Last updated on March 30, 2014
I began a three-year term as associate editor over at Food Policy at the end of last year, which means that I handle submissions in my areas of expertise, deciding which manuscripts get reviewed and which ones get desk rejected, selecting reviewers for those manuscripts that do get reviewed, and so on.
Once again, I wanted to feature a few articles from the latest issue of the journal. There is nothing special about those articles beyond the fact that I thought they would be of interest to readers of this blog. Those are also regular articles–there is an entire special section of this latest issue dedicated to zero tolerance rules in food safety, which you should check out.
Food Price Volatility in Africa: Has It Really Increased?, by Nicholas Minot
Highlights:
- The study covers 167 monthly food price series from 15 African countries.
- Food price volatility varies in predictable ways by commodity and location.
- Food price volatility is higher in African markets than in world markets.
- World food price volatility has increased since food crisis of 2007–2008.
- However, food price volatility in Africa has not increased since the crisis.
Impact of Tissue Culture Banana Technology on Farm Household Income and Food Security in Kenya, by Nassul S. Kabunga et al.
Highlights:
- Impacts of tissue culture (TC) banana technology on household income and food security in Kenya are analyzed.
- First study to use Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for impact assessment.
- TC adoption significantly increases income and improves food security among smallholders.
- Implications for effective technology delivery mechanism are discussed.
Linking Small Farmers to Modern Retail through Producer Organizations – Experiences with Producer Companies in India, by Anika Trebbin
Highlights:
- Farmer organizations play a yet limited role in supermarket supply chains in India.
- There are more than 260 producer companies in India with numbers growing.
- Producer companies can develop into business hubs for retailers and input suppliers.
- A typology of producer companies based on their function and orientation is presented.
Can agricultural input subsidies reduce the gender gap in modern maize adoption? Evidence from Malawi, by Monica Fisher and Vongai Kandiwa
Highlights
- We measured the current gender gap in modern maize adoption for Malawi.
- Results show female vs. male farmer adoption rates are significantly lower.
- We examined if a large farm input subsidy program has impacted this gender gap.
- Findings suggest the program has likely narrowed the gender adoption gap.
- If targeted to female-headed households, the program could reduce the gap substantially.
[…] From the Latest Issue of Food Policy: Food Price Volatility in Africa, Bananas in Kenya, Producer Or…. […]
It may not be typical of all countries but it would seem that there are two types of food prices.
1. Is the final ‘manufactured product’ say for maize, milled and bagged in a factory. This price does not change very much at all. It often serves as a base price influencing the raw price below.
2. Is the raw maize price which is produced on farm in rural areas and is sold raw in the rural areas. It has variation depending on different seasonal factors. A. Presence of food aid organisations in a rural area collapses the price which reduces the demand for the maize of the food surplus farmers. B. General harvest level means the price is up or down depending on levels. Here the variation is substantial and based on supply and demand. It can even go below the manufactured price mentioned above in point 1.
It would seem research is required to flesh out these differential prices. In the rural areas there are shops selling the manufactured product. The element of competition is there between the rural surplus producer and the manufacturer. The tendency is for the latters price to remain constant or vary not very much. But the former has great variations selling the raw product often at $660 per MT ton. A rather bizarre analysis is that the reason for high prices is lack of local rural production.
I did not read the link on food price volatility but do wonder if it addresses the following. It is clear that international agribusiness have no major impact on food price levels in rural communities. This is more influenced by local lack of production. Further if the manufacturers did not exist then the rural price would be even higher because the law of supply and demand being accepted there would be no base price from the manufacturer to control the excessive pricing of rural surplus producers. I am not an economist.