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The study examines the link between dietary diversity and BMI using data from Kenyan women aged 15–49. By exploring how dietary diversity affects BMI across various BMI categories, the study examines the demand for diet diversity and its impact on BMI. The results reveal a positive relationship between food diversity and BMI at all quantiles, suggesting that a more varied diet is associated with increased BMI levels among underweight, overweight, and obese individuals. This indicates that the correlation between dietary diversity and health outcomes in higher BMI categories may be ‘unfavourable’, with increased food diversity linked to a higher risk of ‘unfavourable’ BMI categories, i.e., overweight and obesity. This may be attributed to higher caloric intake and/or higher consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol from a more diverse diet, which can contribute to increased BMI. These findings highlight the need to consider moderation and balance in energy intake and the overall nutritional quality of diets when considering and evaluating diets and dietary diversity and in formulating and shaping food policies.

The outdated investment development path results in Eastern Europe and the lack of focus on the agricultural sector necessitated this study. The generalised least squares estimator employed countries from 1993 to 2021 for agricultural sector data on 17 Eastern Europe. Eastern European agriculture is in the early phase of stage IV of the investment development path, consistent with the theory of the investment development path. Human capital enhanced net foreign direct investment. Agricultural trade openness, exchange rate, and inflation did not influence net foreign direct investment. Developed and transition countries in Eastern Europe were not distinguished regarding net foreign direct investment. Eastern European countries must increase agricultural growth relative to population growth. This would increase agricultural development. The increased income can be saved and channelled into domestic investments to spur additional growth. This would make capital available for export. The growth in human capital must be sustained to enhance technical know-how in agriculture that would accompany agricultural capital export. Agricultural sector managers of Eastern European countries must focus on enhancing the sector's supervisory and regulatory functions. The goal should be to reduce the costs of doing agricultural business through effective facilitation towards efficient agricultural markets.

The paper assessed the effect of economic policy on the effects of aid to agricultural production and consumption on agricultural growth in developing countries. We used data from a panel of 117 countries from 1996 to 2020 fitted to a GMM estimator. We found that both aid-to-production and aid-for-consumption discourage agricultural growth. Economic policy independently enhances agricultural growth. Foreign direct investment promotes agricultural growth. In the presence of economic policy, whilst aid-to-production did not discourage agricultural growth, it worsened the effect of aid-to-consumption on agricultural growth. Among other recommendations, developing countries should seek less foreign aid-toproduction and more FDI into agricultural production as both the former and the latter would increase agricultural growth. Governments in developing countries must enhance trade and macroeconomic policies and promote FDI as this would increase agricultural growth.

Background We examined the investment development path (IDP) through the perspective of developing countries’ agricultural sector. Our analytical approach indirectly accounts for interactions among countries regarding cross-border resource transfers. Aside from providing knowledge on testing the IDP by inferential statistics, the information would be relevant for policymaking. Identifying the stage(s) in the IDP not only highlights the global appeal of agriculture but also guides firms seeking to expand beyond borders. This information is essential for developing an effective economic strategy. Methods We employed data from 1991 to 2021 for 55 countries from the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) and applied a fixed effects estimator corrected for serial correlation and non-constant variances. Results and conclusions We found that agriculture in developing countries is currently in stages I and II of the IDP. Broadly, agricultural production requires policies that would increase outward foreign direct investment and inward foreign direct investment. Domestic agricultural businesses in developing countries must develop capacity by learning from foreign multinationals. This would enable agricultural businesses to invest abroad. Such a move would lead to an increase in outward FDI. As this would have resulted from increased GDP per capita, it will lead to movement from the existing stage to higher ones.

This paper assessed the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the stages of human development (HD) using panel data from 87 developing, 13 transition and 34 developed countries from 1990 to 2019. Foreign direct investment positively influenced human development in developing countries. However, the effect was neutral for transition and developed countries. Regarding the effect of FDI on the stages of HD, except for low human development in developing countries, all the computed effects were positive. Failure to delineate the effects of FDI on HDI into stages of HD would result in inaccurate results leading to inappropriate policy responses. Generally, FDI can be promoted in countries within the stages of human development. Whilst similar policies may be relevant, the extent of the outcomes would differ.

AbstractThe extension of the shelf life of food through processing makes food available beyond the shelf-life of fresh agricultural produce, which has implications for food and nutrition security. Food processing creates products for the specified nutritional needs of persons with special nutritional requirements, market access for products from the agricultural sector, employment for households, opportunities for trade and marketing as well as tax revenues for the state. These contribute to the standard of living (income) as well as education and health components of human development. Existing studies have focused on assessing the human development (HD) effects of foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the differences in human development could engender differences in the effect of FDI on human development. Unlike the exante literature, we focus on food manufacturing FDI, the human development stages and the contemporaneous analysis of developed and developing countries. We used panel data from 18 and 26 developing and developed countries respectively from 1991 – 2021 and fitted it to panel generalised estimation equations and the general method of moments estimators. We find that food manufacturing FDI had a significant influence on human development for all human development stages in developing but only for low-developed countries in the category of the low human development index. Not isolating the influence of FDI on human development stages could produce misleading outcomes for developed countries. Policymakers can look at food manufacturing FDI to increase HDI and in some cases to migrate from one stage to another.

Whilst there is some literature on the effect of inward foreign direct investment on domestic investment for the whole economy and the agricultural sector, that of foreign divestment on domestic investment for food manufacturing is rare. This paper contributes to the literature by estimating the crowding effect of foreign divestment on domestic investment in the food manufacturing sector using an unbalanced panel of 29 countries from 1991 to 2019. Foreign divestment crowded out domestic investment for developed countries in the short and long runs. In terms of the absolute reduction in domestic investment, the short-run effect is higher than the long-run effect. Policies to attract inward foreign direct investment and retain it should be pursued.

Whilst some studies explored the effect of food manufacturing foreign direct investment (FMFDI) on microeconomic and macroeconomic indicators, the human development effect, which is the ultimate for economic management, remains unexplored. This study does that with a focus on developing and developed countries. An unbalanced panel data of 44 (18 developing and 26 developed) countries from 1991 to 2018 with a fixed-effects and general method of moments estimators were employed. Developing countries' FMFDI positively influenced the human development of the total economy. Also, developed countries' FMFDI positively influenced the human development of the total economy. Developing country economic managers should improve the macroeconomic environment to promote foreign direct investment into the food manufacturing subsector. There is a need for a reallocation of FMFDI to developing countries. International bodies such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development would be useful in this direction.

Many developing countries have embraced policies to attract foreign direct investment into their respective economies including the agricultural sector to enhance technology transfer, employment, and trade among other benefits. On the other hand, foreign direct investment into the agricultural sector has been associated with competition with local agricultural produce from imported raw and processed products and land grabbing that has deprived farmers of land for cultivation. These could have implications for the investment and employment of indigenes in the agricultural sector and consequently welfare. This raises the question, does agricultural foreign direct investment promote or discourage welfare? In this paper, we assessed the welfare effects of agricultural foreign direct investment in developing countries. Using an unbalanced panel data of 51 developing countries from 1990 to 2019 with a fixed-effects estimator, we found that agricultural foreign direct investment promotes welfare in developing countries. Openness to trade, population growth, human capital, and infrastructure enhanced welfare. Whilst government expenditure did not promote welfare, inflation did not affect welfare. Whilst promoting foreign direct investment into agriculture, governments in developing countries must improve human capital, develop infrastructure, and pursue trade openness policies. Final government expenditure on goods and services needs to be redirected into funding projects and programmes that improve the health, education, and income of citizens, especially the poor.

Background: Whilst the literature on the complementarity and substitutability of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment (DI) is not uncommon, the facet of food manufacturing is non-existent. This paper fills this void by investigating the effect of FDI on DI in the food manufacturing sector for developing, economies in transition and developed countries. Methods: Using an unbalanced panel data of 49 countries from 1993 to 2016, from FAOSTAT, estimated by the system generalised method of moments (GMM), the Wald statistics for the short and long-run effects of FDI on DI were computed for the development groups. Results: Developed economies experienced a crowd-out effect of FDI on DI in the short run, whilst the others experienced no significant effect. In the case of the long run, the food manufacturing sectors of all three development groups exhibited a crowd-out effect. The effect in the long run for all development groups together is a crowd-in. Analysing all country groups together could mask the results of the various country groups. Conclusions: A review of investment policies to prioritise FDI entry mode that favour domestic investment is needed. Improvement of the investment regulatory and administrative efficiency among others are recommended.

To investigate the nexus between the investment development path (IDP) and human development, we modelled the human development (human development index, HDI) using generalized estimation equations and accounted for the unit interval property using non-linear link functions. The gross domestic product per capita was used as the proxy for the IDP. Using panel data of 2,568 observations from 135 countries for 1990–2019, we found a strong and positive effect of IDP on HDI. Thus, there is a nexus between IDP and human development. The 4% elasticity of the IDP, confirms the broader scope of the HDI than the IDP in capturing development. Coupled with the 60% correlation between the IDP variable and HDI, aside from serving as a proxy for each other, these could also be instruments for each other provided they are uncorrelated with the error term in the model under consideration. Trade, infrastructure, and human capital were found to enhance human development. These offer policy options for enhancing human development.

Research background: Despite the growing social recognition of the positive role played by organic farming in the conservation of natural resources and the reduction or elimination of the negative externalities of modern agriculture, the economic competitiveness of organic versus conventional agriculture is a contentious issue. Studies on scale efficiency in the agricultural economics literature, in general, did not address the differences in production practices such as organic and conventional production. Purpose of the article: We estimated scale efficiency of organic and conventional production, tested for differences between organic and conventional agriculture scale efficiency, and explored the sources of inefficiencies. Methods: This was accomplished using cross-sectional data on 658 organic and conventional cocoa farmers, for the 2012/13 production season in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The analysis accounted for selection bias and recognised the fractional property of the scale efficiency measure. Findings & Value added: Organic agriculture is less scale efficient than conventional agriculture. Whilst we recommend that both producer groups improve scale efficiency, organic producers require greater work to do to make up for the almost 50% scale inefficiency. We also found farmer-based organisations to significantly influence scale efficiency. This calls for the need to strengthen farmer-based organisations to increase participation, among other reasons. We departed from the existing scale efficiency literature in a three of ways. We accounted for selection-bias using propensity score matching in the organic and conventional samples in analysing scale efficiency, modelled scale inefficiency using fractional regression and empirically selected the appropriate link function using a battery of tests. Finally, we accounted for an important policy variable; farmer-based organisation. We employed propensity score matching that accounted from observable biases. Further research may consider other methods that account for both observed and unobserved variations.

Small states, classified as countries with population barely exceeding 1.5 m, encounter special development challenges. Although they share common characteristics of small population and size of land area, they also differ along other characteristics such as geography, remoteness, and dispersion. These have combined to depict them as different from large states and hence could differ from large states regarding responses to macroeconomic indicators such as foreign direct investment. Thus, this paper investigated the stages of Small states within the investment development path (IDP) framework. As a collective, developing Small states depart from the theory of the IDP. As individual Small states, some of the countries also showed stages that are inconsistent with the theory and empirical evidence. Small states need to be studied as a collective and as individual countries.

Gross margin, as a measure of profitability has been associated with an enterprise and for a single product. The determinants of the gross margin have also been investigated using multiple regression. Whilst attempts have been made to model joint production, this has not been the case for gross margin for joint production. Further, multiple regression analysis is inadequate in modelling the gross margins of joint production. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by estimating gross margin for a joint product, decomposed the gross margin into the respective joint products and investigated the drivers (and constraints) of the joint product gross margins by use of multivariate multiple regression. Using data on smallholder palm fruit processing in Ghana, collected using a pretested questionnaire, we have shown that, attention must not be on the gross margin of the major product alone, in a joint production environment. Gender (being female), number of years of formal education, experience in palm oil processing and credit explained the joint product gross margin. Government, NGOs and other development partners should encourage females to stay longer in the formal school system and enhance credit opportunities to smallholder palm oil processors. The gross margin of the complete set of the joint product must be considered. We showed that failure to account for the minor product would underestimate the gross margin. The outcome is useful for computing profit margins in a joint production environment. Also, it assists the manager in identifying what factors to tweak to increase the profit margin for the joint product.

Background We examined the investment development path (IDP) through the perspective of developing countries’ agricultural sector. Our analytical approach indirectly accounts for interactions among countries regarding cross-border resource transfers. Aside from providing knowledge on testing the IDP by inferential statistics, the information would be relevant for policymaking. Identifying the stage(s) in the IDP not only highlights the global appeal of agriculture but also guides firms seeking to expand beyond borders. This information is essential for developing an effective economic strategy. Methods We employed data from 1991 to 2021 for 55 countries from the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) and applied a fixed effects estimator corrected for serial correlation and non-constant variances. Results and conclusions We found that agriculture in developing countries is currently in stages I and II of the IDP. Broadly, agricultural production requires policies that would increase outward foreign direct investment and inward foreign direct investment. Domestic agricultural businesses in developing countries must develop capacity by learning from foreign multinationals. This would enable agricultural businesses to invest abroad. Such a move would lead to an increase in outward FDI. As this would have resulted from increased GDP per capita, it will lead to movement from the existing stage to higher ones.

Background We examined the investment development path (IDP) through the perspective of developing countries’ agricultural sector. Our analytical approach indirectly accounts for interactions among countries regarding cross-border resource transfers. Aside from providing knowledge on testing the IDP by inferential statistics, the information would be relevant for policymaking. Identifying the stage(s) in the IDP not only highlights the global appeal of agriculture but also guides firms seeking to expand beyond borders. This information is essential for developing an effective economic strategy. Methods We employed data from 1991 to 2021 for 55 countries from the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) and applied a fixed effects estimator corrected for serial correlation and non-constant variances. Results and conclusions We found that agriculture in developing countries is currently in stages I and II of the IDP. Broadly, agricultural production requires policies that would increase outward foreign direct investment and inward foreign direct investment. Domestic agricultural businesses in developing countries must develop capacity by learning from foreign multinationals. This would enable agricultural businesses to invest abroad. Such a move would lead to an increase in outward FDI. As this would have resulted from increased GDP per capita, it will lead to movement from the existing stage to higher ones.

Background: We examined the investment development path (IDP) through the perspective of developing countries’ agricultural sector. Our analytical approach indirectly accounts for interactions among countries regarding cross-border resource transfers. Aside from providing knowledge on testing the IDP by inferential statistics, the information would be relevant for policymaking. Identifying the stage(s) in the IDP not only highlights the global appeal of agriculture but also guides firms seeking to expand beyond borders. This information is essential for developing an effective economic strategy. Methods: We employed data from 1991 to 2021 for 55 countries from the Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database (FAOSTAT) and applied a fixed effects estimator corrected for serial correlation and non-constant variances. Results and conclusions: We found that agriculture in developing countries is currently in stages I and II of the IDP. Broadly, agricultural production requires policies that would increase outward foreign direct investment and inward foreign direct investment. Domestic agricultural businesses in developing countries must develop capacity by learning from foreign multinationals. This would enable agricultural businesses to invest abroad. Such a move would lead to an increase in outward FDI. As this would have resulted from increased GDP per capita, it will lead to movement from the existing stage to higher ones.

Background: Whilst the literature on the complementarity and substitutability of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment (DI) is not uncommon, the facet of food manufacturing is non-existent. This paper fills this void by investigating the effect of FDI on DI in the food manufacturing sector for developing, economies in transition and developed countries. Methods: Using an unbalanced panel data of 49 countries from 1993 to 2016, from FAOSTAT, estimated by the system generalised method of moments (GMM), the Wald statistics for the short and long-run effects of FDI on DI were computed for the development groups. Results: Developed economies experienced a crowd-out effect of FDI on DI in the short run, whilst the others experienced no significant effect. In the case of the long run, food manufacturing sectors of all three development groups exhibited a crowd-out effect. The effect in the long run for all development groups together is a crowd-in. Analysing all country groups together could mask the results of the various country groups. Conclusions: A review of investment policies to priorities FDI entry mode that favour domestic investment is needed. Improvement of the investment regulatory and administrative efficiency among others are recommended.

Background: Whilst the literature on the complementarity and substitutability of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment (DI) is not uncommon, the facet of food manufacturing is non-existent. This paper fills this void by investigating the effect of FDI on DI in the food manufacturing sector for developing, economies in transition and developed countries. Methods: Using an unbalanced panel data of 49 countries from 1993 to 2016, from FAOSTAT, estimated by the system generalised method of moments (GMM), the Wald statistics for the short and long-run effects of FDI on DI were computed for the development groups. Results: Developed economies experienced a crowd-out effect of FDI on DI in the short run, whilst the others experienced no significant effect. In the case of the long run, food manufacturing sectors of all three development groups exhibited a crowd-out effect. The effect in the long run for all development groups together is a crowd-in. Analysing all country groups together could mask the results of the various country groups. Conclusions: A review of investment policies to priorities FDI entry mode that favour domestic investment is needed. Improvement of the investment regulatory and administrative efficiency among others are recommended.