smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

consumer demand for food diversity evidence for germany abstract whereas a large number of empirical studies have been devoted to analysing consumer demand for specific products much less attention has been paid to the household s demand for product variety the number of different products consumed in a specific time period this paper analyses consumer demand for food variety in germany the econometric analysis of 4632 households suggests that variety significantly increases with income and the number of children aged between 7 and 17 years and is significantly higher if the family lives in larger cities in east germany and the housekeeping person is not additionally working full time a single male household consumes a significantly smaller number of different food products the significant and positive impact of household income on food variety is in line with the hypothesis that consumption evolves along a hierarchical order as income increases

the food retail revolution in poor countries is it coming or is it over abstract global retail chains are becoming increasingly dominant in the global food trade and their rise leads to dramatic impacts on agricultural supply chains and on small producers however the prospects and impacts of a food retail revolution in poor countries are not yet well understood here i examine this question in madagascar a poor but stable country in which global retailers have been present for over a decade the survey and analysis find that while global retail chains sell better quality food their prices are 40 90 higher ceteris paribus than those seen in traditional retail markets in poor settings characterized by high food price elasticities a lack of willingness to pay for quality and small retail margins supermarkets appear to set prices with an eye toward maximizing profits on the basis of price inelastic demands for quality products from a small middle class interested in one stop shopping it seems unlikely that global retail chains will further increase their food reta

natural resources curse or blessing are natural resources a curse or a blessing the empirical evidence suggests that either outcome is possible this paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources these include that a resource bonanza induces appreciation of the real exchange rate deindustrialization and bad growth prospects and that these adverse effects are more severe in volatile countries with bad institutions and lack of rule of law corruption presidential democracies and underdeveloped financial systems another hypothesis is that a resource boom reinforces rent grabbing and civil conflict especially if institutions are bad induces corruption especially in nondemocratic countries and keeps in place bad policies finally resource rich developing economies seem unable to successfully convert their depleting exhaustible resources into other productive assets the survey also offers some welfare based fiscal rules for harnessing resource windfalls in developed and developing economies

agroindustrialization globalization and international development an overview of issues patterns and determinants this paper offers an overview for a special issue on agroindustrialization globalization and international development it sets out a conceptual framework for understanding the links among these three broad phenomena and then discusses emerging issues and evidence concerning the factors conditioning agroindustrialization in developing countries and the subsequent effects on employment poverty and the natural environment we conclude with a research agenda

world poverty and the role of agricultural technology direct and indirect effects agricultural technology can help reduce poverty through direct and indirect effects direct effects are gains for the adopters while indirect effects are gains derived from adoption by others leading to lower food prices employment creation and growth linkage effects conceptualising and measuring these effects is highly complex yet is needed for each region if technology is to be used as an effective instrument for poverty reduction we propose a methodology for doing this in the context of computable general equilibrium modelling and apply it to archetype models for africa asia and latin america results show that the dominant effect of technology on poverty is through direct effects in africa indirect agricultural employment effects in asia and linkage effects through the rest of the economy in latin america in each case increasing the poverty reduction effect through the targeting of technology across crops and through complementary rural development programmes is also explored

labour chains analysing the role of labour contractors in global production networks abstract third party labour contractors are increasingly prevalent in global production networks gpns and can provide a channel for new forms of unfree labour review of case study evidence from south african and uk horticulture suggests this often emerges off site through labour intermediaries analytical approaches to labour in gpns and value chains are examined the article argues that labour contracting is driven by the commercial dynamics of global outsourcing a cascade system allows unscrupulous intermediaries to coerce vulnerable workers we examine strategies of civil society alliances and regulatory reform and argue for extending liability of all commercial actors across global boundaries

nutrition agriculture and the global food system in low and middle income countries the entire food value chain and diet of low and middle income countries lmics are rapidly shifting many of the issues addressed by the nutrition community ignore some of the major underlying shifts in purchases of consumer packaged foods and beverages at the same time the drivers of the food system at the farm level might be changing there is a need for the agriculture and nutrition communities to understand these changes and focus on some of their implications for health this rapid growth of the retail sector will change the diets of the food insecure as much as that of the food secure across rural and urban lmic s this short commentary contents that current research programs and policies are ignoring these rapid dynamic shifts

the political economy of regulations and trade wine trade 1860 1970 dramatic changes in the 1860 1970 wine trade provide insights on the political economy of regulations and policy instrument choice and trade an invasion of phylloxera in the 1870s turned france from the world s leading exporter to a massive importer of wine and grapes when french production recovered a combination of tariffs safety regulations and quality standards were introduced to protect its french producers causing dramatic changes in global wine and grape production and trade including in spain italy turkey greece algeria tunisia and morocco changes in wine regulations were caused by relative income and loss aversion factors in political economy tariffs were the preferred policy instruments as they directly restrict imports bring in revenues have low transaction costs and are preferred political instruments when there are information imperfections safety regulations and quality standards including labelling and input prohibitions reduce asymmetric information for consumers or undesirable externalities and simultaneously protected domestic producers regulations were often targeted at imported products wine and raisins when tariffs were ineffective or constrained by institutions such as on colonial wine hence tariffs and quality regulations were jointly used in wine policy both as complements and as substitutes in policy design

getting agriculture moving do markets provide the right signals abstract political discrimination has often pushed the domestic value of agriculture in developing countries below its value in markets at the border this paper seeks to explain the reasons why border prices themselves undervalue the linkages that agriculture has to economic growth in the early stages of development if agriculture is critically important to stimulating and sustaining rapid economic growth those countries that fail to correct this discrimination exact a heavy toll in economic performance furthermore the poorest countries will suffer the most agricultural development and development of the non agricultural economy are closely linked the traditional market mediated linkages form the core of economic analysis of the role of agriculture in economic development providing labour for an industrial work force food for an expanding population with higher incomes savings for industrial investments markets for industrial output export earnings to pay for imported capital goods and raw materials for agro processing industries a second category of linkages is not well mediated by market forces even when markets are working well the impact of agricultural growth on the rest of the economy through non market linkages can be traced using a simple growth accounting framework that examines contributions to the labour force capital investment and the productivity with which these two physical factors are utilised several linkages stand out as likely to be important and potentially measurable because they draw on the efficiency of decision making in rural households the low opportunity cost of their labour resources the opportunity for farm investment without financial intermediaries the potential to earn high rates of return on public investments that correct for urban bias the contribution of food price stability to increased efficiency in investment decisions and the impact of growth in food production on widespread improvement in nutrient intake and labour productivity each of these factors alone as public investment and favourable policy stimulate growth in the agricultural sector should cause an increase in the efficiency of resource allocation and thus higher total factor productivity several of these mechanisms will also serve to speed factor accumulation by increasing the savings rate or improving factor mobility

the rise of supermarkets and changing expenditure patterns of poor rural households case study in the transkei area south africa abstract since the late 1990s the number of supermarkets in south africa has been steadily growing due to a more effective and efficient management and procurement system the supermarkets can benefit from economics of scale and sell food at a relative low price in this paper we present a case study of two villages in the transkei area of south africa in these poor rural communities the majority of households now buy their main food items from supermarkets rather than from local shops and farmers while presenting an important step towards livelihood development and food security these supermarkets form also a strong competitor for local agricultural sales the supermarkets provide many food items at lower prices with an increase in income the households look for variety and exotism in their food products and will most likely find this in the supermarkets rather than the local stores we argue therefore that development programs should focus on the local growers access to the supermarket procurement systems

the hidden middle the quiet revolution in the midstream of agrifood value chains in developing countries the food security debate has focused largely on the farm sector and on trade relatively neglected or hidden from mainstream debate are the middle segments processing logistics wholesale of agrifood value chains in developing countries and yet this midstream forms 30 40 per cent of the value added and costs in food value chains the productivity of the midstream is as important as farm yields for food security in poor countries the article shows that over the past several decades the middle segments have transformed quickly and surprisingly with a huge volume expansion a proliferation of small and medium enterprises smes but also concentrating and multinationalizing in some places and products with technology change characterized by capital led intensification and with the incipient emergence of branding and labelling and packaging of new organizational arrangements in procurement and marketing interfaces with farmers and retailers and of private standards and contracts economic policies of market and foreign direct investment fdi liberalization commercial and business climate regulations hard and soft infrastructure investment and food safety laws have paved the path to the expansion and shaped the transformation of the important midstream segment of food value chains

private agri food standards implications for food policy and the agri food system abstract this paper provides a brief introduction to the evolution and nature of private food safety and quality standards highlighting the resultant impacts on the structure and modus operandi of supply chains for agricultural and food products and the challenges posed for processes of agricultural development it serves as an introduction to a series of papers that provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge regarding private food safety and quality standards in both an industrialised and developing country context in so doing it aims to provide a catalyst for further research on this rapidly evolving field of inquiry

agrifood supply chain private sector standards and farmers health evidence from kenya this article evaluates the impact of adoption of european union eu private sector standards on farmers health in rural kenya the study utilizes cross sectional farm household level data collected in 2006 from a randomly selected sample of 439 small scale export farmers we estimate the casual impact by utilizing a two stage poisson regression model two stage standard treatment effect model as well as by regression based on propensity score to assess the robustness of the results using these techniques we demonstrate that the pesticide ascribed incidence of acute illness symptoms and the associated cost of illness significantly decrease with the adoption of standards ceteris paribus farmers who adopt standards experience 70 lesser incidence of acute illness and spent about 50 60 less on restoring their health than nonadopters although standards can potentially prevent resource poor smallholders from maintaining their position in lucrative export markets they can also result in positive changes in the health of those farmers who do adopt them as shown by these results this implies that if adopted on a large scale standards may reduce production externalities corroborating the view that they may serve as a catalyst to transform production systems in developing countries

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

small farmers and big retail trade offs of supplying supermarkets in nicaragua summary in nicaragua and elsewhere in central america small scale farmers are weighing the risks of entering into contracts with supermarket chains we use unique data from cooperatives supplying supermarkets to study the effect of supply agreements on producers mean output prices and price stability we find that prices paid by the domestic retail chain approximate the traditional market in mean and variance while mean prices paid by walmart are significantly lower than the traditional market however the walmart contract is found to systematically reduce price volatility we find some evidence however that farmers may be paying too much for this contractual insurance against price variation

spillovers from modern supply chains to traditional markets product innovation and adoption by smallholders there is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can benefit from modern supply chains however most of the available studies concentrate on export markets and fail to capture spillover effects that modern supply chains may have on local markets here we analyze the case of sweet pepper in thailand which was initially introduced as a product innovation in modern supply chains but which is now widely traded also in more traditional markets using survey data from smallholder farmers and econometric techniques we show that sweet pepper cultivation contributes significantly to higher household incomes strikingly at this stage participation in modern supply chains does not lead to higher incomes than supplying sweet pepper to traditional markets however the results also indicate that missing land titles weak infrastructure conditions and limited access to information constituted serious constraints during the early phases of sweet pepper adoption such constraints need to be overcome so that smallholder farmers are better prepared for the prompt reactions needed under rapidly changing market conditions

optimal timing problems in environmental economics abstract because of the uncertainties and irreversibilities that are often inherent in environmental degradation its prevention and its economic consequences environmental policy design can involve important problems of timing i use a simple two period model to illustrate these optimal timing problems and their implications for environmental policy i then lay out and solve a continuous time model of policy adoption in which the policy itself entails sunk costs and environmental damage is irreversible the model generalizes earlier work in that it includes two stochastic state variables one captures uncertainty over environmental change and the other captures uncertainty over the social costs of environmental damage solutions of the model are used to show the implications of these two types of uncertainty for the timing of policy adoption

fundamental irreversibilities in stock externalities abstract this paper concerns the irreversibility effect in stock externalities in an environment of uncertainty with learning taking place one may wish to under emit today to avoid potential environmental irreversibilities alternatively one may wish to under invest in pollution control capital avoiding investments in sunk capital that turn out to be wasted the paper develops theoretical results on the tension between these two effects and separates risk aversion from the irreversibility effect the paper also presents a simple example in climate change policy

a policy agenda for pro poor agricultural growth abstract sub saharan africa and parts of south asia are likely to hold large numbers of very poor rural people into the foreseeable future although both history and theory suggest a pre eminent role for agricultural growth in poverty reduction in poor agrarian economies such growth today faces new difficulties many of these difficulties are endogenous to today s poor rural areas others result from broader processes of global change but some are due to changes in the dominant policy environment emphasizing liberalization and state withdrawal examination of 20th century green revolutions suggests that active state interventions were important in supporting critical stages of agricultural market development unfortunately such interventions benefits in institutional development are easily overlooked whereas their high costs are much more visible policy implications are discussed

fertility choice land and the malthusian hypothesis in a standard overlapping generations growth model with a fixed amount of land and endogenous fertility the competitive economy converges to a steady state with a zero population growth rate and positive consumption per capita the malthusian hypothesis is interpreted as a positive statement about the relationship between population growth and consumption per capita when production exhibits diminishing returns to labor and there is a fixed amount of land essential for production even when individuals care only about the number of their children and not about their children s welfare the equilibrium is such that they eventually would choose to have only one child for each adult hence if malthus s positive check on population is the result of the response of optimizing agents to competitively determined prices malthus s pessimistic conjecture is not necessarily true even though his other assumptions hold from authors

wealth and sustainability for economists in 1974 it was a live question whether the exhaustion of natural resources such as oil would necessarily lead to the decline of economic activity solow showed that constant levels of consumption could be sustained in the face of exhaustibility if there is sufficient substitutability between produced and natural factors of production hartwick then proved that underpinning this result is a saving rule set investment in produced capital equal to the value of resource depletion at each point in time a large literature has shown that a comprehensive measure of the change in real wealth net saving plays a central role in determining whether current well being can be sustained in particular current declines in real wealth signal that future well being will also decline a result that has been confirmed empirically using data for developing countries changes in wealth and sustainability are therefore joined at the hip the current composition of wealth serves to define the policy challenges that countries face in achieving sustainable development if substitution possibilities are limited between natural and other factors of production as one might expect then technical progress is a necessary complement to policies for sustainability

examining the relationship between the use of supermarkets and over nutrition in indonesia this study examines the relationship between the use of modern food retailers and health outcomes using data from a survey of 1 180 urban households in indonesia the dependent variables include adult and child body mass index and the share of individuals overweight and obese after controlling for individual and household characteristics and using standard and lewbel instrumental variable approaches to control for unobservable characteristics we do not find a statistically significant relationship between use of supermarkets and adult nutrition measures on the other hand there is mixed evidence for a negative effect of supermarkets on child nutrition particularly for those in high income households

a mixed bentham rawls criterion for intergenerational equity theory and implications abstract this paper proposes a welfare criterion that balances the need for development and the concern for the least advantaged generations and explores its implications this criterion called the mixed bentham rawls criterion moderates the effect of discounting yet permits some degree of intertemporal trade off it is a weighted average of two terms a the sum of discounted utilities and b the utility level of the least advantaged generation we derive necessary conditions to characterize growth paths that satisfy our criterion and show that in some models with familiar dynamic specifications an optimal path exists and displays appealing characteristics

savings growth and the path of utility we derive an expression relating the change in instantaneous utility to the growth of net genuine saving in an economy with multiple stocks and externalities that maxi mizes welfare in the utilitarian sense this result is then shown to hold for decentralized competitive efficient economies as well to yield an extension of the hartwick rule instan taneous utility is non declining along a development path if genuine saving is decreasing by way of example the rule is applied as a constant genuine saving rate rule in a simple dasgupta heal solow stiglitzeconomy the rule yields a path with unbounded consump tion and higher wealth than on the standard hartwick constant consumption path jel classification q01 q56 o13

rural nonfarm employment in developing countries in an era of globalization rural nonfarm employment rnfe has become a topic of major importance in rural development as by the mid 2000s rnfe constituted 35 of rural incomes in africa and 50 in both asia and latin america the traditional view of rnfe was a sleepy hinterland activity cut off from changes in the national let alone the global economy that view was assailed by sweeping changes in rural areas starting with the green revolution then rur urbanization and lately by globalization intervening via both trade and modernization of the national economy including the rise of modern retail and processing in this article we hypothesize and offer emerging evidence that the strongest and most positive effects on rnfe of globalization come in the zones that are rur urbanized with a tradeables growth motor induced rnfe sector with clusters of small medium enterprises for manufactures and a preponderance of services surprisingly the trade effects are least and the domestic market transformation effects are the strongest the most challenges are posed for zones that are rur urbanized and dense zone rnfe with low moderate local growth motors the least effects are on hinterland zones the policy implications are to promote tradeables growth motors key to creating rnfe in services the major component of rnfe and to incorporate competitiveness in a changing urban and global economy into rnfe promotion

farmer participation in supermarket channels production technology and efficiency the case of vegetables in kenya supermarkets are gaining ground in agrifood systems of many developing countries while recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector impacts on productivity and efficiency have hardly been studied we use a meta frontier approach and combine this with propensity score matching to estimate treatment effects among vegetable farmers in kenya participation in supermarket channels increases farm productivity in terms of meta technology ratios by 45 we also find positive and significant impacts on technical efficiency and scale efficiency supermarket expansion therefore presents opportunities for agricultural growth in the small farm sector which is crucial for poverty reduction in africa copyright 2012 oxford university press

traditional food traders in developing countries and competition from supermarkets evidence from indonesia indonesia s urban centers recently underwent an explosion of supermarkets with cheaper higher quality commodities and better services supermarkets have the potential to drive traders in traditional markets out of business in this paper we evaluate whether this is indeed the case we find that traditional traders experienced declines in their business however both qualitative and quantitative findings indicate that the main cause of decline is not supermarkets instead traditional markets are plagued with internal problems and face increasingly bitter competition from street vendors therefore the policy recommendations include strengthening traditional traders and seriously tackling the problem of street vendors

the effect of price and income changes on food energy intake in sri lanka data is used to analyze the food acquisition behavior of households from a 1980 81 survey designed to be nationally sectorally and regionally representative of sri lanka the poor are shown to be much more responsive to price and income changes than other income groups the urban population generally exhibits lower income elasticities of demand for food commodities the poor appear to efficient substitutors thereby mitigating the effects of a price change on caloric intake the important exception is rice whose elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to price was about 4 times higher than for any other commodity the reluctance of households to substitute for rice even when faced with rising prices coupled with its large budget share show rice to be the most important consumption good higher rice prices are an important determinant of poverty for landless and urban workers moderating food prices preferably through technological change is a key ingredient to raising consumption among the poor simulations show that even if there are rapid and proportional increases in expenditures of all income groups this will not dramatically increase caloric intake among the poor however if the absolute value of the increase in real expenditures were distributed equally to all households there would be a marked increase in the of households consuming an adequate diet

strategic choice of quality when quality is costly the persistence of the high quality advantage in a two firm two stage model of vertical product differentiation i show that for every convex fixed cost function of quality the firm that chooses the higher quality at the first stage earns the higher profits the result holds for the pure strategy equilibrium in the simultaneous quality game and it holds as well if firms choose their qualities in sequential order

evolution and challenges of dairy supply chains evidence from supermarkets industries and consumers in ethiopia in developing countries the demand for products of animal origin is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years using data collected from 200 urban households this study examines the evolution of the dairy market in ethiopia in particular this study suggests that although the ethiopian dairy market remains extremely thin and volatile the commercialization of processed dairy products through supermarkets is expanding and is expected to keep doing so in the foreseeable future increasing urbanization and corresponding changes in consumer preferences behaviour and purchasing power are the identified causes for the rise of supermarket processor dairy chains this study shows also that emerging dairy chains provide new market opportunities to ethiopian farmers but the existence of retail industrial monopolies and monopsonies jeopardize farmers economic benefits to a great extent the study concludes with some implications for policy and further research

capital accumulation and economic growth the case of the retail food industry in developing countries the share of resources allocated to food marketed through supermarkets and their marketing channels has grown at an unprecedented rate in developing countries during the 1990s this expansion has caused some resources to depart traditional channels differences in the relative capital intensity of the modern marketing channels in contrast to the traditional channels is shown to explain at least part of this evolution as the process of economic growth and capital deepening even when the food share of total expenditures declines in this case incomplete markets and policy distortions can exacerbate the effects of adjustment in traditional agriculture placing a greater need

some dynamic aspects of food standards food standards have existed since the beginning of trade and exchange but have increased and expanded in recent years affecting global and local value chains this has triggered vigorous debates on the impacts on trade and development standards may simultaneously enhance economic efficiency and redistribute rents complicating policy analysis and implying that the economics and the politics of standards are often hard to separate while substantial research has contributed important insights dynamic aspects of standards have not received much attention i present a framework to illustrate some dynamic economic and political aspects of standards in closed and open economies this framework integrates changes over time in preferences implementation costs and protectionist pressures as determinants of standards and suggests explanations for persistent differences in food standards across countries hysteresis in standards can persist due to protectionist motives even if the initial standards were not introduced for protectionist reasons i use some historical cases to document both the persistence and adjustment of standards over time and with international integration

food value chain transformations in developing countries selected hypotheses on nutritional implications we examine how the transformation of food value chains fvcs influence the triple malnutrition burden undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition in developing countries we propose a fvc typology modern traditional modern to traditional and traditional to modern that takes into account the participants the target market and the products offered next we propose selected hypotheses on the relationship between each fvc category and elements of the triple malnutrition burden the primary finding is that the transformation of fvcs creates challenges and opportunities for nutrition in developing countries for example modern fvcs may increase over nutrition problems and alleviate micronutrient deficiencies for urban people with relatively high incomes however they have little nutritional impacts among rural residents and urban poor people who primarily depend on traditional fvcs to access adequate quantities of calories and micronutrients in addition modern food manufacturers are leveraging traditional distribution networks modern to traditional fvcs substantially increasing access to low priced processed packaged foods in rural areas and low income urban neighbors with mixed impacts on the triple burden of malnutrition further research should focus on the influence of fvc transformation on reduction of micronutrient deficiencies on modeling demand substitution effects across food categories and the attendant policy implications for malnutrition

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

coffee value chains on the move evidence in ethiopia abstract important changes have happened to the upstream segment of the coffee sector in ethiopia africa s biggest in the last decade as illustrated by the increasing adoption of improved production harvest and post harvest practices upstream marketing has also improved and there have been large investments in processing capacity shown by the extended coverage of wet mills these improved practices are shown to be associated with positive impacts on coffee productivity and prices changes appear to be linked with multiple factors including local market reform greater presence of public extension agents high international prices and a push for certification by international buyers on the other hand a combination of production lack of improved seedlings weather and disease shocks as well as institutional issues saving constraints and lack of vertical integration and traceability have seemingly impeded more widespread uptake of improved practices and therefore better farm performance the study illustrates the significant complexity in obtaining transformation at the farm level in these settings

constant savings rates and quasi arithmetic population growth under exhaustible resource constraints in the dasgupta heal solow stiglitz dhss model of capital accumulation and resource depletion we show the following equivalence if an efficient path has constant gross and net of population growth savings rates then population growth must be quasi arithmetic and the path is a maximin or a classical utilitarian optimum conversely if a path is optimal according to maximin or classical utilitarianism with constant elasticity of marginal utility under quasi arithmetic population growth then the gross and net of population growth savings rates converge asymptotically to constants

food safety and urban food markets in vietnam the need for flexible and customized retail modernization policies access to safe and healthy food is a crucial element of food security in vietnam the safety of daily vegetables is of great concern to both consumers and policymakers to mitigate food safety risks the vietnamese government enforces rules and regulations and relies strongly on a single approach for organizing food provision being modernizing retail by replacing wet markets with supermarkets in general reorganizing food provision in this way is increasingly considered to be a guarantee for food safety especially in urban settings with growing populations to assess the effectiveness of this induced retail modernization of the fresh vegetables market in vietnam s capital hanoi this paper examines for whom and under which conditions does this approach deliver the desired outcomes the survey data and interviews show that ongoing retail modernization in hanoi reaches only a minor segment of the population and drives a large group of shoppers into informal vending structures on the basis of five case studies this paper demonstrates how similar supermarket interventions can yield contrasting outcomes when they do not accommodate for differences in shopper population and do not adapt to variations in the urban conditions to reduce exposure to unsafe food particularly for poorer segments of the population we conclude that developing a flexible portfolio of retail modernization pathways and adopting a reflexive policy approach provide better impact and leverage as opposed to the current trend of promoting supermarkets as a single ideal type form of food shopping

diversification into horticulture and poverty reduction a research agenda summary horticultural produce and processed products from the developing world are becoming increasingly popular both in domestic and in international markets global production and exports are rising steadily however yield increases have been smaller than area growth and have been negligible or even negative in the least developed countries while experience shows that horticulture can offer good opportunities for poverty reduction because it increases income and generates employment care must be taken that small and poor farmers are not excluded from the opportunities in these market sectors in this article we argue that development agencies must put more emphasis on horticultural research and development especially in the following priority areas genetic improvement safe production systems commercial seed production postharvest facilities and the urban peri urban environment

contractual arrangements between farmer cooperatives and buyers in china the agrofood market in china is dominated by spot market exchanges of small farmers and various small traders with only minor penetration of the modern supply chain at the farmgate the emerging farmer professional cooperatives fpcs are expected to facilitate vertical coordination the overall goal of this study is to investigate the contractual arrangements between the fpcs and the buyers based on a national representative survey of 157 fpcs in china this study shows that 32 of fpcs introduced written contracts in the primary marketing channel contracts are more likely to be adopted in the livestock sector and are positively related to the scale of production while branding promotes contracts between fpcs and buyers public certification of quality and food safety often substitutes for contracts furthermore the membership heterogeneity of fpcs affects an fpc s decision to use contractual arrangements with the buyer

job creation or destruction labor market effects of wal mart expansion this paper estimates the effect of wal mart expansion on retail employment at the county level using an instrumental variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and endogeneity of the timing of entry i find that wal mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry half of this gain disappears over the next five years as other retail establishments exit and contract leaving a long run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs wholesale employment declines by approximately 20 jobs due to wal mart s vertical integration no spillover effect is detected in retail sectors in which wal mart does not compete directly suggesting wal mart does not create agglomeration economies in retail trade at the county level

supermarket choice and supermarket competition in market equilibrium multi store firms are common in the retailing industry theory suggests that cross elasticities between stores of the same firm enhance market power to evaluate the importance of this effect in the u k supermarket industry we estimate a model of consumer choice and expenditure using three data sources profit margins for each chain a survey of consumer choices and a data set of store characteristics to permit plausible substitution patterns the utility model interacts consumer and store characteristics we measure market power by calculating the effect of merger and demerger on nash equilibrium prices demerger reduces the prices of the largest firms by between 2 and 3 8 depending on local concentration mergers between the largest firms lead to price increases up to 7 4

constant per capita consumption paths with exhaustible resources and decaying produced capital abstract we introduce decay in produced capital and exogenous technical progress to the recent solow model of asheim et al with population growth and observe the possible collapse of the economy given too high a rate of decay enough technical progress can restore sustainable per capita consumption

intertemporal equity and hartwick s rule in an exhaustible resource model in a standard exhaustible resource model it is known that if along a competitive path investment in the augmentable capital good equals the rents on the exhaustible resource known as hartwick s rule then the path is equitable in the sense that the consumption level is constant over time in this paper we show the converse of this result if a competitive path is equitable then it must satisfy hartwick s rule

are agricultural markets more developed around cities testing for urban heterogeneity in separability in tanzania abstract a key question for policymakers concerned about feeding sub saharan africa s ssa rapidly growing cities is whether or not nearby farms benefit from improved agricultural markets evidence from case studies and agricultural location theory suggest so but urban heterogeneity has not yet been found in a common economic test of functioning agricultural markets the separability result the test is based on a key insight of the agricultural household model which finds that a farm s profit should be maximized independently from household utility given perfect factor markets i e separability but not so if the household faces at least two market failures i e non separability in this paper i test for geographic heterogeneity in separability between rural peri urban and urban districts using 2014 15 data from the world bank s living standards measurement study and integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa from tanzania i find strong evidence that the correlation between pre harvest labor demand and household size implying non separability in rural areas is significantly weaker in three of tanzania s five largest cities dar es salaam arusha and mbeya given certain assumptions this can be interpreted as evidence of increased agricultural market functionality around these cities relative to rural areas overall these results contribute to the debate on how to achieve urban food security in ssa and give some validity to agricultural location theory and the separability test as tools to help policymakers characterize the nature of agricultural factor markets

a general approach to welfare measurement through national income accounting a framework is developed for analyzing national income accounting using a revealed welfare approach that is sufficiently general to cover both the standard discounted utilitarian and maximin criteria as special cases we show that the basic welfare properties of comprehensive national income accounting previously ascribed only to the discounted utilitarian case extend to this more general framework in particular under a wider range of circumstances it holds that real nnp growth or equivalently a positive value of net investments indicates welfare improvement we illustrate the applicability of our approach in the dasgupta heal solow model of capital accumulation and resource depletion

market power and rents in global supply chains market power and competition policy in food supply chains has emerged as an important economic issue in economics and a highly sensitive item on the policy agenda consolidation is taking place in the food industry both in high income countries and in emerging economies but the impact of concentration in global food chains on efficiency and rent distribution is more nuanced and complex than often claimed we review the literature and extend it by developing a model which explicitly takes into account market imperfections and contract enforcement problems in supply chains increased competition benefits farms by improving contract conditions but contract enforcement becomes more complicated

trade standards and poverty evidence from senegal summary in the debate on trade and poverty it is argued that standards act as trade barriers and cause marginalization of the poor this paper quantifies income and poverty effects of high standards trade and integrates labor market effects by using company and household survey data from the vegetable export chain in senegal we find that exports grew sharply despite increasing standards contributing importantly to rural incomes and poverty reduction tightening standards induced a shift from smallholder contract farming to integrated estate production altering the mechanism through which poor households benefit through labor markets instead of product markets

optimal pricing with costly adjustment evidence from retail grocery prices in many theoretical models it is assumed that there are costs associated with adjusting prices in this paper the existence type and magnitude of such costs are investigated empirically a discrete choice dynamic programming model that nests fixed and variable costs is developed and econometric estimates of the adjustment cost function are obtained the data used to implement the model consist of weekly retail prices and sales of three brands of saltine crackers sold by four chains of grocery stores in a small u s town the study has several distinguishing characteristics first the data are highly disaggregate at the level of brand and store second variables are sampled at weekly intervals third the model nests fixed and variable adjustment costs and can therefore determine their relative importance finally the discrete choice model is both structural and dynamic

access to variety contributes to dietary diversity in china in the canonical consumer demand problem an agent makes a decision about quantities to consume under the assumption that all varieties can be accessed at zero cost in reality the cost of accessing variety may not be zero in this paper we study the effect of variety access cost on the consumption of food variety and its role in explaining regional differences in dietary diversity in china we find that a higher cost of access negatively affects the individual s ability to diversify her diet in terms of both the total counts and the balancing of varieties consumed the primary policy implication of this research is that attempts to create a healthy food environment in china must be differentiated along rural and urban lines in rural communities where consumers have been limited in their ability to diversify food baskets by high electricity and transportation costs infrastructure development and modernization may effectively improve nutritional balance for more urbanized communities where the cost of consuming additional food variety is relatively low food policies might instead focus on interventions that promote healthy eating to mitigate the burden of over nutrition

domestic technology consumption economies of scale and poverty evidence from sri lanka while it is well known that new technologies enhance consumer welfare the manner in which these technologies impact the ability to realize economies of scale in consumption is not well understood we use sri lankan household data to examine how the adoption of new technologies by households positively impacts their ability to achieve household economies of scale this suggests that new technologies not only deliver a greater variety of consumption goods to consumers but they may also play an important role in enabling large households to escape poverty by lowering the per capita costs of maintaining a given standard of living given the importance of consumption economies of scale in the measurement of poverty this study provides some insights on the extent to which the number of poor households changes when food consumption scale economies due to technology adoption in the domestic sphere are incorporated

the development of private fresh produce safety standards implications for developing mediterranean exporting countries integration into global markets offers the potential for more rapid growth and poverty reduction for poorer countries however market barriers within advanced economies to agricultural imports have made it harder for developing countries to take full advantage of this opportunity this article examines the impact of increasing demands for food safety and quality by european food retailers and how the fundamental structure and culture of supplier organisations required by european retail chains are a major entry barrier for developing mediterranean fresh produce exporting countries and for developing countries in general the long term solution for such countries to sustain an international demand for their products lies in structural strategic and procedural initiatives that build up the trust and confidence of importers retailers in the quality and safety assurance mechanisms for their produce

economic impact of direct marketing and contracts the case of safe vegetable chains in northern vietnam abstract the paper investigates the respective impacts on incomes of contractual arrangements direct sales and spot marketing for safe vegetable farmers in northern vietnam it is based on a survey of 137 peri urban vegetable farmers that was analyzed using different econometric methods to correct selection biases direct sales and contractual arrangements have a significant positive impact on income compared to spot marketing contracts have less impact on income compared to direct sales it is recommended that policies be formulated to stimulate direct dealings between farmers and consumers which enhance consumer confidence in terms of quality and translate into higher farmer income than anonymous exchanges or contracts

post green revolution food systems and the triple burden of malnutrition developing country food systems have changed dramatically since the green revolution period at the same time malnutrition still represents a challenge and is now understood to encompass the three simultaneous dimensions of undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition manifest in overweight and obesity these changes in food systems and in the understanding of the global malnutrition challenge necessitate fresh thinking about food systems based strategies to reduce malnutrition this paper introduces a special section that offers such new perspectives we discuss trends with respect to indicators of the triple burden of malnutrition to understand the extent of global malnutrition challenges and then relate those to food systems transformation in developing countries

a century long perspective on agricultural development this article strategically surveys the past century s literature on agricultural development we organize the discussion around three grand themes that reveal the richness of agricultural development as an intellectual endeavor first we explore the role of agriculture in the broader development process from a macroeconomic and political economy perspective we then examine the role of technological and institutional change in successful agricultural development finally the focus turns to a microeconomic perspective on agricultural household decision making and the problems of imperfect and missing markets asymmetric information and transactions costs that lead to widespread apparent inefficiency and disequilibrium

skill formation under incomplete information we consider an economic model of child development with multiple stages due to incomplete information parents are not able to tailor their investments to their child s type when the child is young we show that incomplete information weakens the importance of early investments in children when inter stage investments are easily substitutable but strengthens them when substitution is difficult the latter case is empirically relevant

passing the food and agricultural r d buck the united states and china abstract the global geographical balance of food and agricultural r d spending is shifting characterized by a declining u s share and a rising middle income country share propelled heavily by the rapid rise of spending in china based on our newly compiled data we estimate that china now outspends the united states on both public and private food and agricultural research on a purchasing power parity basis the public private orientation of the research has also changed markedly with the private sector now accounting for around two thirds of the food and agricultural r d spending total in both china and the united states our estimates indicate that china s private sector tilts heavily towards post farm r d activities whereas the u s private sector is split more evenly between on farm and post farm spending while the intensity of chinese investment in food and agricultural r d relative to agricultural gdp is beginning to grow it still lags well behind the food and agricultural r d investment intensities of the united states and other higher income asian countries e g japan and south korea the development regularities we reveal in the longer run trends are indicative of future r d investment patterns with potentially profound long run implications for the size shape and accessibility of the global stocks of scientific knowledge that underpin food and agricultural sectors worldwide

income variability evolving diets and elasticity estimation of demand for processed foods in nigeria we present evidence on evolving dietary patterns in nigeria using six rounds of household consumption data from the nigerian general household survey panel between 2011 and 2016 first following conventional definitions in the literature we show that nigeria has not shown any aggregate increase in consumption of highly processed foods over this period contrary to patterns observed elsewhere in the region in fact consumption of highly processed foods at home has declined while food consumed away from home often assumed to be highly processed has risen substantially we then show that estimates of food expenditure elasticities of different food types are highly sensitive to different estimation approaches and raise concerns about some frequently used methods in the literature in the absence of credible exogenous variation we argue for the importance of panel methods and household fixed effects to control for time invariant factors likely to confound cross sectional estimates finally we examine semiparametric engel curves for different food groups and find that apparent curvature in the relationships between food budget shares and overall food expenditure levels in the raw data become nearly linear when removing variation explained by time invariant household factors

evolving dairy markets in asia recent findings and implications abstract this paper is an overview of important findings regarding the ongoing evolution of asian dairy markets based on a series of new economic investigations these investigations provide systematic empirical foundations to assess asian dairy markets with their new consumption patterns changing industries and trade prospects under different domestic and trade policy regimes with four case studies china india japan and korea a prospective analysis of future regional patterns of consumption and a policy analysis of trade liberalization of asian dairy markets the overview distills the findings of these new investigations and integrates them in the earlier economic literature it draws policy implications and identifies lessons for countries outside of asia especially for emerging exporters in latin america

sustaining linkages to high value markets through collective action in uganda abstract uganda s rapid urbanization offers new market opportunities for smallholder farmers to supply higher value markets such as supermarket chains and fast food restaurants supplying these formal outlets offers higher incomes but accessing and maintaining links to these markets requires significant upgrading in terms of product quality and business management to meet these conditions farmers need to become more organized which requires increased levels of social capital to strengthen internal and external relations with group members service providers and market chain actors one farmers group in south western uganda has successfully sustained sales of potatoes to a fast food outlet in kampala farmers had to learn a series of new skills and integrate multiple technical organizational financial and marketing innovations this paper outlines how collective action combined with strong leadership and an iterative market led learning process enabled a smallholder farmers association to meet the considerable challenges of achieving the stringent quality parameters of a modern food outlet

diet transformation in africa the case of ethiopia africa s food systems are changing fast amid rapid economic growth emerging urbanization and structural transformation in this study we use four rounds of nationally representative data from ethiopia to document changes in household food consumption patterns over a period of unprecedented economic growth we find that while the share of food in the total consumption basket is declining food quantities and calorie intakes have considerably increased between 1996 and 2011 a decomposition analysis suggests that this was mostly driven by improvements in household incomes a finding that is consistent across the calorie distribution also the content of the food basket is changing with a gradual shift toward high value foods such as animal products fruits and vegetables and processed foods overall this diet transformation has important implications for the food security debate and for agricultural and food policy in the country

the liberalization of rice marketing in madagascar abstract madagascar s experience with rice marketing liberalization between 1985 and 1988 illustrates the many obstacles in the way of effective deregulation of agricultural markets the resistance of ambiguous regulation continuing limits on free entry attempts at cartelization and tenacious resistance of existing stakeholders and institutions at the same time the experience shows the ability of higher prices and freer markets to overcome much of this resistance and to stimulate production even in the presence of so called structural constraints such as poor roads weak extension services inadequate credit systems and input supply arrangements