Meeting world food objectives : Towards an improved trade environment in agriculture

The global economic crisis of the early 1980s has left developing countries with their agricultural sectors starved of investment and their overall development prospects radically trimmed. Growing hunger and malnutrition are among the visible symptoms of a world food system in disarray. But the lessons of recession could stimulate review of entrenched attitudes and foster the will to address future trade policy objectives and adjustments against the background of increasing acknowledged interdependence of development partners and the ever more urgent need to serve world food objectives.     

奥巴马“中东新政”影响分析

在中东北非动荡局势愈演愈烈、奥巴马总统支持率不断下降和美国量化宽松政策作用不如预期的背景下,奥巴马推出了美国对中东的新政策。＂中东新政＂的核心内容有：支持中东北非民主运动与政治改革;区别对待动荡国家;加大对重建民主国家的经济援助,支持中东地区的民主化运动;承认1967年巴以边界线。美国调整中东策略,旨在通过民主化运动实现疏美政权的和平演变;美国继续对中东北非地区推行双重标准,可实现美国在该地区利益的最大化。推出＂中东新政＂是美国国内政治和经济形势发展的需要,它可能引发新一轮示威活动,导致动荡局势向其他国家和地区蔓延,进而引发世界对石油供应的担忧和油价的上升。同时,＂中东新政＂可抑制日、欧和新兴经济体的经济发展,有利于美国继续加强和巩固其金融主导地位。当前,中国石油企业的海外油气合作正进入政治风险高发期,为此,企业应加强风险预警研究,构建战略层面的风险预警机制;把握合作机会和主动权。     

Nutrition research policy : US progress in the past decade

Human nutrition research is receiving a great deal of attention from the media, consumers and the US government. This article focuses on policy problems facing the government in the development and implementation of the federal human nutrition research programme: establishment of priorities, organization and funding. The background leading up to the present situation is developed, and the political bodies and federal agencies participating in the debate are described. The authors identify the policy issues, and discuss progress towards their resolution.     

Research for agriculture in developing countries: The US role

The author argues that the USA can make a great contribution to research on food and agriculture in developing countries. He outlines the organizational and attitudinal constraints to this contribution, reviews previous studies that have recommended a redistribution of research resources, and analyses the reasons why resources should be redirected to increase the US contribution to the solution of world hunger problems.     

Nutritional functional classification study of Panama

Despite significant progress, wide-spread malnutrition persists in Panama. This article describes a study which found that over half the malnutrition in the country is clustered in functional groups economically connected to the agricultural sector and which indicates that food availability is a serious problem for 25% of the population. Food intake deficits were equally prevalent among the urban and rural populations. Dietary composition was not seen as the principal problem; rather malnutrition problems are linked to low wages and poor access to public services. A nutrition policy for Panama must be centred first on employment and income generation, and then on extending and maintaining public health and nutrition services, particularly for the extremely poor in the central provinces. Food policy per se would not seem a priority area for public intervention.     

Nutrition policies and programmes: a decade of redirection

This article assesses the effectiveness of nutrition programs and policies since the World Food Conference, 10 years ago. The authors perceive several distinct approaches. Just before the World Food Conference, nutrition programs had passed through an era of enchantment with technological solutions (single-cell protein, oilseed protein isolates). Supply was regarded as the problem; protein inadequacy as the crisis. None of the technological fixes had much of an impact on the malnutrition problem. This contributed to a willingness to entertain a much broader approach to nutrition. The new paradigm manifested itself 1st as a movement toward integrated nutrition planning. The national planning process was assumed to be the appropriate vehicle for applying this methodology. However, integrated nutrition planning threatened, conflicted with or at least brought pressure for change in the administrative and political reality of governmental organizations. Moreover, the nutrition community's capacity to respond to the demands flowing from the new paradigm was limited. The difficulties encountered in trying to achieve full integration led to a reexamination of working within traditional sectors but addressing the problem in several key sectors simultaneously, such as health and agriculture. The past decade also saw a move toward analyzing and improving the design and implementation of various kinds of nutrition interventions. The emphasis was on understanding and dealing with the administrative, economic and political realities of such efforts. Incorporation of consumption and nutrition considerations in the analysis and formulation of food policies in some countries is 1 of the important achievements of the past decade. This overwhelmingly economic approach focuses on pricing policies and market effects, recognizing that poverty and purchasing power are central to the malnutrition problem. Analysis of macrofood policy has filled an important void, giving a more concrete and inclusive view of food security. Nutrition progress during the next decade will require the development community to confront a changed environment and several key challenges, namely the surge of conservative politics in the early 1980s, and the severe economic problems most countries face. There is a need to be realistic about the tenacity of the problem and the multiple barriers to implementation of nutrition policies. The challenges face both national governments and development agencies. There is agreement that, during the decade since the World Food Conference, the field of nutrition has gone through a metamorphosis and that there has been progress. However, the development community still faces an unfinished nutrition agenda.     

Assessing the impact of migration on food and nutrition security

Migration has become a key component in the livelihood strategies of an increasing number of households across the developing world and remittances have expanded dramatically in the last decade. This has come at a time when an increased emphasis has been placed on reducing malnutrition to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. While this is the case, there has been little attention on the interface between migration and nutrition even though migration can influence nutrition through a number of channels. The objective of this special issue is to present state-of-the-art analyses of the link between migration and nutrition in developing countries. In this paper, an overview of the conceptual and empirical issues in identifying the link between migration and nutrition are considered. Further, the results from seven country case studies are synthesized and policy implications are drawn.     

Multisectoral nutrition planning: a post-mortem

Multisectoral nutrition planning emerged in the early 1970's as a bold new approach to combating malnutrition in low-income countries. Conceptually elegant and operationally ambitious, it blossomed on paper but collapsed in practice notwithstanding vigorous promotion by international assistance agencies. This essay reviews the meteoric rise and fall of the multisectoral approach and then proceeds to examine its theoretical underpinnings. The essay concludes by identifying 12 lessons learned that, if heeded, can help the current generation of intersectoral initiatives against malnutrition to realize their potential. In retrospect, it was a mistake to assign responsibility for nutrition to economic planners and scientists who possessed little political influence or operational authority. Nutrition requires high-level political sponsorship if it is to command resources, be integrated with established ministerial responsibilities and have staying power. Nutrition planning bcame attractive to basically conservative governments anxious to accommodate international benefactors without having to accept more fundamental reforms; the analysis of malnutrition causality focused primarily on attributes of the malnourished and their families, not on the social, economic, and political order around them.     

National nutrition planning: lessons of experience

National nutrition planning has failed to fulfill its initial promise because of inadequate consideration of political and administrative obstacles to applying the methodology. The political and operational contexts within which multisectoral nutrition planning has occurred are reviewed in order to draw insights and lessons from the experience of the last 10 years. Considered are the political process, macro and micro planning, the multisectoral approach, integration with agricultural and health planning, nutrition interventions, community participation, cost benefit analyses, and information systems evaluation, management and organization. Emphasis on the multisectoral causation of malnutrition has contributed substantially to nutrition programming and remains indispensable for improving nutrition, but requires more thoughtful response to practical implementation problems. Integrating nutrition concerns more effectively into health and agriculture systems offers a more promising approach than efforts to attack malnutrition by encouraging multisectoral nutrition coordinating agencies and national plans.     

Dimensions of broadband policies and developments

There is a continuous discussion on the development and comparison of broadband infrastructures and broadband strategies of different countries and regions around the world. Is the US ahead of Europe, or is it the other way round, and how about East Asian countries? And, are there any policy reasons for it? The paper discusses three of the fundamental dimensions in broadband policies: Infrastructure vs. Service competition, regulatory vs. Developmental policies, and networks vs. Content prioritization. It examines the diverse combinations of these policy dimensions with respect to 7 countries in Europe, Asia and North America. The paper concludes that all three dimensions are found in the broadband policies of all the countries but that there are differences in the prominence of the dimensions in the individual countries.     

How should nutrition be positioned in the post-2015 agenda?

How should the nutrition community be positioning nutrition within the post-2015 MDG debate? This paper represents a snapshot review of ongoing nutrition challenges, the contours of the post-MDG debate, and the views of 26 experts in nutrition and the MDGs. The paper draws out post 2015 options, develops criteria for ranking the options, applies the criteria and makes a recommendation. While a nutrition goal (the “vertical” option) that covers all countries and addresses both under and overweight and obesity may well be most effective for galvanizing commitment for nutrition and for guiding action, it does not seem politically feasible. A strong position for nutrition is to be located with hunger in a “vertical” goal with an additional “horizontal” goal which places nutrition-specific indicators alongside nutrition-relevant indicators in new goal buckets, with placement driven by the UNICEF conceptual framework for undernutrition. The “minimalist” option of simply replacing the flawed underweight indicator with the superior stunting indicator in the poverty goal will not galvanize any constituency and should be rejected.     

Galvanizing political commitment in the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition: Assessing commitment in member-countries of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

In pursuit of the global ambition of ending all forms of malnutrition, it is important to understand, measure and strengthen political commitment for nutrition. Building commitment involves advocating, establishing institutions, adopting policies, mobilizing resources and coordinating responses – within and outside of government, across sectors, from national to local levels – for as long as necessary to ensure results, sustained over time. As the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement enters its tenth year of existence, this study asks if political commitment for nutrition is evident in the 60 SUN member countries and how this commitment translates into results.Guided by a theoretical framework, we use indicators from the SUN Movement's Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) system to measure five forms of political commitment for nutrition - expressed, institutional, operational, embedded and system-wide - in countries stratified by income and duration of SUN membership. We further determine the association between assessed levels of commitment and progress towards achieving established global nutrition targets. In doing so, we identity important commitment gaps.Results show that countries that joined the SUN Movement early (2010–12) had higher expressed and institutional commitment scores compared with late joiners (2013–17), with no difference between low and middle-income countries. For operational commitment, early joiners had higher scores for the finance and legislation subcomponents but not for nutrition-specific intervention coverage. Low-income countries, however, had significantly lower scores for the nutrition-specific intervention coverage sub-component of operational commitment and lower embedded commitment scores compared with middle-income countries. A positive association was found between institutional and operational commitment, irrespective of country economic status. Early joiners in the SUN Movement were more likely to rank in the top half of SUN countries for all four forms of commitment. When divided into terciles based on their overall rank for system-wide political commitment, countries in the highest tercile were more likely to be making progress in the reduction of U5 child stunting.The results point to the importance of working to strengthen all forms of commitment, especially converting expressed and institutional commitments into operational commitment. While institutional commitment matters, it can be ‘tokenistic’ only if there is limited capacity to operationalise that commitment. Countries with system-wide political commitment appear to achieve better nutrition impact. It is difficult to determine whether early joiners were already more committed to nutrition and therefore more likely to join the SUN Movement or whether membership in the SUN Movement compelled such commitment. Most likely it is a combination of both, but it is hard to disentangle the direction of causality without measuring changes in commitments over time, and complementing this type of analysis with qualitative research on the perspectives of different stakeholders. Nonetheless, the ongoing measurement and reporting of political commitment can inform dialogue with country and global-level stakeholders on how to galvanize further commitment during the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition especially in view of the 2020 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Tokyo, Japan.     

Is rationing socialist?: Cuba's food distribution system

Cuba, an economically underdeveloped country, has achieved a goal that even most developed countries find elusive: it has eliminated hunger. A 1982 report prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress acknowledged that Cuba has ‘eliminated almost all malnutrition, particularly among small children.’¹ This article looks at how Cuba has managed to feed its people. It also questions whether the system created 25 years ago to ensure just distribution, ie rationing, today stands as an obstacle to the further development of Cuba's food system.     

The class basis of agricultural growth

An explanation of the stagnation in agricultural production relative to effective demand and of the widespread malnutrition and hunger in the countries bordering the Caribbean is provided, using the basic categories of political economy. The authors show that the disappearance of peasants as a class of producers and their reduction to the role of a semiproletarian labour reserve explains the crisis in many food crops as well as extensive rural poverty. They also show that the dynamism of capitalist agriculture is often biased against wage-foods as a result of cheap food policies and directed instead toward the production of exportables, inputs for industry and luxury foods.     

Neither feast nor famine: World food 20 years on

The authors summarize the results of a modelling exercise designed to examine future problems in the world food system. The alternatives resulting from the interactive analysis are presented and the impact of some of these alternatives on American business and society are discussed. Their conclusions include the likelihood that world food conditions in the next 20 years will not follow the trends of the last 20 years; that the rising level of food imports of poor regions will not be sustained; that self-reliance holds the key to a stable future; that food reserves are essential and US policy on them needs to be reassessed; and that the measures needed in poor countries could conflict with the present concern of the US government for human rights.     

Sustainability of food and nutrition security policy during presidential transitions

Developing countries with democratic governments periodically experience presidential transitions that affect political and institutional performance. Unforeseen uncertainties during transitions are not faced strategically and interrupt collaboration among country teams expected to jointly implement policies, including policies intended to contribute to food and nutrition security. In some low- and middle-income countries, these obstacles result in persistent hunger, malnutrition, and death mainly affecting the most vulnerable populations and contributing to unequal human development.We aimed to understand what mechanisms determined sustainability of Food and Nutrition Security Policy (FNSP) during presidential transitions, from socio-political and nutritional perspectives, in a Central American country that experiences a change of president every four years. Purposeful criterion and snowball sampling were used to recruit 52 policy actors from all relevant sectors and levels, elected or appointed, that had contributed to implementing the FNSP adopted since 2006. Data from semi-structured interviews were analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding. Results were verified using content analysis for obtaining emerging themes in news, speeches, and documents.Twenty-four forces simultaneously shaped a dynamic process determining sustainability during transitions. The forces for sustaining FNSP were Backed Up, Beneficial, Championed, Importance, Institutionally Sound, Owned, Sensitive, Shared, Steady Resources, Strategic, Transition Effect, and Trusted. The forces for not sustaining FNSP were Antagonistic Underlying Structure, Campaigning, Dysfunctional Transition, Fractioned, Haphazard, Insensitive, Irrelevant, Misrepresentation, Neglected, Rivalry, Unsound Institutions, and Unsteady Resources. These forces determining FNSP sustainability during transitions were molded by the emerging reasons for sustaining and for not sustaining policy actions as reported by the study participants. The forces favored or impeded the sustainability of an action or part of it. The forces operated at all levels and sectors, but forces affected actions differently in these. The forces did not compete, but combinations of them brought about outcomes that policy actors in charge and their collaborators could intentionally influence. The potential of forces to shape sustainability of FSNP depended on interacting actors responding to emerging events within specific contexts. Roles performed by civil society, governmental officials, and international cooperation were critical for policy sustainability during transitions.These results are consistent with Lewin’s Force Field Theory on the complex dynamics embedded in intersecting forces within contexts and identify the specific forces that were operating. Although the 24 forces were identified in one context, the set of forces likely captures the range of forces that may operate in other similar political contexts. The knowledge that such forces may be operating could be helpful in ensuring sustainability of policies in the future. Actors and other stakeholders can identify the predominant specific forces operating for a policy and activate or promote the forces that enhance sustainability and deactivate or suppress the forces that inhibit sustainability. Foreseeing or creating opportunities to activate (or deactivate) and promote (or suppress) forces during the early stages of a presidential transition could help sustain policies and related practices that benefit food and nutrition security.     

Food value chain transformations in developing countries: Selected hypotheses on nutritional implications

We examine how the transformation of food value chains (FVCs) influence the triple malnutrition burden (undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies and over-nutrition) in developing countries. We propose a FVC typology (modern, traditional, modern-to-traditional, and traditional-to-modern) that takes into account the participants, the target market, and the products offered. Next, we propose selected hypotheses on the relationship between each FVC category and elements of the triple malnutrition burden. The primary finding is that the transformation of FVCs creates challenges and opportunities for nutrition in developing countries. For example, Modern FVCs may increase over-nutrition problems and alleviate micronutrient deficiencies for urban people with relatively high incomes. However, they have little nutritional impacts among rural residents and urban poor people, who primarily depend on traditional FVCs to access adequate quantities of calories and micronutrients. In addition, modern food manufacturers are leveraging traditional distribution networks (modern-to-traditional FVCs), substantially increasing access to low-priced processed/packaged foods in rural areas and low-income urban neighbors with mixed impacts on the triple burden of malnutrition. Further research should focus on the influence of FVC transformation on reduction of micronutrient deficiencies, on modeling demand substitution effects across food categories and the attendant policy implications for malnutrition.     

Politically induced regulatory risk and independent regulatory agencies

Uncertainty in election outcomes generates politically induced regulatory risk. For monopoly regulation, political parties’ risk attitudes towards such risk depend on a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an output–expansion effect that benefits at least one party. Irrespective of the parties’ risk attitudes, political parties have incentives to negotiate away regulatory risk by pre-electoral bargaining. Pareto-efficient bargaining outcomes fully eliminate regulatory risk and are attainable through institutionalizing independent regulatory agencies with a specific objective. Key aspects of the regulatory overhaul of the US Postal system in 1970 are argued to be consistent with these results.     

Towards a food and nutrition policy in Tanzania

Fragments of a nutrition policy are seen throughout the different phases of Tanzania's modern history. Efforts of the pre-Independence period culminated in formation of a committee on nutrition which advocated improving food storage, food legislation and standardization, and nutrition education. After independence, an initial period of concentration on cash crops was followed by increased cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, and some nutritional surveys were undertaken. After the Arusha Declaration in 1967 a basic needs strategy giving greater stress to food production and adequate nutrition received emphasis, and a Food and Nutrition Centre was established with 4 departments: food science and technology; manpower development; medical nutrition; and planning and coordination. Emphasis on production is reflected in a target of reducing malnutrition by 30 to 50% in every region by 1981, and an interdisciplinary approach is being used to achieve this goal. The basic similarity in proposed activities during the various phases of Tanzania's history indicates that political will is necessary for carrying out the policies.     

Nutrition and national development: Establishing the connection

The three major strands of the nutrition planning literature — the socio-economic consequences of malnutrition, its determinants and characteristics, and the solutions offered to the problem — are examined by the authors and found wanting. There are serious limitations both in analysis of the problems and proposals for action in most work on nutrition policies because macro-level social, institutional, economic and political factors are neglected.