Agricultural policies and food systems: Priorities for indicator development

Existing indicators of agricultural protection and support were developed primarily to gauge the market and welfare effects of government policies. They have shed light on a wider range of impacts through their use in economic models and empirical analysis. The rising scale of support to agriculture globally, and continued reliance on market distorting policy instruments, make this work as important as ever. Deeper investments are nonetheless needed to address heightened concerns about the spill-over impacts of agricultural policies on the performance of food systems, in particular with respect to food security and nutrition, rural livelihoods, resource use and the environment, and global emissions. A first area for development is improved measures of policies to correct agriculture's externalities. A priority here is to develop a carbon tax equivalent of sectoral mitigation efforts. A second area is to provide a clearer delineation of government spending on private versus public goods. This would make a valuable contribution to a ‘repurposing’ agenda that seeks to identify how agricultural budgets can be spent more effectively, as well as the scope for transferring resources to wider social priorities, such as public health and climate action.     

THE ECONOMICS OF - WHEAT PRODUCTION IN MOROCCO

A representative farm policy impact model was developed using linear programming and primary survey data. The model was used to estimate farm-level effects of proposed national government policies aimed at increasing food security through greater bread wheat production. The four policy options analysed included the introduction of a bread wheat variety resistant to an insect pest, an increase in the official bread wheat support price, potentially unlimited availability of nitrogen fertiliser, and rationing of nitrogen fertiliser at 500 kg per farm. The various policies increased farm income between 2.45 and 18 percent, as farmers made trade-offs between the production of bread wheat and the more profitable durum wheat. Adjustments were made by farmers in the model to meet government-targeted levels of bread wheat production in order to support national food self-sufficiency at minimum cost. Simultaneously, the resources freed were used to produce more durum wheat. The results suggest a need to analyse interregional and international comparative advantages in wheat production prior to implementing proposed policies aimed at increasing bread wheat output.     

Maize Diversity and the Political Economy of Agrarian Restructuring in Guatemala

The neoliberal restructuring of agriculture is often predicated on the promise of a more efficient food system: other objectives, such as access to food, the environmental sustainability of production practices, the nutritional composition of diets and the rights of food producers, are largely ignored. In this paper, I document how the liberalization of trade and agricultural policies in Guatemala has undermined the latter set of objectives, thereby compromising domestic food sovereignty and global food security. In particular, I demonstrate how neoliberal policies have undermined maize agriculture and contributed to the loss of crop genetic resources in the Guatemalan ‘megacentre’ of agricultural biodiversity. In its place, small‐scale farmers have been encouraged to conform to the country's purported comparative advantage in non‐traditional export crops. The results have been widening inequality, a growing dependence upon imported grain and agrochemicals, environmental degradation and decreased food security.     

农业支持政策结构变迁的国际比较分析

[目的]在多哈回合谈判再次要求削减黄箱政策背景下,通过量化比较分析典型发达国家和地区在多哈回合谈判前后农业支持政策结构变化趋势,为中国农业供给侧结构性改革背景下农业支持政策改革提供方向借鉴。[方法]使用OECD农业政策评价指标对比分析欧盟、美国、日本和中国4个国家和地区农业支持力度、支持结构的变化趋势。[结果]发达国家和地区积极创新农业支持手段以替代市场价格支持,加快农业支持政策的市场化转变,强调支持政策与资源环境保护的交互作用,注重对农业知识和创新体系的资金投入。[结论]我国应持续加大对农业的支持力度,逐渐减少市场价格支持比重,创新支持工具并强化政策间的协调性,优化一般服务支持结构,加大对农业知识和创新体系的财政投入。     

PROJECTION MODELS FOR U.K. FOOD AND AGRICULTURE*

Successful policy planning depends to a large extent on being able to predict the consequences of alternative measures. In the case of agriculture, it is important to know how the future pattern of supply and demand in this sector will be affected by government action on specific issues such as farm price support, and by expected trends in macro-economic variables such as national incomes and population. This paper illustrates the application of a model of U.K. agriculture to the projection of changes in the production and consumption of food and agriculture products between now and 1975. The demand projections show the effect of important levies, and of joining the E.E.C, on future expenditure on food, while the supply projections show how the output of a number of agricultural commodities will be affected by adjusting farm prices towards E.E.C. levels.     

The Vanishing Free Market: The Formation and Spread of the British and US Food Regimes

In this paper, I compare the formation of food regimes during British and US hegemony, which were mirror-images in terms of the degree of free trade and state regulation as well as the direction of trade flow of grains. Many scholars recognize that the foundation for each regime was laid by the national policy and dominant political coalition in the world-economic hegemon, but my analysis pays particular attention to the divisions and coalitions within agriculture as forces that drove the shape of each regime. Though important agricultural divisions existed in each case, the political power of the resulting agricultural coalitions – and those coalitions' relations to the nation's dominant coalition – are central to understanding the formation and spread of each food regime.     

THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY: THE IMPLICATIONS FOR ITALIAN AGRICULTURE

The relative importance of Italian agriculture in the EC, both in terms of net value added and of employment, has never been matched by a comparable impact on the CAP policymaking process. Mediterranean agricultural products in particular have been less favoured by the overwhelming common policy instrument of product price support, which has also a negative impact on the economy as a whole. The most relevant effects of the CAP are reviewed: the impact on resource allocation, including international income transfers, and the effects on the environment, as well as the effects on interpersonal income distribution. An evaluation of CAP is then made from different points of view: the likely perspective of present Italian farmers, a national perspective and an overall perspective, including the interests of non EC countries and future generations. Lower and more balanced price support, together with higher concern for structural and environmental policies especially in less favoured areas, are advocated.     

WORLD AGRICULTURAL TRADE AND THE NEW GATT ROUND

World agricultural markets are grossly imbalanced with supplies running well ahead of demand at current depressed world prices. At the heart of the problem is the high protection given to agriculture in many OECD countries. In particular, price supports to farmers are too high and incentives to maintain or expand production too great. The success of the Uruguay Round in achieving greater liberalisation of trade in agriculture will depend on the willingness of participating governments to undertake significant reforms of domestic agricultural policies, with the aim of reducing overall protection to agriculture and switching support measures away from direct producer price support to income aid for specific disadvantaged producers. In some countries, this notion has run up against complex politico-social and structural objectives, which prevent these countries from agreeing to any significant price reduction. Price support policies, however, have been ineffective in the long run in retarding the outmigration of labour from agriculture. Measures involving only quantitative controls on production will be useful in the short run to reduce surpluses but will not solve the underlying problems which the new GATT Round must address.     

The effects of agricultural policy on supply and productivity: Evidence from differential changes in distortions

Incentives in agriculture are highly distorted. It has long been argued that these distortions were a key explanation for differences in supply and productivity across countries, but the empirical evidence is limited. We revisit this issue using data on policy distortions across 63 countries for the period 1961–2011. We estimate the effects of differential changes in agricultural distortions across countries on supply and productivity. We highlight concerns in our analysis and previous work about endogeneity that biases the estimated effect downward—countries that lose comparative advantage are likely to increase support for agriculture. We address these concerns by including country and region-time fixed effects, along with a rich set of controls. Overall, we find evidence that enhanced incentives through policy changes can increase the rate of production growth, with about half of the increase due to productivity increases. This result is strongest in Sub-Saharan Africa where anti-agricultural policies on exports were reduced and in Europe where pro-agricultural policies on imports were reduced, driven largely by external pressure. Endogeneity appears to be strongest in Asia where countries have followed the typical pattern of raising support for agriculture during industrialization due to a rising farm-urban income gap.     

The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture

Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the most important challenges facing society today is how to feed an expected population of some nine billion by the middle of the 20th century. To meet the expected demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we need to produce 70–100 per cent more food, in light of the growing impacts of climate change, concerns over energy security, regional dietary shifts and the Millennium Development target of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015. The goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes. However, there remain significant challenges to developing national and international policies that support the wide emergence of more sustainable forms of land use and efficient agricultural production. The lack of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence-based policy. In this paper, we seek to improve dialogue and understanding between agricultural research and policy by identifying the 100 most important questions for global agriculture. These have been compiled using a horizon-scanning approach with leading experts and representatives of major agricultural organizations worldwide. The aim is to use sound scientific evidence to inform decision making and guide policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. If addressed, we anticipate that these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide, while improving the synergy between agricultural policy, practice and research. This research forms part of the UK Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project.     

Urban crops and livestock: The experiences,challenges, and opportunities of planning for urban agriculture in two Canadian provinces

While many municipalities globally are currently undertaking initiatives to support urban agriculture, policies and zoning regulations can act as barriers, with the former usually not integrated with planning. Extensive research has been conducted on urban agriculture policies in the global South, but much less is known about associated practices and policies in the global North. This is especially true for the Canadian context and therefore the present study aims at improving our overall understanding of the urban agriculture situation in two Canadian provinces. Relevant policies, such as official plans or official community plans, alternate policy documents and guidelines, zoning by-laws, and animal-related by-laws were reviewed for 10 municipalities in Ontario and in British Columbia, all varying in socio-economic and climatological characteristics. Additional key informant interviews were conducted with municipal planners, community garden coordinators, and other municipal staff familiar with urban agriculture policies from six of the selected municipalities.In line with global trends, our results suggest that urban agriculture is becoming more widespread in the two provinces. However, even though all studied municipalities consistently support urban agriculture, they vary significantly in their approach, with some municipalities focusing much more narrowly on certain types of activities than others. Overall, community advocacy and municipal council support are the most important drivers in the policy process. Key informants expressed a need to bridge existing gaps between policy adoption and implementation of tools, emphasize public education and public awareness, create inventories of land available for urban agriculture, incorporate urban agriculture in the development review process, and focus on the commercial potential of the practice. Encouragingly, despite the many challenges that need to be addressed, we found that many opportunities exist that municipalities could consider when creating improved local urban agriculture policies and tools to enhance the urban food system.     

Transatlantic Similarities and Contrasts in Rural Development PoliciesTransatlantische Ähnlichkeiten und Gegensätze bei den Politiken zur Entwicklung des ländlichen RaumsPoints communs et divergences transatlantiques sur le développement rural

Transatlantic Similarities and Contrasts in Rural Development Policies
The United States (US) and European Union (EU) share many general policy aims for rural areas, but they differ in the ways in which they try to achieve these aims. The principal difference lies in the role envisioned by agriculture in overall rural development. EU policies treat agriculture as a provider of public goods, and many of its 'rural' programmes target agriculture. In the US, very few Federal rural development programs are focused solely on agriculture. Differences of approach may be linked to different farm distributions, population densities, historical settlement patterns, and the historical policy process per se . In particular, in the US rural development policy does not cover the environment or income support to farmers; these are addressed through other programmes. In contrast, the EU classifies its agri-environmental programmes as rural development, claiming that more environmentally-friendly farm practices bring benefits to the broader rural economy. US State and local initiatives emphasize many themes found in the EU's Pillar II programmes, such as value-added or sustainable agriculture. Overall, although there are marked differences in the ways in which policies are implemented, the coverage of these policies in the EU and US is rather similar.     

日本与欧美农业环境支持政策对中国的启示

农业政策中与环境相关的支付政策越来越多。发达国家将WTO绿箱政策、农业直接支付政策与农业环境支持政策结合起来,这样既可以从根本上解决农业生产所带来的安全问题,也可以加深消费者对相关政策的理解与支持,同时从产业链的上游解决食品安全及农业的可持续发展问题。欧盟的Greening政策和日本实施的农业直接支付政策均以农户遵守农药化肥及农业废弃物处理的相关规范为前提,通过合理使用肥料及各种防治措施从不同程度上达到农业可持续发展、农业的多功能性及降低温室气体排放的目的,并由此获取政府的支持。文章通过对发达国家,特别是与中国农业形态类似的日本农业环境政策取向的分析及与欧美相关政策比较分析,认为中国首先应该完善循环农业的相关法律法规和标准,加强对农民的培训以及明确其应遵守的基本义务,对采取环境友好型农业生产方式的农民给予支持。     

最低收购价政策调整对我国粮食安全的影响以稻谷为例

[目的]最低收购价政策实施以来,在稳粮价、促生产、保粮安的同时,也产生了显著的负面影响,探索以市场机制为核心的粮食价格支持政策改革势在必行。[方法]文章以稻谷为例,通过构建局部均衡模型,模拟逐渐下调最低收购价、取消最低收购价、取消最低收购价并大幅增加农业补贴等方案对我国稻谷的产量、总消费、库存和净进口等方面的影响,进而探究最低收购价政策调整对我国粮食安全的影响。[结果]（1）下调稻谷最低收购价,对稻谷市场价格、总产量和总消费的影响较小,而对库存和净进口量的影响较大;（2）取消最低收购价,虽然能大幅度减小国内外差价、库存量和进口量,但短期内也会显著减少稻谷产量,对我国的粮食供给安全带来了巨大冲击;（3）取消稻谷最低收购价,并大幅度提高了农业补贴后,稻谷总产量下降水平明显减少,既解决了托市收购带来的负面影响,也降低了取消托市收购对粮食供给安全的冲击。[结论]最低收购价政策的支持效应显著,为充分保障国内粮食安全,在推行粮食市场化改革时,应首先考虑小幅度下调最低收购价,而不是一次性取消最低收购价政策;同时,要配套相应的补贴政策,优化农业补贴结构,来保障粮农的种植积极性。     

Food and consumer behavior: why the details matter

A growing body of literature now demonstrates the importance of behavioral factors in individual food consumption. However, whether addressing hunger, nutrition, or obesity, food policies are often created to target changes at the aggregate level. These policies ignore such behavioral tools or effects and their potential heterogeneous effects on consumers. In this article, we review the most important results examining food consumption and behavioral economics and provide a thorough discussion of how such tools are now being added to the lexicon of effective policy tools. In addition, we discuss how traditional policy tools that ignore the individual behavioral effects can miss the mark or even backfire. The implication is clear: a thorough understanding of behavioral economics is necessary to create efficient food policy.     

Risk pooling cooperative games in contract farming

Contract farming can be an effective measure to deal with agricultural production risks. This study provides a two‐stage stochastic programming model to analyze farmers’ cooperation in the context of contract farming under uncertainty. It provides a fair cost allocation policy for a coalition of farmers using a stochastic linear duality approach. A fair cost allocation implies that no subset of farmers has an incentive to leave the coalition. Thus, a fair allocation policy ensures the stability of a coalition. Meanwhile, the risk pooling game is shown to have population monotonicity, which means that, every time a coalition adds a new member, each farmer within the coalition will incur a smaller cost. Hence, the population monotonicity gives an incentive for coalition expansion. Our results not only provide a simple way to design fair cost allocation policies for collaboration strategies in contract farming, but also play an important role in the sustainable development of farmers’ coalitions.     

Private irrigation investment in Colombia: effects of violence,macroeconomic policy,and environmental conditions

This paper identifies and estimates the effects of several determinant, on private investment in irrigation in Colombia. It attempts to quantify macroeconomic policy, environment, and violence variables that have been identified in previous studies as significantly affecting investment, in agriculture in genera., and in irrigation in particular. Variables such as violence, climate, and governmental price credit policies are used to explain changes in private investment in irrigation across regions and over time. Violence negatively affects private investment. Climate affects the investment such that in regions with favorable climate condition, investment in irrigation is less attractive, and appropriate government crop-price and credit policies promote investment in irrigation.     

IMPACTS OF TAXES TO REDUCE AGRICHEMICAL USE WHEN FARM POLICY IS ENDOGENOUS

The economic impacts of policies to reduce water pollution from agriculture have been explored in a number of studies. A standard assumption in this literature is that farm income support policies are given. However, the modern public choice view of agricultural policy suggests that significant environmental initiatives in agriculture would likely be accompanied by changes in farm income policies to protect those with a significant stake in agriculture. We explore the potential effects of such compensating adjustments on the costs and effectiveness of taxes on polluting chemical inputs in US corn production. We find that compensating farm policy adjustments can greatly increase the costs and reduce the effectiveness of the environmental protection measure. The results also indicate the potentially high costs of poor policy co-ordination.     

The impact of OECD biofuels policies on developing countries

OECD countries’ biofuels policies, derived from energy and environmental legislation and activated by high oil prices, were the primary cause of not only the sudden spike in grain and oilseed prices in 2007–2008 but also of the ensuing price volatility. Even though developing countries have a comparative advantage in biofuels production, they were shut out of rich countries’ biofuel markets by trade discriminating biofuels policies. Developing countries would not have been able to take full advantage of the price spike in the short run anyway given the low supply elasticities and the long time required for biofuel production to come online, unlike for corn‐ethanol. The controversy over the right price of food is misplaced and policy makers should instead focus on improving biofuels policies, which like their counterpart agricultural policies in previous decades, have damaged the welfare of developing countries.     

Urban water management: optimal price and investment policy under climate variability*

Australian urban water utilities face a significant challenge in designing appropriate demand management and supply augmentation policies in the presence of significant water scarcity and climate variability. This article considers the design of optimal demand management and supply augmentation policies for urban water. In particular, scarcity pricing is considered as a potential alternative to the predominant demand management policy of water restrictions. A stochastic dynamic programming model of an urban water market is developed based on data from the ACT region. Given a specification of the demand and supply for urban water state dependent optimal price and investment policies are estimated. The results illustrate how the optimal urban water price varies inversely with the prevailing storage level and how the optimal timing of investment differs significantly between rain dependent and rain independent augmentation options.