Browsing by Subject "Food prices"

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    Equity in Global Food Systems Change: A Cross-Country Analysis of the Drivers of Food Insecurity
    (2021-04-21) D'Angelo Campos, Aline
    Since the middle of the 20th century, policy makers have prioritized high agricultural productivity to maximize the production of a handful of staple crops used in the production of ultraprocessed foods and animal products. As a result, our food system produces large externalities for public health and the environment that are not currently priced in the market. Among many calls for change to this mode of production, there are also valid concerns about the impacts of such change on food security. This study sought to contribute to the debate around this topic by analyzing the relationship between food prices and food insecurity at the country level. Through multiple regression analysis, we find that higher food prices are associated with larger increases in food insecurity rates in lower-income settings than in higher-income settings. We also find that several others factors, such as GDP per capita, poverty rate, portion of rural population, and portion of population under 15 years old are significantly associated with food insecurity. These results suggest that focusing policy efforts on non-price related drivers of food insecurity may be effective in combating it, especially in higher-income settings – while offering the important added benefit of minimizing public-health and environmental damage.
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    Food Crises, Civil Unrest, and the Political Economy
    (2014-09-18) Schulman, Jaakov
    Contemporary notions of food security are ever more connected to the commodification and globalization of modern agriculture. As nations continue to count on consistent and reliable commodity markets to provide food imports at competitive rates, unexpected externalities can prompt sudden spikes in worldwide food prices with severe consequences to poorer populations in developing countries. In some cases, such cost crises provoke episodes of violent unrest and place civil safety and regime stability in jeopardy. This research paper examines the specific characteristics of a political economy connected to occurrences of food-related violent civil unrest, which occurred in response to the most recent 2007-2008 food price crisis. First, this paper outlines the mechanisms of the 2007-2008 crisis and the historical context from which it emerged. Second, this paper reviews the array of existing research that connects changes in food prices with the incidence of civil unrest while presenting explanations for why such riots occurred in some countries and not others. Third, this paper presents a set of empirical measures that attempt to quantify the specific characteristics of a political economy that capture variation between the developing economies in Africa. The continent was chosen as the research sample because it experienced significant cases of civil unrest that coincided with the food price crisis. Fourth, this paper statistically tests those measures of the political economy against metrics for food-related civil unrest to reveal correlations. Finally, Egypt's experience over the course of the 2007-2008 crisis is examined as a case example. The response of Egypt’s government to the crisis is examined in order to place the quantitative models within a concrete, qualitative context. The paper proposes three empirical models with varying approaches to operationalizing the political economies of African countries around the 2007-2008 crisis. The models offer complementary explanations for variation in the incidence of food-related unrest and reliably explain the Egyptian case example as examined in this paper. Finally, the models suggest how governments may augment their capacity to take action to reduce the consequences of price crises by focusing on specific aspects of governance and economic policy.