5 The World Bank’s new Database of Agricultural Distortions (Anderson and Valenzuela) complements and extends those efforts by OECD and IFPRI and the seminal K/S/V study. It builds on them by providing similar estimates for other significant (including many low-income) developing economies, by developing and estimating new, more comprehensive policy indicators, and by providing estimates of nominal rates of assistance (NRAs) for non-agricultural tradables to compare with those for the farm sector.<sup>3</sup> This new database includes estimates for 75 countries that together account for between 90 and 96 percent of the world’s population, farmers, agricultural GDP and total GDP (table 1). The sample countries also account for more than 85 percent of farm production and employment in each of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia, and their spectrum of per capita incomes ranges from the poorest (Zimbabwe and Ethiopia) to among the richest (Norway).<sup>4</sup> NRAs and consumer tax equivalents (CTEs) are estimated for more than 70 different farm products, with an average of nearly a dozen per country. In aggregate the coverage represents around 70 percent of the gross value of agricultural production in the focus countries,<sup>5</sup> and just under two-thirds of global farm production valued at undistorted prices over the period covered. Not all countries had data for the entire 1955-2007 period, but the average number of years covered is 41 per country.<sup>6</sup> Of the world’s 30 most valuable agricultural products, the NRAs cover 77 percent of global output, ranging from two-thirds for livestock, three-quarters for oilseeds and tropical crops, and five-sixths for grains and tubers. Those products represent an even higher share (85 percent) of global agricultural exports. Having such a comprehensive coverage of countries, products and years offers the prospect of obtaining a reliable picture of both long-term trends

> 3 These estimates and associated analytical narratives are discussed in far more detail in a global overview volume (Anderson), and the detailed developing country case studies are reported in four regional volumes covering Africa (Anderson and Masters), Asia (Anderson and Martin 2009a), Latin America (Anderson and Valdés) and Europe’s transition economies (Anderson and Swinnen).

> 4 The only countries not well represented in the sample are those in the Middle East and the many small ones, but in total the omitted countries account for less than 4 percent of the global economy (made up of 0.2 percent from each of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, 0.9 percent from Latin America, and the rest from the Middle East and North Africa).

> 5 Had seven key mostly-nontraded food staples (bananas, cassava, millet, plantain, potato, sweet potato and yam) been included for all instead of just some developing countries, their product coverage would have risen from around 70 to 76 percent; and had those staples had an average NRA of zero, they would have brought the weighted average NRA for all covered agriculture in developing countries only about half of one percentage point closer to zero each decade over the sample period (Anderson, table 12.10).

> 6 By way of comparison, the seminal multi-country study of agricultural pricing policy by Krueger, Schiff and Valdés (1988; 1991) covered an average of 4.3 products for 23 years to the mid-1980s for each of its 18 focus countries that together accounted for 6 percent of global agricultural output; and the producer and consumer support estimates of the OECD (2008) cover 22 years for its 30 countries that account for just over one-quarter of the world’s agricultural output valued at undistorted prices.