Standards for Development - Agrifood Systems Report

The World Bank World Development Report 2025: Standards for Development (WDR 25) offers a comprehensive assessment of today’s global standards landscape and a practical framework for how countries can adapt, align with, and shape standards to accelerate economic development.

Standards are particularly critical for agrifood systems—including agriculture, food processing and distribution, forestry, and natural-fiber textiles—where a large share of global trade is shaped by non-tariff measures linked to standards. For many countries, the challenge lies not only in adopting standards but in building laboratories, inspection services, certification bodies, and traceability systems that allow standards to enable rather than constrain inclusive growth.

To better understand how food safety, animal health, and phytosanitary standards affect market access, productivity, and inclusion—particularly for low- and middle-income countries and small-scale producers, the World Bank Group is currently preparing a companion report to the WDR 25 focusing specifically on agrifood systems. We greatly welcome your insights and experience to ensure that the report is practical and useful for policymakers and practitioners.

Your feedback will help us identify priority gaps, key challenges, and areas where further analysis or guidance could support more effective implementation of standards in agrifood systems.