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The possibility that export agriculture may crowd out food production is examined. Growth in export agriculture does not appear to come at the expense of food production. Food producdon is positively correlated with export crop prices and real exchange rates suggesting complementarity. However, lack of data means that the impact of policy on food production in Africa cannot be analyzed in the same way as export agriculture. Food producdon data are often questionable. Market price data for food crops are unavailable for most African countries. Because many African governments fix official prices for food, only those prices are generally reported and often do not correspond to actual market prices. However, the impact of policy on Africa's food problems can be examined indirectly.

Average food supply per capita has not declined in Africa since the 1960s. Food supply per capita - according to FAO data - has risen slightly, on average, s' esting that only the composition of consumption has shifted from domesically-grown foods to imported foods (which are often preferred, especially among urban and wealthier consumers). However, Africa's chronic food crisis is commnonly assumed to be both widespread and worsening, as evidenced by declining food production per capita and rising food imports. It is generally assumed that weak domestic production creates a need for more imports. The causal direction between imports and domestic production may be the reverse: that is, a shift in demand toward imported foods may have resulted in increased consumption of imports, and therefore reduced demand for domestic foods. This weak demand then led to weak domestic output. Demand for imported foods may rise due to urbanization, import capacity, and the relative price of imported to domestic foods (which will be affected by real exchange rates). Indeed, the doubling of Africa's food imports in the late-1970s was largely the result of events in Nigeria, which accourned fur 70 percent of the increase. This occurred during Nigeria's oil boom when there were large shifts in import capacity (a quadrupling), the real exchange rate, and urban migration.

To t_st the hypothesis that both rising food imports and declining domestic production is demand driven rather than the result of a production constraint, an econometric model is estimated. The results confirm that much of the rise in Africa's food imports can be attributed to urbanization, import capacity, and exchange rate distortions. When these factors have been taken into account, the remaining trend is only 1 percent per year, and this can probably be explained by the declining international prices for wheat and rice over the period.

Rural-urban migration, which appears to be a cause of rising food imports, is a result of government policies, imciuding exchange rate policies that have altered the internal terms of trade in favor of urban areas. Evidence of the extent to which urban migration is influenced by policy - and the potential for policy reform to alter existing migratory patterns - is demonstrated with recent data from Ghana. Survey data confirm what has been observed anecdotally in several African countries: significant reverse migration is occurring from non-agricultural to agricultural occupations since the introduction of Ghana's reform program.

The improvements in aggregate patterns of production and trade in Africa since the mid-1980s coincide with the implementation of structural adjustment programs in a large number of African countries. To assess the evidence of a causal relationship, economic perfob.ce in countries where policy distortions have been relatively small, is compared to that in countries where policy distortions have resulted in an unfavorable policy environment. In aggregate, countries with favorable policy environments have performed better in the late-1980s than the countries with unfavorable policy environments in virtually all measures of economic performance, including agricultural production, agricultural exports, and overall economic growth. The experience in