Inter-farm,inter-regional and farm-non-farm income distribution: The impact of the new cereal variaties

HYVs affect distinct aspects of income distribution. Among farmers, the technology on balance most readily benefits the small; but public policy - on prices, credit, irrigation, nutrients, mechanisation, crop-breeding - has skewed gains towards larger owners. Between landed and landless the latter gain, as HYVs — unless subverted by inappropriate mechanization — raise and smooth wages and employment. The evidence on rich and poor regions lightens the prevailing gloom; and agronomic features of newer HYVs fit them well for some long-neglected, ill-watered areas. As for city and country, urban price policies, etc., have diverted some gains from HYVs towards less-poor urban consumers (and their employers). However, natural scientists are sufficiently independent of policy-makers to produce — with proper socio-economic support - research that steers benefits from HYVs towards the natural gainers from more food, labour-intensively grown: the rural poor.     

Policy Options for China＇s Bio-ethanol Development and the Implications for Its Agricultural Economy

The present paper analyzes the potential impacts of bio-ethanol expansion on agricultural production, food prices and farmers＇ incomes in different regions of China. The results show that increase in demand for feedstock to produce bio-ethanol will lead to large increase in the prices of agricultural products. The increase in prices will trigger a significant rise in the production of feedstock at the cost of lower rice and wheat production. The study also reveals that the impacts of bio-ethanol on farmers＂ incomes vary largely among regions and farmer groups. Given the expected expansion of bio-ethanol production in the future, and the limited land resources for feedstock production in China, the viability of different crops as feedstock for bio-ethanol requires careful analysis before a large-scale expansion of China＇s bio-ethanol program. Bio-ethanol production in China should be relying more on the second generation of bio-ethanol technologies （i.e. using celluloses to produce bio-ethanol）, and China＇s government should increase research investment in this field.     

Foodcrop Demand in Indonesia: A Systems Approach

Aggregate agricultural commodity demand parameters are estimated, based on an application of the Deaton and Muellbauer Almost Ideal Demand System to a seventeen year Indonesian time-series data set of prices, expenditures and consumption availability. The statistical results are generally significant and correctly signed. The revealed demand relationships imply that the Indonesian food Staples are normal goods. Expenditure elasticities are higher for the higher value foodstuffs than for the lower value starchy staples. Furthermore, the demand for rice has become highly inelastic to both own and cross-price interventions. This implies that rice price interventions will require a high degree of fine-tuning in order to stabilise prices effectively, and that low urban rice prices cannot be regarded as an appropriate, or even second best policy instrument for improving nutritional status.

A high degree of Substitution between rice and secondary food crops, and amongst groups of secondary food crops, is identified. The significance of the cross-price elasticities for the secondary food crops suggests that single-market interventions will have non-trivial budget-mediated effects in other commodity markets. The management of a multi-commodity food policy requires that the spillover effects from commodity pricing policy must be taken into account in order to optimise the effects of price policy interventions.     

Food crisis and export taxation: the cost of non-cooperative trade policies

This paper aims to assess the rationales for export taxes in the context of a food crisis. First, we summarize the effects of export taxes using both partial and general equilibrium theoretical models. When large countries aim to maintain constant domestic food prices, in the event of an increase in world agricultural prices, the optimal response is to decrease import tariffs in net food-importing countries and to increase export tariffs in net food-exporting countries. The latter decision improves national welfare, while the former reduces national welfare: this is the price that must be paid to keep domestic food prices constant. Small net food-importing countries are harmed by both decisions, while small net food-exporting countries gain from both. Second, we illustrate the costs of a lack of regulation and cooperation surrounding such policies in a time of crisis using a global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, mimicking the mechanisms that appeared during the recent food price surge (2006–2008). This model illustrates the interdependence of trade policies, as well as how a process of retaliation and counter-retaliation (increased export taxes in large net food-exporting countries and reduced import tariffs in large net food-importing countries) can contribute to successive augmentations of world agricultural prices and harm small net food-importing countries. We conclude with a call for international regulation, in particular because small net food-importing countries may be substantially harmed by those policies that amplify the already negative impact of a food crisis.     

Agricultural efficiency and welfare in South Africa

Agricultural and food commodity price declines associated with domestic and international agricultural efficiency gains can have important welfare effects for a country. While food price reductions benefit low-income consumers in particular, they may also cause declines in agricultural employment, leading to some resistance to technological change as a policy goal. The simulations reported here use a South African Computable General Equilibrium model with highly disaggregated food and agricultural sectors to illustrate the various effects of such agricultural efficiency gains. The results suggest that technological advances in agriculture should not be resisted because of their negative impact on agricultural employment; the welfare gains from declining prices are too important, while employment gains in other (growing) sectors are likely to outweigh the loss of agricultural employment. In the face of increasing international efficiency South African agriculture should be encouraged to respond by also increasing its efficiency, despite the negative consequences for employment in the industry, as a failure to do so may be even more detrimental to the poor in terms of overall employment.     

Estimating the impacts of rising food prices on nutrient intake in urban China

The nutritional impacts of rising food prices on urban households across income classes are assessed using the 2004 NBS urban household survey data for Jiangsu province of China. Empirical results from this study suggest that the across-the-board food price increase is expected to have a substantial adverse impact on nutritional well-being of urban households and in particular, the poor. Moreover, an increase in the price of food grains alone will have the largest adverse impact on calorie and protein intakes, whereas an increase in price of oils and fats only will induce the largest reduction in fat intake.     

城郊与农区蔬菜种植成本收益比较分析

采用比较分析法,对2011-2012年全国大中城市和全国各地区蔬菜种植成本收益进行分析。结果表明:与农区相比,城郊蔬菜种植逐渐步入"高投入、高产出"阶段,人工成本和出售价格分别是影响城郊蔬菜种植成本和收益的主要因素。以发挥市场配置资源决定性作用为重点,创新"菜篮子"市长负责制,健全农产品质量安全和食品安全追溯体系、加强城郊与农区合作是提高蔬菜种植收益的重要举措。     

Trade Liberalization and National Food Security: Rice Trade between Bangladesh and India

Following a poor harvest in late 1997 and a massive flood in 1998, private sector traders in Bangladesh imported several million metric tons of rice from India. This paper presents evidence that this trade, made possible by separate trade liberalizations in India and Bangladesh in the early 1990s, augmented domestic supplies and stabilized prices in Bangladesh at import parity levels. Letters of credit data indicating the participation of hundreds of importers, and a close correlation of price movements across the two countries suggest that the trade was competitive. A risk of co-incident crop shortfalls in the two countries remains, though these have occurred rarely in the past two decades. Bangladesh imports from alternative sources would also enhance food availability if another production shortfall occurs, but these imports face higher transport costs and would involve far fewer importing firms given the economies of scale of shipments by sea.The positive contribution of trade liberalization to short-run food security in Bangladesh in recent years does not minimize the importance of increased agricultural productivity and rural economic growth to provide rural poor households with sufficient incomes to acquire food. Nonetheless, the Bangladesh experience shows that trade liberalization offers potential benefits for national food security by enabling a rapid increase of food supplies following domestic production shortfalls.     

Losses of agricultural products and productive resources in the Russian federation

The paper is devoted to the problem of losses in the agroindustrial complex at all stages of production and processing of products. The data of balances of food supplies are analyzed, indicating a poor accounting level of losses. It is proved that the actual level of losses of agricultural products and food supplies makes up a significant amount, which affects increase of production value and food prices.     

Impact of Tariffs on Industries and Prices in Finland during the Interwar Period

Abstract

While there has been some analysis of the role of tariffs in Finland during the interwar period, quantitative estimates of the benefits and drawbacks are quite rare. This article examines the impact of tariffs on industries value added and prices during the interwar period calculating the effective rate of protection as well as using an input-output price model. The basis for both calculations is an input-output table describing the Finnish economy in 1928. It is argued that the Finnish tariff policy was basically a contra-price-fall policy, directed merely towards agricultural and food products. The focus was on securing the domestic supply of food products. The results also suggest that tariffs did not provide sufficient protection to new industries – contradicting the infant industry argument repeated in some of the earlier studies.     

GROWTH ACCOUNTING FOR SRI LANKA'S AGRICULTURE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO FERTILIZER AND NONAGRICULTURAL PRICES: DO POLICY REFORMS AFFECT AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT?

The agricultural sector of Sri Lanka reacted sharply to the highly contentious policy reforms called Structural Adjustment Programs. We used a four‐sector general equilibrium model under a growth accounting approach to find out the effect of the policy (exogenous) variable on the target (endogenous) variable. Here, we considered only the most important variables, and the overall results indicate that policy changes are favorable to overall agricultural development, although their effect on the domestic food sector is negative. The most serious negative determinant under the policy changes relates to fertilizer, and our study indicates that fertilizer prices considerably affect agricultural production; it especially has a negative effect on domestic food production. Second, this paper analyzes the impact of nonagricultural price, finding that it positively helped the development of overall agriculture. Third, agricultural exports increased under the new policy reforms and made large contributions to agricultural production.     

The Political Economy of Urban Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth, increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate capacity for service provision. Even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development, there is little attention given to the question of urban food security. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, urban food problems in Africa commanded political attention, the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance. This is largely because in the 1970s, the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously. The impact of structural adjustment, continued rapid growth, and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor. Under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food, urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity. The lack of formal safety nets, and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity. This paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub-Saharan Africa, and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from Kampala, Uganda, and Accra, Ghana, to suggest some tentative conclusions.     

农产品价格影响因素的文献综述

理清近年来农产品价格大幅度上涨的原因对于建立农产品目标价格制度显得尤为重要。从国别视角出发来对现有关于农产品价格影响因素的研究进行了综述,其中国内因素视角分为农产品生产成本、城乡居民收入、货币供给量、国内通货膨胀四个小专题,国际因素视角分为国际农产品价格、国际石油价格、汇率、其他外部因素四个小专题。最后指出,影响农产品价格的因素主要还是供求状况,其他因素要么是通过影响农产品的供求来影响价格,要么对农产品价格的影响程度不大,或者是不同学者得出了不同的结论。     

Agricultural liberalization,poverty and inequality: Indonesia and Thailand

The effects of agricultural and general trade liberalization in Indonesia and Thailand are analyzed and compared using a multi-household, multi-sector integrated general equilibrium framework. In both countries agricultural protection contributes a relatively small part of the total cost of protection because when the protection is removed the gain in welfare is much smaller in the case of agricultural liberalization than across the board liberalization. In both countries the poor, urban and rural, have a strong interest in across the board liberalization of trade policy. The urban poor also have an interest in agricultural trade liberalization, but not the rural poor.     

The 2008 Food Summit: A political response to the food price crisis in Gauteng province,South Africa

In responding to food price riots and other unrest in 2008, Gauteng province in South Africa hosted a two-day Food Summit attended by 4000 delegates. Summit invitees expected to be consulted on issues of concern about food prices, but the government instead responded with the message that the poor must be self-sufficient and grow their own food (via the Ilima/Letsema campaign launch), an impractical suggestion in a crisis. The timing of the 2008 Summit in relation to major changes within the African National Congress and the looming 2009 national election in South Africa leads to a conclusion that the Summit was a political event designed to build political capital ahead of the elections, rather than a genuine stakeholder consultation event linked to food security. Findings of this study indicated that food security planning in Gauteng is exclusionary through its rural bias and excludes, for example, urban dwellers and foreign migrants. Also, at that time, Gauteng would have been underprepared for a genuine food emergency as there was no working provincial strategy to deal with urban food security or a severe food crisis.     

Will China's WTO accession worsen farm household incomes?

Many fear China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) will impoverish its farmers via greater import competition in its agricultural markets. We explore that possibility bearing in mind that, even if producer prices of some (land-intensive) farm products fall, prices of other (labor-intensive) farm and nonfarm products could rise. New estimates, from the global, economy-wide numerical simulation model known as Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), of the likely changes in agricultural and other product prices as a result of WTO accession, are drawn on to examine empirically the real income implications of China's WTO accession. The results suggest farm–nonfarm income inequality may well rise within China but rural–urban income inequality need not. The article concludes with some policy suggestions for alleviating any pockets of farm household poverty that may emerge as a result of WTO accession.     

Does Bulog Stabilise Rice Prices in Indonesia? Should It Try?

The intuition of economists is likely to be a poor guide to the social value of food price stabilisation, because of problems in modelling the impact of stabilisation on consumer behaviour, producer behaviour, and the macro economy, including the impact on economic growth. The potential for stable food prices to contribute to economic growth is especially relevant to the poor countries of Asia, where rice is important in macroeconomic terms. Indonesia's experience since 1959 presents an opportunity to test hypotheses about the design, implementation, and impact on social welfare of food price stabilisation. The model presented here explains Bulog's activities, and confirms that its interventions stabilise rice prices. Should Bulog try to stabilise rice prices? The answer is a clear yes in the 1970s and 1980s, but is less clear in the 1990s as Bulog's costs have risen and the share of rice in the economy has fallen.     

我国农产品价格与热钱的实证研究

自2005年中国汇率形成机制改革以来,热钱流入中国的话题就开始趋热。在2006年末,世界农产品价格大幅上涨,围绕粮食、食品的国内外投资和交易成为新的经济热点。鉴于最近中国农产品价格发生了强烈波动的事实和农产品市场的重要性,本文通过对热钱规模和农产品价格指数的月度数据进行实证分析,得出热钱与农产品价格存在均衡关系,是农产品价格变化的Granger原因。     

Agricultural Tradables and Economic Recovery in Uganda: The Limitations of Structural Adjustment in Practice

Uganda's economic reform program has been widely regarded as a success story for structural adjustment. Nevertheless, a large trade deficit persists, shored up by inflows of aid and private remittances. The poor performance of the agricultural tradables sector is presented as the key explanation for this trade imbalance. Two main reasons for this poor performance are found to be the failure to liberalize producer prices quickly and the failure to overcome early institutional resistance to reforms of marketing arrangements. Uganda's recovery is therefore much less impressive than it appears and the sustainability of the now heavily aid-dependent economy must remain in serious doubt.     

粮价上涨最终受益者是农民吗?

与国际范围内粮食价格快速上涨同时,中国粮食市场自2006年9月出现新一轮的粮价上涨。物价上涨在2008年春节前后达到了高峰,特别是食品价格上涨较快。国内粮价不断攀升,看似农民收入增加,但伴随着一系列的农产品生产资料的价格增加,农业间接成本投入的攀升,农民最终收入所剩如何?