Food security and agricultural sustainability: an overview of critical success factors

This paper offers an overview of factors that are decisive for productivity increase in the agricultural sector (both farming and agro‐food). An attempt is made to explain differences in total factor productivity in agriculture in different countries by means of meta‐analysis, in particular, by using rough set theory as a framework for comparative study. The main aim is to derive the drivers of changes in agricultural food production with a view to conditional future predictions of an “if … then” nature. The empirical application to OECD countries is used to illustrate the potential of this new approach for identifying critical success factors in agriculture with a view to future food security objectives.