Agricultural trade liberalization and economic development: the role of downstream market power

A model is developed to characterize the vertically linked and concentrated nature of developed‐country food markets. This model is then parameterized and used to simulate the effects of varying food market structures on the benefits to developing‐country exporters of agricultural commodities from trade liberalization by developed countries. Results demonstrate that even relatively modest departures from perfect competition can cause much of the benefits from trade liberalization to flow to marketing firms instead of producers in the developing country. The distributional effects under downstream market power differ significantly from the perfectly competitive case and may result, somewhat paradoxically, in developing countries receiving a lower share of the total value added within the food chain as trade reform occurs.     

Constant market shares analysis: uses,limitations and prospects*

In this paper, we generalise the constant market shares (CMS) framework, with particular attention to the underlying theoretical conditions required for diagnostic interpretation. The approach is applied to the analysis of the export performance of the Australian processed food sector in South‐East Asia over the period 1980–2003. We conclude that the usefulness of CMS analysis for evaluating a country's international trade performance depends upon the empirical validity of the aggregation assumptions implicit in the diagnostic interpretation.     

Canada's beef exports: Border effects and prospects for market access

This paper examines the magnitudes of border effects on Canada's beef exports, and assesses the prospects for market access. The empirical analysis relies on a gravity model derived from a supply-based framework, and implements different econometric methodologies. It covers the conventional measurement of border effects that is determined relative to the intranational trade baseline. Also, it sets alternative baselines to estimate the wedge between the border effects on beef exports of Canada and those of other countries. The estimated parameters are used to carry out different scenarios to examine the tariff-related and nontariff border effects, and to evaluate the impacts of trade preferences for Canada's bilateral beef exports. The results reveal significant trade impediments facing Canada's bilateral beef exports to many large markets (e.g., EU-15, Japan, Republic of Korea, China, and Russia), and they often indicate that the effects of tariff reductions become considerably larger when coupled with reductions in nontariff impediments. Also, they underscore the significance of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)’s preferential market access for Canada's beef exports. The export opportunities for the Canadian beef industry that are generated through lower trade barriers would, however, decrease when trade barriers facing other beef-exporting countries are reduced.     

Land market liberalization,transfer of agricultural technology,and the process of industrialization

Common wisdom suggests that foreign land ownership should facilitate the transfer of agricultural technology from developed to developing countries, attract foreign capital flow to developing countries, and enhance the process of capital accumulation. The goal of this paper is to dispute this claim and describe a particular feedback mechanism through which the foreign land ownership can become a barrier for growth and development. The main result of this paper suggests that a policy proposal to enhance the process of growth and development through foreign land ownership accompanied by the transfer of agricultural technology may not always succeed. It is important to recognize that apart from benefits, foreign land ownership can sometimes become an impediment for growth. As a result, a policy maker with a clear goal to speed up the process of development may end up pushing the country even deeper into an underdevelopment trap due to the policy intervention.     

Rural land system reforms in China: History,issues, measures and prospects

Land system reform (LSR) helps to protect farmers' rights and interests and national food security. China is a country dominated by agriculture but insufficient arable land resources. The contradiction between man and land is prominent. To alleviate the man-land contradiction, the Chinese government has carried out a series of LSRs, especially in the past half century. Extensive and in-depth studies have been done on the process and stage characteristics of China's LSRs, but the systematic analysis on the necessity, problems and key measures to deepen the land system reform is still insufficient. Based on a systematic review of the history of the evolution of China's LSRs, this study firstly analyzed the key issues and new challenges existing in or arising from China's land system, then put forward the necessity of deepening the reform of land system, and discussed specific measures taken to deepen the reform of land system in China at present and finally pointed out the future LSR’s direction. The results show that China's rural LSR has gone through five stages in general since 1949. The key problems existing or arising from the current land system in China include unclear subject of land property right, serious inefficient utilization of land resources, rapid farmland conversion and conflict between farmers’ interests and land system. The dual land system in urban and rural areas has severely restricted the integration of social and economic development in this country. The Chinese government is actively promoting the reforms of rural agricultural land, collective operating construction land and homestead to further remove the dual institutional barriers that hinder the establishment of an integrated land trading market. The vision is good, but there is still a long way to go for China's LSR. The direction of China's rural LSR is to make the property rights relationship clearer, the farmland rights more complete, the transfer transactions more market-oriented and the property rights’ protection more equal. Deepening the rural LSRs is helpful to improve the efficiency of land resource utilization, safeguard the rights and interests of farmers, promote the coordination of human-land relationship, and inject new vitality and momentum into rural revitalization. Cooperative promotion of land resource capitalization reform and household registration system reform is the key area of land system reform in China in the future.     

2004年粮食市场回顾与2005年展望

对于我国粮食市场来讲,2004年可谓是极不平常的一年。供求关系逆转导致价格“一飞冲天”,中央出台一号文件既促进“三农”利益又改善粮食供给,粮食流通体制改革进一步促进市场化运营,政府实施宏观调控抑制通货膨胀等等因素和现象相互交织,注定今年的粮油市场将在行业内的历史上留下重重的一笔。在此我们特对年内市场进行回顾总结,并对来年市场进行概略性的展望,以期对市场人士有所启迪和帮助。一、粮食市场回顾(一)供求关系有效改善我国粮食生产自1997年以后开始整体性的连续下滑,到2003年跌入10年来的低谷。2004年小春产新前,国内粮食库存…     

Food scares, market power and price transmission: the UK BSE crisis

This paper is concerned with the impact of food scares, principallythe BSE crisis in the UK, and focuses on price transmissionin vertically related markets. We show that if market powerhas an effect on the farm–retail margin, this determinesthe specification of the cointegrating relationship and thusprovides a test of market power. The results for the UK beefchain suggest that we cannot reject the importance of marketpower. The impact of the BSE crisis on farm prices is foundto be more than double that on retail prices, thus corroboratingpublic concerns regarding a differential impact of food scareson retailers and producers.     

Food subsidies and market interdependence: the case of the Moroccan soft wheat subsidy

Among the several propositions advanced to explain the rising cost of subsidizing soft wheat production and consumption in Morocco are the indirect effects emanating from related markets, namely the hard wheat and barley markets. A three-sector supply-demand model, described in this paper, was used to estimate the direct and indirect (induced) effects on government cost of changes in the soft wheat subsidy. The results show that virtually all the indirect effects come from the soft wheat market itself. The indirect effects emanating from the related markets are negligible.     

工厂化养殖循环水处理系统的建造技术及其市场前景

本文在介绍工厂化养殖循环水处理系统建造的技术工艺和建造流程的基础上,分析了了该系统的市场前景.经测算,该系统满负荷运行1h,每套循环水处理系统的最大处理能力可达13t,水处理能力很强.本研究成果利用现有养殖池改造、增建循环水处理系统,是根据我国目前养殖业现状,针对我国养殖池塘特色设计的模式,节约成本,推广方便,具有良好的市场前景.     

Food,farmers, and the future: Investigating prospects of increased food production within a national context

With international food price shocks in 2008 and 2011, food security became a political priority in many countries. In addition, some politicians have recently adopted a more nationalistic stance. Against that background, this paper critically investigates the prospects of increased food production within a national context. We use a small, high-income country, Norway, as an empirical case. In 2012, the government set a goal of increasing agricultural food production by 20% by 2030. We ask: 1) How has food production in Norway developed before and after the goal was set? 2) What plans do farmers have, and what do they regard as the main obstacles to increased production? We apply a mixed method combining public statistics, a survey, and interviews. We analyze four production systems: a) milk; b) grass-based meat; c) combined pig and grain; and d) grain. These systems represent around 80% of the domestically consumed food produced on farms in Norway. Since 2000, aggregate food production has had a slight downward trend with periodic fluctuations. Based on a political economy approach, we identify land and labor as the most limiting factors. Capital is less of a hindrance and offers a potential for increased production. Farmers have modest expectations of increased production, though. This outlook resonates with the strong integration of agriculture into the wider economy, at both micro and macro levels, making it challenging to implement new policies and change farm practices on a broad basis. Increases in some specific products, however, are realistic.     

Cash crop liberalization and poverty alleviation in Africa: evidence from Malawi

This article uses the case of burley tobacco liberalization in Malawi to investigate the efficacy of cash crop liberalization as an instrument for poverty alleviation in sub‐Saharan Africa. The principal justification for cash crop liberalization is that markets allow farm households to increase their incomes by producing that which provides the highest return to their productive resources and use the cash to buy consumption goods. Using a latent welfare model, we find that households that selected to grow cash crops had higher incomes than those that did not grow cash crops. However, we also find that due to the lumpiness and seasonality of cash crop incomes, higher household incomes, while increasing food purchases did not significantly affect per capita food intake. Irrespective of participation in cash crops, for much of the cropping season rural households seem to rely more on nonfarm income for expenditure and consumption smoothing.     

Market liberalization and integration of maize markets in Malawi

The paper studies the extent of market integration of maize markets in Malawi in order to understand how it has been affected by market liberalization. Several measures of integration are introduced to analyze both the comovement of prices and the price adjustment process over time. Monthly retail prices of maize at eight main locations over the period January 1984 to December 1991 are considered. The main conclusion is that liberalization has increased market integration.     

The effects of the Food Reserve Agency on maize market prices in Zambia

Over the last decade, governments throughout eastern and southern Africa have increasingly used strategic reserves and/or marketing boards to influence grain market outcomes, yet little is known about how these activities are affecting grain markets. This article estimates the effects of the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) on maize market prices in production and consumption regions in Zambia using a vector autoregression model and monthly data from July 1996 through December 2008. In recent years, FRA has become the dominant buyer of smallholder maize in Zambia. Simulations show that FRA activities stabilized market prices throughout the July 1996–December 2008 study period and raised mean prices between July 2003 and December 2008 by 17–19%. The price raising effects of FRA policies have assisted surplus maize producers but adversely affected net buyers of maize in Zambia, namely urban consumers and the majority of the rural poor. The increase in maize price stability is unlikely to have had substantial welfare effects on poor households. In contrast, relatively wealthy producers are likely to have benefited from the higher average and more stable maize prices resulting from FRA policies.     

Food Aid and Food Security: A Cautionary Note

A simple model is presented to examine the effects of instability in global food aid supplies on foreign exchange expenditures and food availability in recipient countries. When global food prices rise, food aid recipients are doubly affected through decreased availability of food aid, and through higher costs of additional commercial imports needed to make up the shortfall. Empirical estimates of key parameters of the model suggest that countries with a high dependence on food aid may place their food security at risk.
Suit un modèle simple qui permet d'analyser les conséquences de l'instabilité des approvi-sionnements destinés à l'aide alimentaire sur les dépenses en devises étrangères et l'offre d'aliments dans les pays bénéficiaires. Lorsque le prix mondial des aliments augmente, les bénéficiaires de l'aide alimentaire subissent le contrecoup à la fois d'une aide alimentaire réduite et du coût plus éléve des produits importés pour répondre à la pénurie. Une estimation empirique des principaux parametrés du modele suggére que les pays qui dépendent fortement de l'aide alimentaire compromettent leur sécurité alimentaire.     

Land market regulation: market versus policy failures

This paper reviews the role of market failures in land markets, evidence as to their quantitative significance and the impact of land use policies designed to offset for such failures. Policies of containment and densification limit the supply of land for all urban uses. When applied as stringently as in Britain, a full net welfare evaluation shows the increased costs of space for housing substantially exceed the value of amenities generated. There is also evidence that constraints on land supply impose costs on productive uses of land in both office and retail use. Although the estimates are that these costs are considerable they relate only to the gross costs. Three possible policy changes are identified which could preserve the role of regulation in offsetting for problems of market failure while greatly relieving the costs of policy-imposed supply restrictions.     

Food security,the labor market,and poverty in the Brazilian bio‐economy

This article deals with the social implications of ethanol expansion in Brazil. The evolution of the labor market in sugarcane production in the country is analyzed together with its regional patterns of expansion, to illustrate how changes in the recent expansion are modifying the traditional pattern of labor demand in the activity. At the same time, the distributional effects of sugarcane expansion, as well as it's impacts on food security and land use change was approached with the aid of general equilibrium simulation models. The analysis shows that both the average earnings and the average years of schooling in sugarcane production are actually higher than in general agriculture in Brazil, and that this is linked to the growing increase in production in the Southeast and Central‐West. Sugarcane production in these regions is more capital intensive and has a much higher productivity than in other traditional regions in Northeast Brazil. The study concludes that the expansion in sugarcane production according to actual patterns does not have a negative effect on poverty, and has only minor impacts on food prices and deforestation. The increase in the regional economic imbalances within the country appears to be the problem that requires attention.