Neither feast nor famine: World food 20 years on

The authors summarize the results of a modelling exercise designed to examine future problems in the world food system. The alternatives resulting from the interactive analysis are presented and the impact of some of these alternatives on American business and society are discussed. Their conclusions include the likelihood that world food conditions in the next 20 years will not follow the trends of the last 20 years; that the rising level of food imports of poor regions will not be sustained; that self-reliance holds the key to a stable future; that food reserves are essential and US policy on them needs to be reassessed; and that the measures needed in poor countries could conflict with the present concern of the US government for human rights.     

The food situation in developing countries : Two decades in review

This article presents an overview of the general changes in the food situation in developing countries over the past two decades, and especially since the 1974 World Food Conference. Following an examination of trends in production, consumption and trade in basic food staples of Third World countries, the article looks at possible strategies for improving their food situation.     

Wheat markets,food aid and food security in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, after two decades of civil strife and successive droughts from 1998 to 2002, large inflows of food aid, distributed mainly to returning refugees and through food for work programs, have helped offset production shortfalls of wheat, the country’s major staple. At the same time, private international trade from neighboring countries, especially Pakistan, has also played a major role in augmenting wheat supply and stabilizing prices.     

Organising agriculture in the year 2000

How much of the world's potential food production is realised depends on how effectively agriculture is organised. The authors evaluate the effects of alternative agricultural systems on food production, consumption and trade growth rates in the food-deficit, developing countries. The effects of these alternative agricultural systems on production and trade in the rest of the world are also discussed. They conclude with a review of the specific characteristics of the alternative systems and examine the role each is likely to play in organising agriculture in the year 2000.     

Rejoinder : The mixed blessing of domestic support policies

This rejoinder notes the encouraging conclusion in the article by Tim Josling and Richard Barichello (p317–27),¹ that the impact of the policies followed for wheat by the world's main exporters has tended towards stabilizing world markets over the past twelve years. However, placing this conclusion in a wider context, the author believes that assuring world food security will remain dependent on support policy decisions taken for domestic policy reasons and that developed country domestic support policies have had a mixed effect for world markets.     

Marketing supplementary food products in LDCs: A case study in Morocco

Developing country governments as well as a number of international agencies have become directly involved in the past two decades in the production and marketing of supplementary food products. This article discusses the Moroccan government's involvement in introducing a weaning food targeted for elaborates on the factors which contributed contributedm to the failure of this and other similar ventures, while drawing attention to the important low-income Moroccan children. It role that marketing plays in launching socially desirable food products in developing country environments.     

Food accessibility,diversity of agricultural production and dietary pattern in rural China

The market-oriented reform in China in the past 4 decades has greatly reshaped the consumption pattern in rural areas. In particular, farmers’ diets are more likely to depend on food market development such as food accessibility. This study investigates the role of food accessibility in the transition of dietary pattern in rural China by using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data (1997–2011) and whether food accessibility helps alleviate the deviation between farmers’ dietary pattern and the recommended dietary pattern according to China Food Pagoda 2016. The primary results indicate that food accessibility contributes to improvements in quality. In particular, food accessibility increases the consumption of oil and decreases the consumption of cereal, potatoes, and beans; fruits; vegetables; and salt. Further estimation finds evidence that along with increasing food accessibility, fruit is converging to the recommended dietary pattern in China Food Pagoda 2016, and the deviations of legumes, nuts, and oil are increasing. We also observe that the impact of food accessibility on dietary quality is stronger for those not engaged in agriculture production. Our study provides valuable implications for rural development and nutrition security in the developing world.     

The Brandt report and international food problems

The political role that food has played in the Afghanistan and Iran crises, as well as in the UK's relations with its EEC partners has focused more attention on international food questions than at any time since the pre-war campaign for tariff reform. International food problems involve issues broader and more complex than finding ways of combating widespread hunger: showing concern and contributing some resources to solving someone e/se's problem. This increased awareness of the political and economic as well as humanitarian aspects of the food problem should enable us to recognise the need to give particular attention to proposals such as those made by the Brandt Commission¹ on world hunger and international food questions.     

Modelling trends in food market integration: Method and an application to Tanzanian maize markets

Pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries, research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades. Empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions: on the one hand, there is the parity bounds model (PBM) using a switching regressions technique, while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive (TAR) models has been proposed. This article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that TAR models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets. Furthermore, we extend the standard TAR model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter. Using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in Tanzania, we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties.     

Food consumption in Mexico: demographic and economic effects

Disaggregated demand analysis is beginning to receive increased importance in food policies for developing countries. Using household data from the 1977 Mexican Income and Expenditure Household Survey, the authors estimate the income and demographic effects on expenditures for 9 aggregate food categories. In addition, they use a probit model to explore the effect of these variables on the purchase decision for 5 high protein supplying goods. The results indicate that demographic variables, as well as income, have important effects in determining food expenditures. The authors analyze these effects and indicate the role they might play in food policy programs such as PRONAL, the National Food Programme.     

An implicit food policy : Wheat consumption changes in Venezuela

The authors examine Venezuela's wheat and maize consumption in the light of the country's historical process of economic development. They show how certain development policies and strategies affected the consumption of wheat and maize and how, although generally lacking any explicit food policy content, these policies acted as implicit food policies aiding the progressive replacement of maize as the dietary staple by wheat.     

A quantitative analysis of trade policy responses to higher world agricultural commodity prices

The worldwide spike in prices of agricultural commodities in 2007–2008 elevated food security and social stability issues to the forefront, especially in many food-deficit countries. In order to mitigate the global food commodity price pressure on domestic markets, several major exporting and importing countries, mostly developing economies, adopted trade policy changes such as export bans (or raising export restrictions) or reducing import tariffs during the same period. This paper estimates the potential impacts of these policies on the world prices and trade of major agricultural commodities using a set of multi-country, multi-commodity, and partial-equilibrium models. Our findings suggest that over all, the trade policy responses in various countries increased the prices of all agricultural commodities, although the impact on the total net trade varies by commodity. The simulation results show that the overall impact of trade policy distortions on the world rice price is most significant at 24%, followed by wheat (14%) and barley (9%). In general, the poorer food-deficit countries/regions, which have limited power to manipulate their trade policies, experienced higher price increases compared to those major trading countries that adopted policy interventions. Also, the developing countries that are net importers which did not implement trade policy interventions experienced significant welfare losses resulting from interventions implemented by other major trading countries.     

The Soviet burden on the world food system : Challenge and response

Through its disruptive entry into western food markets and its non —participation in global efforts at food policy management the Soviet Union has placed a burden upon the world food system. Dr Paarlberg examines this burden and the US response which has been to seek better information on Soviet agriculture, impose ad hoc controls on food sales and to enter a bilateral agreement in 1975. Three other suggested responses —grain reserves held without Soviet participation, a US wheat board, and a North American export cartel —are discussed. The author concludes that the Soviet burden is decreasing and is best lifted by increasing the free supply available for export. In future. Soviet reliance on food imports may draw it into a greater dependence on the non-socialist world.     

Reflections on food crises past

World food crises are relatively rare events, occurring roughly three times a century. But they also tend to be regular events, every three decades or so, suggesting there is an underlying cyclical cause. If so, far-sighted donor and government investments in raising agricultural productivity, and policies on behalf of stable food production and prices, might go a long way to preventing food crises in the future. Preventing food crises rather than trying to cope after the fact with their impact on the poor is the only way to avoid substantial, perhaps permanent, damage to the welfare of poor households. Lessons from the world food crises in 1972/73 and in 2007/08, especially lessons from how the world rice market functioned, point the way toward improved food policy management at national and international levels in the future.     

Energy and irrigation in LDCs

Climatic conditions prevailing in most developing countries determine that much of the annual rainfall is seasonal. There are regular dry spells which last anything from a few weeks to several months and sometimes even longer. If developing countries are to achieve greater self-sufficiency in food production, then irrigation must play a vital role. But irrigation is energy intensive and some energy sources are a dwindling asset. On the other hand there is a continually rising demand for food which automatically produces a corresponding increase in energy requirements. The question this poses then is, if continuity of food production is to be assured, on what energy system should irrigation development be based? Alternatively, how can expendable sources of energy be most economically used?     

Does trade openness contribute to food security? A dynamic panel analysis

Despite significant progress in the fight against hunger during the last decades, food insecurity remains a major problem in many countries, especially developing ones. In this study, we use a large cross-country data to investigate the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security, measured by dietary energy consumption. We employ a system GMM approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity, correlated individual effects and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables. The empirical results reveal that trade openness and economic growth exert positive and significant impacts on dietary energy consumption, and also contribute to improvements in dietary diversity. The results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables capturing specific agro-climatic constraints (e.g. weather-related) and regional/country characteristics and to the sample composition. Most geographical regions are found to have significantly higher food security levels compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. Additional results indicate that besides calorie consumption, trade openness also improves dietary diversity and diet quality-related aspects of food security.     

Food security and nutrition challenges in Tajikistan: Opportunities for a systems approach

Despite progress in poverty reduction achieved over the last two decades, Tajikistan’s food security situation remains challenging. Recent studies and analyses have highlighted progress as well as areas that require increased attention from the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan and international development partners. The paper argues that a systems approach that takes into consideration policy interventions by different sectors is required to more effectively improve access and affordability of healthy diets, contributing to a better food security and nutrition situation of the population.     

Telecommunications interception in Australia: Recent trends and regulatory prospects

This article reviews recent trends and regulatory prospects relating to telecommunications interception in Australia. The steady expansion of surveillance powers in Australia over the past two decades, particularly at the federal level, is critically evaluated. Drawing comparisons with the United States, the article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the existing regulatory system for telecommunications interception, including legal safeguards such as judicial warrants and civil actions for unlawful interception. The authors conclude by sketching a new normative framework for telecommunications interception that repudiates the idea of “balancing” competing interests in favor of a regulatory model that promotes human rights and due process as paramount considerations.     

Telecommunications policy: The medium is the message

Reflecting on his involvement with Telecommunications Policy, since 1979, this article by one of its first editors Colin Blackman, contributes to the 40^th anniversary issue. It describes the launch of the journal, the unique nature of its publisher, IPC Science & Technology Press, the way in which the field has changed over the past four decades, and makes some personal observations about the changing nature of the world of journal publishing.     

Models of world food supply,demand and nutrition

Computer simulation of the world problematique offers a policy maker an interesting opportunity to see the dynamics of relationships within and between the global subsystems of which food and agriculture is one. The four major modelling studies reviewed in this article make assumptions about the possible level of food supply, technological and economic impacts on production, ecological consequences, and social and political factors influencing demand. Following their analysis of agricultural data inputs in all these areas, the authors discuss the type of policy measures likely to be recommended on the basis of global modelling.