AbstractThis chapter discusses enabling environments for competitive agro-industries. It is argued that fostering competitive agro-industries requires that conducive business climates, or enabling environments, are in place. Recent efforts to promote reform processes through business climate assessments, but it is concluded that these approaches were not designed for the evaluation of business climates for agro-industrial enterprises. To provide guidance on agro-industry-focused analyses of business climates, a hierarchy of state actions for characterizing and assessing enabling environments for agro-industrial enterprises, classifying actions as essential enablers, important enablers and useful enablers, is proposed. The hierarchy, however, is just a starting point. It is argued that, for effective reform to emerge, a nuanced appreciation of the roles that public policy makers can play in sustaining competitiveness is needed. An analytical framework for reform processes framed by two key dimensions, namely the level of risk and uncertainty agro-industries face when conducting business and the capacity of the state in shaping the environment for business, is introduced. It is argued that the framework can be used to identify suitable policy options for different enabling environment reform contexts.