Egypt: Food security and food aid

This article examines the multifaceted notions of food security and food aid through a case-study of a rather exceptional country in political terms - Egypt. Egypt has achieved a high degree of food security with lessened reliance on domestic production and has become one of the largest recipients of cereal food aid. The analysis considers significant questions about the interdependence of food security and food aid, the maintainability of an externally dependent food system, its implicit resource costs and its internal distribution and equity impact.     

Risk assessment in the international food safety policy arena. Can the multilateral institutions encourage unbiased outcomes?

Two institutions provide multilateral venues for countries to discuss food safety measures at the international level: the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) and the World Trade Organization. Both institutions encourage their Members to base food safety standards on scientific evidence.     

Three bubbles and a panic: An explanatory review of recent food commodity price events

This paper is a summary of the behaviour of food commodity prices in 2007–2008 and a review of the causes of the price increases, extracted from a report to the Chief Scientific Advisor to Her Majesty’s Government [Thirtle, C., Piesse, J., 2008. An Explanatory Review of the World Food Commodity Price Events of 2007–2008. A Report to the Chief Scientific Advisor. Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, London]. The historical background shows that the price spike was much less severe than in the 1970s. The conventional wisdom that prices of the main food commodities were falling prior to 2006 is questioned. Most ceased falling and were quite stable from the 1980s. The paper separates the causes of the spike from the underlying changes driving the long run trends. The literature on the causes of the spike is critically reviewed and summarised. There is a reasonably broad consensus on most of the causes, but much less on the impact of the depreciation of the US Dollar. There are also concluding speculations on the future.     

Policy coherence and food security: The effects of OECD countries’ agricultural policies

There have been important changes to agricultural policies in many OECD countries over the past decade and the international spill-over effects of support and protection have diminished. Now would be a good time to eliminate remaining distortions and put in place more efficient alternatives, including social safety nets and tools to help farmers manage risk. This would lock in the benefits of reform and simultaneously address charges of policy incoherence. In the context of high food prices, new issues have emerged with potential implications for food security. They include export restrictions, the use of biofuel mandates, and the opportunities and threats presented by increased foreign investment in agriculture. On these issues, as well as in terms of conventional support mechanisms, policies in emerging economies (in particular the BRIICS) are increasingly important. A pro-active agenda for policy coherence would involve not just eliminating policies that distort trade, but also enacting positive measures to increase food availability, for example by raising agricultural productivity, using resources sustainably, and eliminating waste and over-consumption. Across countries, there are important gains to be realised from knowledge sharing, and from multilateral action to provide global public goods – not least smoother functioning of the multilateral trading system.     

Food scare crises and developing countries: The impact of avian influenza on vertical price transmission in the Egyptian poultry sector

A bivariate smooth transition vector error correction model is applied to monthly poultry price data to analyze the effects that avian influenza has had on price transmission along the Egyptian poultry marketing chain. In order to reflect consumer awareness of the crisis, an avian influenza food scare information index is developed and used within the model as a transition variable. Our results suggest that price adjustments to deviations from the market equilibrium parity depend on the magnitude of the avian influenza crisis. Further these adjustments are found to have very different implications for market equilibrium: during the crisis retailers use their market power to increase marketing margins. In contrast, wholesaler margins are found to decline. Results also suggest that food safety information indices contribute to understanding the economic effects of food scare crises in developing countries.     

Integrating fisheries,food and nutrition – Insights from people and policies in Timor-Leste

The important role of fish in food and nutrition security is becoming more widely acknowledged by the fishery sector and within food policy. Integration of fish and food policy, at national, regional or global levels, is required to ensure the contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to human health is supported through governance arrangements. We explore this aspect of food policy integration in Timor-Leste, where malnutrition is a critical health problem. Consumption of fish is low by international standards and only a small proportion of the population engages in fishing. We used a mixed method approach involving desktop policy analysis, interviews and social network analysis to explore interactions among sectoral instruments and organisations. Our results show generally good integration of food security into fisheries policies, but a lack of integration of fish into food policies. Policy network analysis revealed evidence of collaboration and cooperation between sectors, however, consideration of fish and food concerns was not well embedded across all organisations. We discuss challenges and options for future integration of fisheries into sustainable food systems in Timor-Leste and more broadly, including the need for greater political will and resources, combined with clearer targets and actions within instruments.     

Revisiting the UNICEF malnutrition framework to foster agriculture and health sector collaboration to reduce malnutrition: A comparison of stakeholder priorities for action in Afghanistan

High rates of undernutrition persist in Afghanistan, but community-level information is scarce on its underlying causes. Developing policy in such situations is affected by varying stakeholder perspectives on the issues. This study uses the UNICEF malnutrition framework and a rapid assessment methodology to compare how stakeholders at community, provincial and national levels describe the food and nutrition situation. Consistent differences in problem definition by administrative level and between agriculture and health sectors were apparent. Stakeholders at all administrative levels widely agreed on the need to improve incomes and employment to ensure food security because of the many constraints to agricultural production. Provincial and national level stakeholders further agreed on the need for nutrition education at all levels of society. The research illustrates how local adaptation and application of the UNICEF malnutrition framework can reveal divergent perspectives, as a first step toward finding common ground and an appropriate policy response.     

How can policy processes remove barriers to sustainable food systems in Europe? Contributing to a policy framework for agri-food transitions

A new food policy coherent with the goal of achieving sustainable food systems implies changing visions and radically revising the understanding of the system on which agricultural and food-related policies act. This paper identifies and discusses policy processes that contribute to sustainable food systems in Europe. Based on a conceptual framework that links the policy cycle approach to transition theories, we (i) assess the evolution of policy cycles of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to highlight how the food and nutrition concepts have evolved and been reframed throughout the five phases of the CAP, (ii) map and classify available policy instruments to assess potential synergies and gaps in view of their reorganization and (iii) indicate and discuss strategic tools for sustainable food policies. This contribution goes beyond the current literature highlighting the obstacles which hinder the transition to a policy regime that embodies the nexus among food and nutrition security, natural capital preservation and climatic and social justice, and proposing new avenues for food policy studies.     

A ‘Common Food Policy’ for Europe: How governance reforms can spark a shift to healthy diets and sustainable food systems

More than half of adults in the European Union (EU) are now either overweight or obese (53%). Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), many of which are diet-related, account for 70% of mortality in Europe and a growing share of healthcare costs. While eating habits have an important role to play in NCD prevention, consumption patterns across the EU are diverging significantly from recommended diets. There is growing consensus on the solution: a series of coordinated and wide-ranging policy interventions to build healthy ‘food environments’.This article argues that EU governance structures remain ill-adapted to the systemic nature of this and other challenges in food systems (e.g. climate change, biodiversity loss, food poverty): conflicting objectives and missed synergies are identified between different policy areas (agriculture, trade, health, environment, etc.) and between different levels of governance (EU, national, local). An integrated food policy framework – a ‘Common Food Policy’ – is therefore required to meet the EU’s public health and sustainability objectives. It identifies four distinct aspects of the governance shift required to promote healthy diets and build sustainable food systems in Europe: (i) coherence across policy areas; (ii) coherence across governance levels; (iii) governance for transition; and (iv) food democracy. Blueprints for a Common Food Policy are already emerging, and are ripe for consideration, development, and implementation by the European institutions.     

How can we better capture food away from Home? Lessons from India’s linking person-level meal and household-level food data

Despite acknowledged shortcomings, household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES) are increasingly being used to proxy food consumption because they are relatively more available and affordable than surveys using more precise dietary assessment methods. One of the most common, significant sources of HCES measurement error is their under-estimation of food away from home (FAFH). In 2011, India’s National Survey Sample Organization introduced revisions in its HCES questionnaire that included replacing “cooked meals”—the single item in the food consumption module designed to capture FAFH at the household level—with five more detailed and explicitly FAFH sub-categories. The survey also contained a section with seven, household member-specific questions about meal patterns during the reference period and included three sources of meals away from home (MAFH) that overlapped three of the new FAFH categories.By providing a conceptual framework with which to organize and consider each household member’s meal pattern throughout the reference period, and breaking down the recalling (or estimating) process into household member-specific responses, we assume the MAFH approach makes the key respondent’s task less memory- and arithmetically-demanding, and thus more accurate than the FAFH household level approach. We use the MAFH estimates as a reference point, and approximate one portion of FAFH measurement error as the differences in MAFH and FAFH estimates. The MAFH estimates reveal marked heterogeneity in intra-household meal patterns, reflecting the complexity of the HCES’s key informant task of reporting household level data, and underscoring its importance as a source of measurement error.We find the household level-based estimates of FAFH increase from just 60.4% of the individual-based estimates in the round prior to the questionnaire modifications to 96.7% after the changes. We conclude that the MFAH-FAFH linked approach substantially reduced FAFH measurement error in India. The approach has wider applicability in global efforts to improve HCES.     

从经济学视角分析绿色采购中政府补贴的作用

随着全球生态环境的恶化,发达国家提出了绿色采购。由于绿色产品成本高于传统产品,生产技术也有待提高,所以,可以通过政府给予生产企业补贴的形式使购买者以更低的价格采购更多的绿色产品。政府补贴有价格补贴和财政补贴两种形式,通过博弈分析,认为财政补贴中固定补贴的缺点较大．而随企业生产规模变化的补贴对企业绿色生产有较强的激励作用。国家应当通过适当的补贴形式,促进绿色采购的开展。     

How do political,individual and contextual factors affect school milk demand? Empirical evidence from primary schools in Germany

Despite the subsidies provided for school milk within the European School Milk Scheme, consumption has declined steadily in Germany. Thus, a federal research project was established to analyze factors that influence the demand for school milk. The results should form a basis to improve future school milk policy. To identify the factors affecting the decisions by individual pupils to order school milk and to quantify the impact of each factor, politically induced factors, individual and context factors were considered. Price effects and the associated policy issues were derived via a price experiment in selected German primary schools, while information on weekly orders for school milk was collected at the individual level. Detailed information on the eating habits, preferences and tastes, attitudes, socio-economic circumstances and characteristics of the persons involved was obtained by administering various surveys. The respondents examined in the study included pupils, the pupils’ parents, class teachers, school milk managers (primarily janitors) and school principals.To properly account for the hierarchical structure of the dataset (pupils within classes and schools along the different price steps of the experiment), a logistic multilevel analysis was applied based on 7336 pupils from 101 schools. The free-of-charge distribution of school milk had a high positive impact in the demand decision, confirming the importance of the policy setting (e.g., availability of subsidies). Although the price had an expected negative effect, its impact is limited. In addition to socio-economic factors (e.g., age, gender, immigration background and income of households), the behavior and attitudes of pupils and parents, as well as the context or environment surrounding the school milk offering (e.g., number of school milk products, whether teachers drink milk with the pupils during the break) had an impact.