Energy systems analysis for food policy

Recent work on energy systems analysis of food production systems has demonstrated the importance of energy to the food production sector of the economy. We show how energy requirements for food production are closely related to the intensity of production, and that there is a quantifiable trade-off between land and energy use. This trade-off is quite different for vegetable and industrial food as opposed to animals and fish. Thus the energy consequences to food production from changes in diet, shrinking land resources or increasing population may be readily computed.     

Footprints of water and energy inputs in food production – Global perspectives

During the second half of the 20th century the global food production more than doubled and thus responded to the doubling of world population. But the gains in food production came at a cost, leaving a significant environmental footprint on the ecosystem. Global cropland, plantations and pastures expanded, with large increases in fossil energy, water, and fertilizer inputs, imprinting considerable footprint on the environment. Information from pre eminent publications such as Nature, Science, PNAS and scholarly journals is synthesized to assess the water and energy footprints of global food production. The data show that the footprints are significant, both locally, national and globally and have consequences for global food security and ecosystem health and productivity. The literature nearly agrees that global food production system generates considerable environmental footprints and the situation would likely get worrisome, as global population grows by 50% by 2050. Investments are needed today to buffer the negative impacts of food production on the environment. Investments to boost water productivity and improve energy use efficiency in crop production are two pathways to reduce the environmental footprint.     

Agriculture as a funding source of ISIS: A GIS and remote sensing analysis

Agriculture is an important source of income for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), which currently rules over large parts of the breadbaskets of the two countries. It has received limited attention compared to other sources of ISIS revenues such as oil, looting, ransom, foreign donations and various forms of taxation. We estimate winter crops production of wheat and barley in ISIS-controlled areas in both Syria and Iraq for the years 2014–2015 and irrigated summer crops production (cotton) in Northeast Syria. We show that remote sensing can give a credible estimation of agricultural production in the absence of statistics. With evidence from MODIS Aqua and Terra Satellites as well as Landsat imagery, we find that agricultural production in ISIS-controlled Syrian and Iraqi zones has been sustained in 2014 and 2015, despite the detrimental impact of conflict. After a drought in 2014 production was able to capitalize on improved rainfalls in 2015. First indications show that the winter grain harvest of 2016 in Iraqi territories of ISIS was significantly above pre-conflict mean and below pre-conflict mean in its Syrian territories. We also show how water flows along the Euphrates have impacted production. We estimate the revenue that ISIS can derive from wheat and barley production and the likely magnitude of an exportable surplus. Agricultural production gives the group a degree of resilience, although its economy is not sustainable in the longer run and could be affected by military collapse. Taxation of recurrent income streams such as agriculture will become more important for ISIS as its extractive sources of revenues show signs of dwindling. Beside non-grain food imports, agricultural production is crucial for its political legitimacy by ensuring food provision to the broader population. Food security considerations would require a high priority in any post-ISIS reconstruction effort and would need to include the rehabilitation of supply chains for agricultural inputs such as quality seeds and fertilizers.     

Food aid,domestic policy and food security: Contrasting experiences from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

Food aid, both for short-term emergency relief and as program food aid that helps address medium-term food “deficits”, is often a major component of food security strategies in developing countries. This study reviews the experience with food aid of four major recipients of food aid (India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zambia) regarding food production, trade, markets, consumption and safety nets, as well as the policy responses to food emergencies. The widely varying experiences of the study countries suggest that food aid that supports building of production and market enhancing infrastructure, is timed to avoid adverse price effects on producers, and is targeted to food insecure households can play a positive role in enhancing food security. However, food aid is not the only, or in many cases, the most efficient means of addressing food insecurity. In many cases private markets can more effectively address shortfalls in food availability and cash transfers may be a viable alternative to food transfers in-kind.     

Impact of water scarcity in Australia on global food security in an era of climate change

Australia is a major food exporting country. Recent droughts reduced dryland farming production and the volume of water allocated to irrigated agriculture, with a resulting decline in aggregate agricultural production and exports. This paper analyses the possible impact of increased water scarcity on Australian agricultural production and the magnitude of subsequent impacts on global food security. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on land and water use coupled with a hydro-economic stochastic modelling approach, the impacts of reduced agricultural production in the southern Murray–Darling Basin, and more generally for Australia, are analysed. Changes in agricultural activity, reduction in agricultural exports and altered composition of products exported attributed to the severe 2000–2009 drought are also analysed to highlight the implications for global food security. The impact of climate change on food production is examined. The analysis shows that climate change, when modelled as the extreme case, along with other factors such as land use, will impact Australian food exports. Despite its relatively small contribution to total global food supply, Australia’s contribution to international trade in wheat, meat and dairy products is substantial and could affect global food prices. Furthermore, Australia’s agricultural exports are of disproportionate importance within the South- and South–East Asian and Oceania region, both in terms of volume and for strategic reasons. Adaptation along with investment in agriculture production is needed to maintain Australian agricultural production and enhance global food security.     

The economics of food aid under subsistence farming with an application to Malawi

We investigate how food-aid affects price and production of staple food, with a partial equilibrium model with non-separable production and consumption. The model captures the key characteristics of sub-Saharan Africa subsistence economies. Simulations generate negative but also positive food-aid elasticities of production. Conditions are identified which mitigate the negative impact and support a positive impact. The share of domestic food production in total staple food demand (+) and the share of income from staple food production in total household income (−) are key determinants. Price and production equations, estimated with a panel of district data of the Malawi maize market for the period 1999–2010, show a small positive impact of food-aid. Large negative impacts of food-aid are not likely given production and income shares and behavioural responses.     

Social protection for enhanced food security in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper identifies several positive synergies between social protection programmes and enhanced entitlements to food. One function of social protection is to manage or reduce vulnerability. Several instruments are reviewed – weather-indexed insurance, public works programmes, emergency food aid and buffer stock management – which aim to stabilise income and access to food across good and bad years, or between the harvest and the hungry season. Other social protection instruments aim to raise household income and crop production, for instance agricultural input subsidies or input trade fairs, as well as public works projects that construct or maintain physical infrastructure such as rural feeder roads. This paper also argues that entitlements to food can be strengthened if social justice principles are introduced to the design and delivery of social protection programmes. Examples reviewed include rights-based approaches such as employment guarantee schemes, community-based targeting and demand-driven accountability mechanisms. The paper concludes by arguing for a comprehensive approach to social protection that will achieve sustainable food security, by combining interventions that stabilise income or food production with those that raise income or food production, and are designed and delivered in ways that enhance social justice.     

Pathways to reduce the environmental footprints of water and energy inputs in food production

With climate change and population growth, the pathways for reducing the environmental footprint of food production are increasingly sought, but poorly understood. This paper sketches the environmental footprints of water and energy use in food production systems. The main objective is to present an empirical application, to help identify the main pathways to reducing the footprints. The agricultural system of rice, wheat, and barley production on selected farms in the southern Murray Darling Basin in Australia is used as a case study. Further insights are gained through a review of the data published in pre eminent journals. Together the analysis indicates that boosting water productivity and improving energy use efficiency in crop production operations are the two possible pathways to reducing the environmental footprints of water and energy inputs in food production. These generic conclusions have implications for water, food and environment policy.     

The sceptical consumer? Exploring views about food assurance

The problem of trust in food production and regulation has increasingly been raised as a practical and policy issue in recent years and one solution has been to provide more and better information about food production and regulation, especially through food assurance schemes. To look for evidence that this might be successful, this paper uses a small empirical study of how UK consumers think about food information and food assurance claims, using a statement sorting exercise (Q methodology) to identify key factors or shared views. We found that our consumers, despite differences in sociodemographics, gender, diet and shopping habits, tended to share a baseline of scepticism about food information and food assurance claims. We speculate that such scepticism may mean that, rather than providing a solution to the problem of distrust, food assurance schemes may themselves come to be distrusted.     

Long-term crop productivity response and its interaction with cereal markets and energy prices

Crop yields are endogenous as long as economic agents adjust to permanent changes in expected prices. The literature, however, does not offer a definitive value of how much yield would change in response to sustained price changes. To fill the gap, we use available scientific findings and data to estimate yield elasticities that enable agricultural commodity and food policy analysis. Using a world market model with short- to long-run yield response, we show the impacts of sustained energy price shocks on global cereal supply and demand. The results highlight substantial differences in quantity and price effects depending on the yield elasticities. These results demonstrate the need to recognize yield response when assessing impacts of energy prices or biofuel production on food uses or, more generally, on food security in the face of income and population growth, evolving dietary patterns, climate change implications, or other long-run pressures.     

Food self-sufficiency: Making sense of it,and when it makes sense

Food self-sufficiency gained increased attention in a number of countries in the wake of the 2007–08 international food crisis, as countries sought to buffer themselves from volatility on world food markets. Food self-sufficiency is often presented in policy circles as the direct opposite of international trade in food, and is widely critiqued by economists as a misguided approach to food security that places political priorities ahead of economic efficiency. This paper takes a closer look at the concept of food self-sufficiency and makes the case that policy choice on this issue is far from a straightforward binary choice between the extremes of relying solely on homegrown food and a fully open trade policy for foodstuffs. It shows that in practice, food self-sufficiency is defined and measured in a number of different ways, and argues that a broader understanding of the concept opens up space for considering food self-sufficiency policy in relative terms, rather than as an either/or policy choice. Conceptualizing food self-sufficiency along a continuum may help to move the debate in a more productive direction, allowing for greater consideration of instances when the pursuit of policies to increase domestic food production may make sense both politically and economically.     

The impacts of value chain upgrading on the export of processed food

Upgrading in global value chains (GVCs) is an important path for developing countries to move along to capture higher benefits. Several qualitative studies of GVCs have identified two main upgrading types: economic (product, process, functional, and inter-sectoral) and social upgrading. The upgrading concept is widespread in productive sectors such as processed food, which has become a key export for developing countries. However, they have confronted multiple product standards required by global buyers. This study uses a case study of Thailand’s processed food exports (TPFEs). Although Thailand is a leading exporter of processed food, the country needs to upgrade in many areas related to production to meet global product standards and requirements. If Thailand fails to comply with global product standards, it will lose its export competitiveness. This study uses a gravity model to evaluate the impact of economic and social upgrading (EUP and SUP) on TPFEs. Our results show that upgrading types are significant in TPFEs, particularly for exports to developed countries. Process upgrading has a negative impact on TPFEs because of increased production costs to comply with product standards. However, process upgrading can lead to increased producers’ and exporters’ knowledge about how to comply with international standards. Consequently, process upgrading exhibits a lagged positive effect on TPFEs.     

An optimization approach for managing fresh food quality throughout the supply chain

One of the most challenging tasks in today's food industry is controlling the product quality throughout the food supply chain. In this paper, we integrate food quality in decision-making on production and distribution in a food supply chain. We provide a methodology to model food quality degradation in such a way that it can be integrated in a mixed-integer linear programming model used for production and distribution planning. The resulting model is applied in an illustrative case study, and can be used to design and operate food distribution systems, using both food quality and cost criteria.     

Towards regional food security in southern Africa: a (new) policy framework for the agricultural sector

In the southern African Region (SAR) large populations, mainly concentrated in rural areas, face food insecurity and poverty. Food insecurity is intensified by adverse weather conditions and droughts which impact negatively on farm level food production throughout the region. Agriculture constitutes an important economic sector in the majority of countries in the region. This is measured as share of agricultural value added to the GDP and as agriculture's share in employment. Based on these facts alone, it must be obvious that sustained agricultural performance will play a significant role in the improvement of food security and livelihoods in the region. However, food security is not only attained in rural areas and by the consumption of home produced food stuffs. Urbanisation is expected to increase dramatically over the next few decades and feeding the urban masses, at affordable prices, must be considered to be a high future priority for governments in the region. Food security must not be viewed as an agricultural issue per se. The drive to food self sufficiency through domestic agriculture production in many countries in the region did not enable these countries to feed their own population. Food security should rather be defined as the acquirement of sufficient and nutritious quantities of food (Sen, 1981, Poverty and Famines: An essay on Entitlement and Deprivation). An approach, whereby attention is given to the macro level availability of food, access to income streams as well as improved production capacity to acquire food at a household level and the utilisation of nutritious food, should therefore be guiding food security policies (SADC: FSTAU, 1997, A Strategic Framework for Food Security in the Region). This broader view emphasises household level poverty reduction, economic development and growth as important components of a food security strategy (World Food Summit, Rome, 1996). An important issue which therefore needs to be explored is whether agriculture does have the potential to contribute to economic processes, which will support broad based development and food security. This paper is intended to argue the importance of agricultural development for food security in the region and to develop a diverse policy framework to strengthen this new, more comprehensive role of agriculture in the region.     

Does food aid have disincentive effects on local production? A general equilibrium perspective on food aid in Ethiopia

This paper examined impacts of food aid on domestic food production employing a computable general equilibrium modelling technique and using data from Ethiopia. The simulation experiments have shown that food aid has unambiguous disincentive effects on domestic food production. The removal of food aid caused a modest increase in food prices but this stimulated food production. Employment and income generation effects of the latter outweighed the adverse effect of the former. Consequently, the removal of food aid led to improvements in aggregate household welfare. Contrary to some concerns in the food aid literature that any reduction in food aid would hurt the poor, the simulation experiments suggested that actually poor rural households and urban wage earners are the ones who benefit most in absence of food aid but entrepreneurs are more likely to encounter a marginal welfare decline. We have distinguished between in-kind food aid and cash equivalent transfers in order to isolate the disincentives that in-kind transfers would make to domestic production from those that are related to household purchasing power problem. The expansionary effect of removing food aid becomes significantly larger when it is accompanied by cash equivalent payments because the latter would provide demand side stimulus to agriculture while the removal of in-kind transfers would stimulate supply side, with the supply and demand side effects reinforcing each other. In our modelling framework, the only adverse effect would be a modest deterioration in the external current account, because the expansionary effects of food aid would cause imports to rise but exports to fall.     

Reengineering the production planning process in the food industry

This paper addresses managerial process reengineering and in particular the reengineering of the production planning process. The reengineered process highlights planning options to avoid the process imbalance and loss of production potential that can follow innovation in a facility that is fully committed to JIT production.The study was motivated by production problems following product innovation within the food industry but the reengineering conclusions and procedures are applicable to all similarly structured industries. An example based on data from a snack food manufacturing company illustrates the reengineered procedure for a plant that is typical of the food processing industry.     

The state of food and agriculture in Islamic countries

This review of the state of food and agriculture in Islamic countries underlines the need for much greater public commitment to agricultural development. Within the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 44 member nations, exibiting immense geographic and economic diversity, have come together recently to begin to cooperate on increasing food production. It is difficult to generalize about food production conditions in Islamic nations, but basically, within the OIC, total arable land increased from 159 to 167 ha in the 1970s, a small amount unevenly distributed over the group. Dry-land farming has not received enough public attention, and the dependence on cereals grown under rainfed conditions leaves the population vulnerable to fluctuation. Many of the poorer nations have not given the priority to land improvement that has been successful in Egypt, Pakistan, and some other countries. The economic burden of food imports has become lighter in some countries, although in all it continues to be serious. Net cereal imports to Islamic countries rose from 21 to 39 million tons from 1975-83. An overall increase in the per capita dietary energy supplies masks broad differences between the wealthier and poorer nations of the OIC, and between more and less priviledged populations within the societies. A small proportion of financial commitments to agriculture (15%) come from Islamic community donors; this is not a leading program priority. Often spending has been for large capital-intensive projects depending on imported skills and inputs. As a group, the OIC must plan to take advantage of their technical and environmental diversity, and work together to avoid inefficient dispersal of personnel and other resources. Tabular data show selected indicators of agricultural development (e.g. % of food imported, food production growth), average annual rate of food production change related to population growth, per capita dietary energy supplies, and external assistance commitments.     

Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria

While the poverty implications of off-farm income have been analyzed in different developing countries, much less is known about the impact of off-farm income on household food security and nutrition. Here, this research gap is addressed by using farm survey data from Nigeria. Econometric analyses are employed to examine the mechanisms through which off-farm income affects household calorie and micronutrient supply, dietary quality, and child anthropometry. We find that off-farm income has a positive net effect on food security and nutrition. The prevalence of child stunting, underweight, and wasting is lower in households with off-farm income than in households without. Using a structural model, we also show that off-farm income contributes to higher food production and farm income by easing capital constraints, thus improving household welfare in multiple ways.     

Administrative cooperation and disease control in cross-border pork production

In recent years, the continuous structural change in the value chain of modern food production has been characterised by an increasing international division of labour among manufacturing companies. A regional specialisation of primary agricultural production is especially apparent in meat production. Thus, the German–Dutch border area has developed into a region of unprecedented intensive pork production. While The Netherlands specialises in piglet production, the production of fattened pigs continues to grow in northwest Germany. As a result of this increasing transnational value chain development, German imports of Dutch piglets have risen continuously since 2000. However, this structural interweaving of pork production between The Netherlands and Germany has resulted in many new challenges for the cooperation between the various participants and in particular for the administrative authorities in the field of food and feed safety as well as efficient animal disease control. The motivation for this exploratory study stems from the lack of scientific work on this topic to date. The aim of this research is to illustrate the relevance of functioning cross-border cooperation in the food sector, using commodity flow structures and disease spread analysis. Results indicate that cross-border cooperation between authorities during a CSF epidemic can reduce the risk of recurrence and the duration by 50%.     

The statistics of hunger

The author critically reviews commonly used statistics of food production, market supply, demand and consumption, and asserts the absolute necessity for a more discriminating form of analysis. He offers an alternative statistical and accounting technique designed to show a complete picture of the state of a country's overall food supply, and the food distribution to individual households at the same time.