land is accessed or allocated, at what price and what rights are assigned to producers will have far-reaching impacts on productivity by affecting (i) potential entrepreneur’s (women’s and men’s) ability to make risky agricultural or non-agricultural investments; (ii) the scope for efficiency-enhancing transfers of land to its best use that also promotes equity; and (iii) financial intermediaries ability to provide products that can support investments in this area.

Given the nature of the land topic and the legitimate interests involved, further consultations will be carried out and some new areas could be included next year, such as the cost of registering group rights, the time and cost of land surveying process, the procedural safeguards in case of expropriation and the management of land records. These developments will contribute to the development of a more balanced scoring methodology.