农业国际化与我国农产品贸易优势

农业国际化是全球农业生产力水平不断提高的结果,而加入世贸组织极大地促进和推动了我国农业的国际化进程。文章借助世贸组织前后我国农产品国际贸易数据．分别计算我国农产品产业内贸易和产业间贸易的发展指数,实证分析了我国农产品在世贸组织前后竞争优势的演变．并对进一步增强我国农产品竞争优势提出具体的政策建议。     

Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in South Asia: What do we know,and what have we learned?

Despite significant improvements over recent decades, rates of undernutrition remain high in South Asia, with adverse impacts on morbidity and mortality. Overweight/obesity, among children and adults, is now an additional and major public health concern. While agriculture has the potential to improve nutrition through several pathways, this potential is currently not being realised in the region. The Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium (2012–2018) set out to improve understanding about how agriculture and related food policies and programs in South Asia (specifically in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan) can be better conceptualised and implemented in order to enhance impacts on nutrition outcomes, especially those of young children and adolescent girls. This paper provides a snapshot of the agriculture-nutrition nexus in the region, outlines the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition outcomes, elaborates on the objectives of the LANSA research consortium within this context, and highlights the core findings of the six papers that form the body of this Special Issue. The paper ends with five key lessons that have emerged from this research, during this decade.     

Large agricultural investments in Kenya’s Nanyuki Area: Inventory and analysis of business models

Many experts agree that more agricultural investment is needed in the global South to improve local food security and reduce poverty. However, there is a lack of consensus about the types of investment needed to achieve these goals. This paper contributes to the literature on large agricultural investments and corresponding business models by inventorying and analysing such investments in Kenya’s Nanyuki area. We identify four clusters of business models that differ primarily by type of production and other distinct determinants, namely: demand from markets; access to land; land tenure regime and colonial history; actors involved; biophysical context; labour availability; and governance of the value chain via private standards. The study results shed light on the factors that help or hinder implementation of large agricultural investments and shape their impacts in the context of African land use systems. The way land is accessed represents one of the most-decisive factors determining the risks and opportunities associated with such projects. We find that most investments in the Nanyuki area occur on land bought or leased from private owners.     

Women’s agricultural work and nutrition in South Asia: From pathways to a cross-disciplinary,grounded analytical framework

In this systematic review, we aim to examine the impact of women’s work in agriculture on maternal and child nutrition in South Asia. Building on previous reviews supported under the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) consortium, and recent published literature, we include findings from new LANSA research. While mapping literature onto the gender-nutrition pathways linking agriculture to nutrition (Kadiyala et al., 2014), we also point to conceptual and methodological directions for further exploration emerging from our work. Key amongst these are a focus on seasonality, poverty, and gender relations, moving beyond both an exclusive focus on women as a unified and homogenous group, and agriculture as an unchanging and common set of activities and production processes. Our analysis suggests the need for a more contextualised approach, and for a richer cross-disciplinary framework for effectively addressing the ways in which women’s work mediates agriculture’s role in improving child and maternal nutrition in South Asia.     

Agricultural productivity growth in Brazil: Large and small farms excel

The long-standing debate on the relationship between farm size and productivity has been generally limited by the range of farm sizes evaluated and the definition of productivity. In this paper we use data from three Brazilian agricultural censuses to address these issues. In particular, we introduce a wider distribution of farm sizes than presently available from the literature and we employ total factor productivity (TFP) as our performance measure. In doing so, we test which farm size class had the highest TFP levels in 1985 and 2006, how factor productivity growth varied within and across farm size classes between those years, and which policy or factor had the greatest productivity enhancing effect. When examining TFP growth, we move beyond the common decomposition into technical and efficiency changes by identifying the complete distribution of farm productivity performances. We find that by 2006 a U-shaped distribution of productivity over farm sizes had emerged. Considerable 1985–2006 TFP growth differences are prevalent; positive rates for the majority accompany stagnant or negative rates for some. Public education investments were associated with faster productivity growth regardless of farm size, while technical assistance’s positive effect and credit’s negative effect were associated with larger farm sizes. The role of specialization varied by size.     

基于循环经济的绍兴休闲观光农业发展研究

［目的］休闲观光农业建设是绍兴市产业转型升级的关键一步，探寻休闲观光农业新模式，能够为休闲农业发展提供理论参考。［方法］文章采用变异系数法确定指标权重，多因素综合分析法测算观光农业发展水平，从循环经济角度出发，评价2001—2016年绍兴市休闲观光农业发展可持续性，提出发展中存在的问题并探索循环型的休闲观光农业新模式。［结果］（1）2001—2016年以来，经济发展可持续性得分较高，资源环境可持续得分次之，循环经济可持续发展偏低。（2）现阶段绍兴市休闲观光农业发展主要存在休闲观光农业自然环境不断遭到破坏，休闲观光农业缺乏整体规划，休闲观光农业旅游支撑体系不够健全等问题。（3）未来发展中，循环经济发展下的休闲观光农业可以开发建设时空复合循环型、资源综合利用循环型、能量多级利用循环型、综合开发利用循环型等4种模式。［结论］未来绍兴市应将循环经济的理念融入到休闲观光农业中，因地制宜，科学选择循环型休闲观光农业发展模式； 规划先行，科学利用农业旅游资源； 强化保障，建立休闲观光农业支撑体系，全面推动休闲观光农业健康持续发展。     

Principles of innovation to build nutrition-sensitive food systems in South Asia

Innovations within global food systems have contributed to the predicament known as the triple burden of malnutrition – the co-existence of hunger and micronutrient deficiency with the diseases of overnutrition, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. We use the case of the triple burden in South Asia to demonstrate analytically that innovation is a double-edged sword, with positive and negative potential, rather than a simple good. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals that target food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (e.g. SDGs 2, 3 and 12), the countries of South Asia need more innovation, but, first, they would also benefit from some intelligent reflection about what innovation means, the directions it should take, and its risks and downsides alongside its benefits. In the present juncture, South Asian countries have an opportunity to learn from the experiences of other developing nations, and choose from alternative options to steer their own course. In this paper, we discuss how innovation has contributed to the present situation and ask how alternative kinds of innovation may enable South Asian countries to escape from the triple burden. We describe a conceptual framework that may be useful for thinking about how innovation pathways can be created and directed towards the goal of improving nutritional outcomes in South Asia. The framework draws attention to the direction of socio-technical change, the distribution of technologies and their risks and benefits, and the diversity of possible innovation pathways (STEPS Centre, 2010). We illustrate these points using examples of innovations in the areas of agricultural production, value chain interventions, and policy and institutional reforms.     

Integrating livestock feeds and production systems into agricultural multi-market models: The example of IMPACT

The various ways in which livestock production systems can be incorporated into economic, partial-equilibrium, multi-market models are presented, and the challenges outlined. A particular focus and illustrative case is livestock feed. Foremost among the challenges is the reconciliation of scientific understanding of livestock feed requirements and production characteristics with the available national data. Another challenge is in estimating herd structures. An economic, multi-market modeling approach is presented which has been widely used in policy analysis and advocacy, and an account is given of the necessary recent enhancements for addressing livestock.     

The geographic and sectoral patterns of large-scale farmland investments in sub-Saharan Africa

Following the food and energy price crises of the mid 2000s, sub-Saharan Africa has become one of the largest recipients for large-scale farmland investments. While much has been written on the phenomenon, scant reliable empirical evidence is available as to the precise geographic and sectoral patterns and underlying drivers. Employing strict data quality requirements, this paper addresses these knowledge gaps by analyzing 563 farmland projects that have been established between 2005 and 2013 in sub-Saharan Africa. Findings show that the investment intensity and associated risks are not geographically uniform. Moreover, the study highlights a number of popular misconceptions regarding investor origin and their sectoral interests and motives.     

Recommendations arising from an analysis of changes to the Australian agricultural research,development and extension system

The business of agricultural research, development and extension (RD&E) has undergone considerable change in Australia since the late 1980s, moving from a domain largely dominated by government departments to a situation of multiple actors, and where rural industries now directly contribute funds towards RD&E efforts. However, the transition has not been without impacts on the overall agricultural RD&E agri-food capacity of the nation, and there are now indications of reduced capacity and slowing productivity gains in certain sectors. If not addressed, there is the risk that the future resilience of industries could be threatened, affecting parts of the Australian economy and compromising Australian contributions to global food supply on export markets and a slowing of agricultural innovation. There are also comparable divestment trends and the loss of capacity and risks to future resilience of agricultural systems in other developed nations. Importantly, research and extension are discussed as interdependent partner disciplines, and that the separation of the two has deleterious effects on capacity and resilience building. The authors investigate, through six case study institutions, organisational innovations that may provide direction towards the future restructuring of agricultural RD&E effort in Australia. These insights have application to both the Australian and the international reader, warning about the consequences of reduced investment in agricultural RD&E, and learning about how research and extension can transition from traditional public sector models to systems that have greater flexibility and, importantly, ownership by the industries themselves.