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

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

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

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

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

selling to advised buyers in many cases agents that make purchase decisions are uninformed and rely on the advice of biased experts for example when contemplating an acquisition the board of the bidder relies on the advice of the managerial team when deciding what oer to make for the target in this paper we study how to sell assets to such advised buyers if the goal is i to maximize revenues ii to maximize allocative eciency in static mechanisms such as rst and second price auctions advisors communicate a coarsening of information and a version of the revenue equivalence theorem holds in contrast dynamic mechanisms such as multiple round auctions result in more informative communication between buyers and their advisors which leads to more ecient allocations and may lead to higher revenues when advisors are biased toward overpaying an ascending price auction dominates any static mechanism in terms of both eciency and revenues when advisors are biased towards underpaying a descendingprice auction dominates static mechanisms in terms of eciency but often results in

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

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

retail globalization and household welfare evidence from mexico the arrival of global retail chains in developing countries is causing a radical transformation in the way that households source their consumption this paper draws on a new and unique collection of mexican microdata to estimate the effect of foreign supermarket entry on household welfare and its underlying channels the richness of the data allows us to estimate a general expression for the welfare gains from retail fdi and to decompose the total effect into several distinct components to base our estimates on plausibly exogenous variation in foreign retail entry we propose an event study design that exploits data on the universe of foreign store locations and opening dates in combination with high frequency data on barcode level store prices consumption quantities and household incomes in those same locations over the period 2002 2014 we find that foreign retail entry causes large and significant welfare gains for the average household that are mainly driven by a reduction in the cost of living a substantial share of this price index effect is due to pro competitive effects on consumer prices charged by domestic stores we find little evidence of significant changes in average municipality level incomes wages or employment we do however find evidence of store exit and adverse effects on domestic store profits and the incomes of traditional retail sector workers finally we present evidence that the gains from retail fdi are on average positive for all income groups but strongly regressive and quantify the opposing forces that underlie this finding

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

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

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

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

small farmers ngos and a walmart world welfare effects of supermarkets operating in nicaragua despite more than a decade of ngo and government activities promoting developing world farmer participation in high value agricultural markets evidence regarding the household welfare effects of such initiatives is limited this paper analyzes the geographic placement of supermarket supply chains in nicaragua between 2000 and 2008 and uses a difference in difference specification on measures of supplier and non supplier assets to estimate the welfare effects of small farmer participation though results indicate that selling to supermarkets increases household productive asset holdings they also suggest that only farmers with advantageous endowments of geography and water are likely to participate

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

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

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

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

agency and strategic contracts theory and evidence from r d agreements in the pharmaceutical industry we examine the use of strategic rights in research and development r d agreements between a client and an agent when an entrant may compete with the client for the license of non contracted discoveries developed by the agent the agent puts effort either in the contracted project or into other r d activities which can result in non contracted discoveries strategic rights help the client and the agent extract rent from the entrant and also motivate the agent to place effort into the contracted project accordingly firms are more likely to adopt strategic rights when the likelihood of entry is larger moreover strategic rights and termination rights are substitutes in mitigating agency problems by investigating r d agreements between pharmaceutical clients and bio tech agents we find consistent evidence of the positive impact of entry threat on the use of strategic rights as well as evidence of the substitution between strategic rights and termination rights

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