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The objective of this study is to analyze the determinants of agricultural production in Cameroon, a country with very high agricultural potential. The authors conduct this study using data from FAO (FAOSTAT, 2022), the World Bank (WDI, 2022), and Cameroon's Ministries of Rural Development (for budgetary data on public agricultural expenditures). The econometric results show that in Cameroon, the increase in agricultural output is largely sustained by the expansion of the rural population and that a series of factors contribute to the decline in agricultural production, including rural education, low institutional levels and the isolation of rural areas. According to the results of this study, if Cameroon wants to accelerate its agricultural growth, the redistribution of uncultivated arable land to farmers, the integration of agricultural training units into rural secondary education programs and the enforcement of laws protecting land ownership must be at the heart of economic policies. L'objectif de cette étude est d'analyser les déterminants de la production agricole au Cameroun, un pays à très fort potentiel agricole. Les auteurs mènent cette étude à partir des données de la FAO (FAOSTAT, 2022), de la Banque mondiale (WDI, 2022) et des ministères du developpement rural du Cameroun (pour les données budgétaires relatives aux dépenses publiques agricoles). Les résultats économétriques montrent qu'au Cameroun, l'accroissement du produit agricole est soutenu en grande partie par l'expansion de la population rurale et qu'une série de facteurs contribue à la baisse de la production agricole entre autres, l'éducation en milieu rural, le faible niveau des institutions et l'enclavement des zones rurales. Au regard des résultats de cette étude, si le Cameroun veut accélérer sa croissance agricole, la redistribution des terres arables non cultivées aux agriculteurs, l'intégration des unités de formation aux métiers de l'agriculture dans les programmes d'enseignement secondaire en milieu rural et l'application des lois protégeant la propriété foncière doivent être au cœur des politiques économiques.

For over a decade China has supplanted Europe as the principal stimulus for the production and export of soy from Brazil, overwhelmingly in the form of whole beans rather than meal. Medium-term projections, whether from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) or Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), suggest that this dynamic will continue, while China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) forecasts are somewhat more modest. In this article, a range of new factors are taken into account, which point to a more uncertain future. These include: Brazil’s alignment in the US-China trade war and the tensions this is creating both diplomatically and within the soy sector itself; the measures China is adopting to diversify its agricultural commodity supply bases; China’s increasing commitment to global climate goals; the impact of food innovation and consumer trends on global meat consumption; and the policies China is putting into place to increase domestic capacity. All these factors, it is argued, may call into question the current dynamism of the Brazil-China soy nexus over the medium term, with the unintended consequence of easing of the pressure on Brazil’s fragile Cerrados and Amazon ecosystems., International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Vol. 53 No. 2 (2022): China beyond China, Part I

The article presents the results of the assessment of Russia's food security in 2020-2021 based on the available statistical data and sociological monitoring of the population's 'food well-being' conducted since 2015 by the Center for Agro-Food Policy of the RANEPA. The authors believe that the pandemic risks for Russian agriculture were limited, and agricultural production ensured a high level of food self-sufficiency. Although the physical access to food remained at the same level, the economic access has deteriorated; however, Russian families managed to keep their usual diet by redirecting the money saved due to the pandemic restrictions to food consumption. Rising food prices have become the most important problem under the crisis, and to solve it, the Russian government has used a wide range of measures - from reducing duties on food imports and temporary bans on food exports to setting marginal retail prices for certain food products. The sociological assessment of the population's 'food well-being' (the all-Russian telephone survey) showed that the families' requirements to the access to food are rather modest due to the huge credit of patience and sustainable practices of adaptation to the objective social-economic restrictions. Given the achieved indicators of Russia's food self-sufficiency according to the Food Security Doctrine, the state should shift its focus from food self-sufficiency (and increasing exports) to the economic access of the population to food.

Despite initial concerns of catastrophic outcomes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown measures did not severely affect regional agriculture in Central Asia and the Caucasus. They did, however, affect food supply chains in terms of demand and logistics. Food prices were volatile throughout 2020 and particularly high in countries with currency depreciation. However, the on-going COVID-19 pandemic as a human and health crisis presents an ever increasing risk to the economies of Central Asia and the Caucasus. The global implications of the pandemic, combined with a decline in oil and gas exports and migrant remittances, could impede recovery and undermine economic stability in the region. Policymakers should avoid disrupting domestic food supply chains and placing barriers to trade through export bans and quotas. At the same time, they must ensure food security and reduced price volatility through diversified trade networks. Deeper domestic value chains and efficient management of public and private food stock reserves will better prepare countries to face the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Better-informed and targeted policy responses to a pandemic require improved national systems of nutrition research and monitoring, and timely availability of data not only relating to production but also to other levels of the agrifood chain.

Несмотря на изначальные опасения по поводу катастрофических последствий, пандемия COVID-19 и связанные с ней карантинные меры не оказали существенного влияния на сельское хозяйство в регионах Центральной Азии и на Кавказе. Однако они повлияли на продовольственные производственно-сбыто-вые цепочки через спрос и логистику. Цены на продовольствие были нестабильными в течении всего 2020 года и особенно высокими в странах, где произошло обесценивание национальной валюты. Однако продолжающаяся пандемия COVID-19, представляющая собой гуманитарный кризис и кризис в области здравоохранения, несет все больший риск для экономики стран Центральной Азии и Кавказа. Последствия пандемии глобального масштаба в сочетании с сокращением экспорта нефти и газа и денежных переводов мигрантов могут препятствовать восстановлению и подорвать экономическую стабильность в регионе. Лицам, определяющим политику, следует избегать нарушения внутренних цепочек поставок продовольствия и создания торговых барьеров посредством запретов и квот на экспорт. В то же время они должны обеспечивать продовольственную безопасность и снижать волатильность цен за счет диверсифицикации торговых связей. Более глубокие внутренние цепочки создания стоимости и эффективное управление государственными и частными запасами продовольствия лучше подготовят страны к преодолению последствий продолжающейся пандемии. Для более обоснованных и целенаправленных правительственных мер по минимизации последствий пандемии необходимы усовершенствованные национальные системы исследований и мониторинга в области питания, а также своевременное наличие данных, касающихся не только производства, но и других звеньев агропродовольственной цепочки.

This research provides a single explanation for: (i) the persistence of malnutrition and (ii) the increased prevalence of metabolic disease (diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease) among normal weight individuals with economic development. Our model is based on a set point for BMI or bodyweight that is adapted to conditions of scarcity in the pre-modern economy, but which subsequently fails to adjust to rapid economic change. During the process of development, some individuals thus remain at their low-BMI set point, despite the increase in their consumption, while others who have escaped the nutrition trap (but are not necessarily overweight) are at increased risk of metabolic disease. The model and the underlying biological mechanism, which are validated with micro-data from India, Indonesia and Ghana can jointly explain inter-regional (Asia-Africa) differences in nutritional status and the prevalence of diabetes.

Index-basierte Termingeschäfte auf dem Nahrungsmittelmarkt werden kritisiert, weil sie für rasante Preissteigerungen und Hungerrevolten verantwortlich gemacht werden. Die Autoren haben die Literatur zum Nahrungsmittelmarkt ausgewertet und die realwirtschaftlichen Ursachen für die Nahrungsmittelkrisen untersucht. Sie kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass nicht Termingeschäfte, sondern vor allem politische Fehlentscheidungen zu den Krisen beigetragen haben. This short essay on financial speculation with agricultural commodities offers (1) a survey on the real economy factors that caused recent hunger crises, (2) an overview of the academic research on the impact of index-based fi nancial speculation on agricultural markets, and (3) a discussion of political measures that are appropriate - or inappropriate - for improving global food security.

Food security is one of the most complex problems that the world is facing today. This paper discusses the role of international trade in food security and analyzes whether there is a real option to promote or attract land investments, alongside domestic production and international trade for the nations touched by food insecurity. Considering food security as a common purpose for all nations, independently of their level of development or political ideologies, the research concludes that serious cooperation within international agricultural trade negotiations represents the main step towards resolving the most important world challenges such as achieving global food security alongside “Green Growth”. International trade is connected with economic development: free trade brings on medium and long term economic growth. Fighting against poverty requires efficient economic policies and, due to the high degree of economic integration reached by the international economy, this is possible only if governments cooperate with each other and with international organizations, avoiding protectionism.

This paper provides evidence on household responses to the relaxation of one barrier constraining adoption of health practices - lack of information - in a resource constrained setting. It examines the effects of a randomized intervention in Malawi which provides mothers with information on infant nutrition and health. It finds that the intervention results in increases in household food consumption, particularly of protein-rich foods by children. The increased household consumption is funded by increased father's labor supply, constituting evidence that changes in the perceived child health production function affect adult labor supply. Improved consumption also results in better child health.

Since the 2007–08 food crisis, many thoughtful analyses have addressed the causes and impacts of high and volatile international food prices and proposed solutions to the crisis. These studies have covered global as well as local food price dynamics and policy reactions. The food price problem is, however, far-reaching, and its impacts are wide and interrelated. The price formation mechanism has become highly complex and dynamic. Policy actions are politically and economically sensitive. This situation calls for continuous and comprehensive assessments of the problem to provide timely and evidence-based knowledge for policy makers. This paper reviews existing evidence and theories and presents new thoughts and insights from analyses to enlighten the course of actions to be taken. Our review implies that the current body of literature concentrates on high food prices. Commodity price analysis should, however, differentiate between three types of price changes: trends, volatility, and spikes. While price trends are important in the long term, volatility and spikes are more important in the short to medium terms. Descriptive statistics indicate that all three price changes are increasing over time and show strong correlations among themselves. A rising medium-term price trend has triggered extreme short-term price spikes and increased volatility. An assessment of the costs of price volatility has shown that the existing literature follows a conventional marginal-cost approach that considers only few cost components. Direct and immediate components have not been adequately analyzed, and long-term effects have been overlooked. The effect on child nutrition and health is one such long-term effect. Under-nutrition in early childhood has negative consequences for lifetime earnings capacity because of the physical and mental impairment it causes. Economy wide distortions and misallocations also threaten the long-term development of commodity-dependent economies. Measuring and estimating the cost of food price volatility should factor in ongoing processes such as economic growth and technological changes. The supply, demand, and market explanations for high and volatile global prices have been differentiated as exogenous and endogenous factors. To help further identify the drivers of food price changes, they are categorized as root causes, intermediate causes, and immediate causes. Both empirical and theoretical evaluations suggest extreme weather events from the supply side, biofuel production from the demand side, and speculation in commodity futures from the market side are the three most important root causes of observed price volatility. The theoretical and empirical effects of speculation in commodity futures are not yet well understood. However, speculative trading in commodity futures should not be viewed as a random bet that can be smoothed out through the price system. It is important to consider the market and nonmarket contexts that guide the behavioral and strategic choices of speculators. Whereas speculation caused by manipulative, disorderly behaviors and ‘financialization’ are damaging, speculation caused by demand and supply in physical markets can serve as price discovery, liquidity, and risk-hedging mechanisms. Our empirical analysis to quantify the importance of these factors shows that speculation effect is stronger than demand- and supply-side shocks for short term price spikes. Overall policy interventions at global, regional, and local levels should concentrate on reducing price spikes and protecting poor people from short- and long-term crises. The viii formulation and implementation of such policies must be supported with timely information and research-based evidence. A comprehensive portfolio of policy actions is proposed here, rather than over-extended individual measures to address the root causes or over-regulation of markets to address volatility and spikes. Evaluation of policy instruments should weigh the true costs associated with both, action versus inaction. Research must focus on developing price and food security indicators and models that will guide policy implementation also in the short run. Such models are currently missing.

The agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies. Many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transfirmational, while others have been gradual but persistent. This article reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political-economy explanations that have been advanced. Based on a rich global data set covering a half-century of evidence on commodities, countries, and policy instruments, we identify hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which refirm may be feasible.

The study focuses on the period 2004-09 during which Egypt experienced food crisis. The political economy context on how the government responded to the crisis is analysed while pinpointing to what extent there was a pass-through effect from international to domestic prices. The complexity of food price policy issues and their entanglement with poverty, agricultural, and economic policies in Egypt together with the structural aspects of the food subsidy policies are discussed and evaluated from a political economy perspective. Prospects for reform or lack thereof are also analysed in the context of the 25 January 2011 revolution and new political set-up.

Sachzwänge im internationalen Klimaschutz: 1. Weltweit wirksame Begrenzung von Emissionen, 2. Nutzung der Ressource muss einen Preis haben, um Anreiz für sparsamen Umgang zu geben, 3. Pro-Kopf-Lösung (auch von Bundeskanzlerin Merkel gefordert), damit Indien und China mitmachen. Input-Orientierung: Wer Kohle, Öl und Gas in den Wirtschaftskreislauf einspeist muss dazu das Recht zur Emission von 3 (bei Gas 2,5) Tonnen CO2 erworben haben. Die Zertifikate laufen wie Transportdokumente mit.

The global food price shock of 2006-2008 has particularly affected poorer strata of populations in several developing countries. In Egypt and some other countries it has put food subsidy schemes to the test. This paper develops two comparable computable general equilibrium models for Egypt and Ukraine which are used to simulate direct and indirect impacts of the food price surge and various policy options on the performance of the main macroeconomic indicators as well as on poverty outcomes. The results illustrate the limited ability of realistic policy responses to mitigate negative social consequences of an external price shock. Food import tariff cuts are a partial remedy faring better than other analysed options. Furthermore, the Egyptian system of food subsidies needs substantial reforms limiting the related fiscal burden and improving the targeting of the poor population.

Mehr als die Hälfte der Erwachsenen in Deutschland ist übergewichtig. Besonders oft betroffen sind Ältere, Arme und Menschen mit geringer Bildung. Ein Thema für Wirtschaftswissenschaftler? Ernährung und fehlende Bewegung sind entscheidende Faktoren für wichtige Volkskrankheiten. Für durch Übergewicht bedingte Krankheiten wird ein Drittel der gesamten Gesundheitskosten aufgewendet - einer der Gründe für Ökonomen, sich mit der Frage zu befassen, wie eine gesundheitsbewusste Auswahl von Lebensmitteln gefördert werden kann. Ein von der Politik dafür favorisiertes Instrument ist die Nährwertkennzeichnung. Diese Angaben werden bislang von Herstellern freiwillig und nicht standardisiert auf Lebensmittelverpackungen ausgewiesen. Das soll sich ändern: In Kürze wird das Europäische Parlament eine Standardisierung der Nährwertangaben beraten. Kontrovers diskutiert wird dabei die konkrete Ausgestaltung. Im Kern stehen zwei Modelle zur Wahl: Ein von der EU-Kommission favorisiertes Modell, wonach der Prozentanteil einzelner Nährwerte ohne klassifizierende farbliche Unterlegung auszuweisen wäre. Verbraucher- und Gesundheitsorganisationen hingegen bevorzugen das Ampelmodell - die Ampelfarben sollen dabei signalisieren, in welchem Maß Nährwerte in einem Lebensmittel enthalten sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht der vorliegende Wochenbericht die Frage: Gibt es empirische Befunde oder theoretische Erklärungsansätze, welches der beiden Kennzeichnungssysteme verbraucher- und gesundheitspolitische Ziele eher begünstigt? Zentrales Ergebnis: Es gibt bislang keinen eindeutigen empirischen Beleg dafür, eines der beiden Modelle zu verwerfen. Allerdings lässt sich aus informations- und verhaltensökonomischen Erklärungsansätzen ableiten, dass das Ampelmodell klare Vorzüge aufweist. Denn Verbraucher können Informationen bei der Kaufentscheidung oft nur sehr begrenzt aufnehmen und verarbeiten.

The prevalence of hunger in the Philippines prompted the government to launch its hunger mitigation initiative in November 2005. The initiative consisted of two programs: the Food-for-School Program (FSP) and the Tindahan Natin Program (TNP). The FSP belongs to a class of social safety nets called conditional cash or in-kind transfers. There is a growing interest on these instruments worldwide because of evidence that they have not only been useful in providing assistance to poor families but more so because they have been found effective in securing investments in human capital among the poor. On the other hand, the TNP is a targeted food price subsidy program. Like other food price subsidy programs, it operates by lowering the price of certain food items. The lower food price effectively results in increased purchasing power that translates into an increase in the real income of beneficiaries. The budget allocation for these programs has been increasing in recent years. One interesting question to ask now is: Who benefits from the government’s hunger mitigation program? The answer to this question has a large bearing on both the effectiveness and efficiency of the program. Given this perspective, the paper assesses the 1) distribution of the benefits from the FSP and TNP in 2006, and 2) implications on targeting of the use of public schools and day care centers as distribution points. In the process, it also draws some lessons in targeting.

Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on agriculture and farmers, the media’s spotlight on starvation deaths and, finally, the Supreme Court of India’s strong reaction to the plight of the hungry—all make a case for recognizing the right to food. This paper examines the situation prevailing in India and reviews the obligations and initiatives by the government of India to ensure food security. This paper mainly looks at the aspect of corruption as one of the reasons for the failure of the programmes meant for the poor, makes suggestions for addressing the issue and examines the possible role of civil society organizations in making the schemes workable for the poor. The vast number of people below the poverty line, and the failure of schemes meant for this group, clearly shows that India needs to wake up. The judiciary cannot monitor the implementation of the schemes forever. The government needs to review the policy periodically and take corrective measures for effective implementation of different schemes and programmes, establish mechanisms of accountability and ensure the right to food for all.

Present-biased preferences cause distortions in consumption that can motivate the use of paternalistic in-kind transfers. Empirically, goods are consumed to different degrees when consumption outlay changes. Economists distinguish between necessary goods and luxury goods. A present-biased individual has an intertemporal distortion of consumption toward the present, which in turn distorts present consumption toward luxury goods. In-kind transfers of necessary goods, such as food stamps, can alleviate the intertemporal distortion and make present-biased transfer recipients better off. Further, transfers in kind are asymmetrical in the sense that they can target present-biased recipients without affecting fully rational recipients.