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Category: Policy

Published December 12, 2011

What Grinds My Gears: “Organic Can Feed the World”

In a post over at the Atlantic, Barry Estabrook begins as follows:

Given that current production systems leave nearly one billion people undernourished, the onus should be on the agribusiness industry to prove its model, not the other way around.

Let’s ask ourselves whether organic agriculture can feed the world, shall we? “The way I see it, Barry, this should be a very dynamite show!”

Well Barry, it turns out the agribusiness industry has already proven its model: It has survived the market test for several decades.

If organic is so much better, why is it that the most democratic of all institutions — the market — is not allowing it to win out? Could it be that it’s because organic is more expensive?

(Update: Johanna, a reader, made an excellent point about agricultural subsidies in the comments, which has made me change my mind about the viability of “conventional” agriculture relative to organic if we were to get rid of agricultural subsidies.)

And another thing: the one billion people that go undernourished? Their plight is the result of lack of storage and transportation infrastructures, which both add significant transaction costs to the market price of food and leave many people out of the market altogether, and not because of a lack of food to go around.

Even if we could magically motivate donors to fund storage and transportation infrastructure (because let’s face it Barry, is there anything sexier for donors than to invest in refrigeration technology or roads?) is more expensive food really the answer to chronic undernourishment?

Continue readingWhat Grinds My Gears: “Organic Can Feed the World”
Published December 7, 2011

How Do the Level and Volatility of Food Prices Shape Social Unrest?

On Monday, I gave a Massachusetts Avenue Development Seminar (MADS) at the Center for Global Development (CGD). According to the CGD website:

The MADS is a ten year-old research seminar series that brings some of the world’s leading development scholars to discuss their new research and ideas. The presentations meet an academic standard of quality and are at times technical, but retain a focus on a mixed audience of researchers and policymakers.

The title of my talk was “Food Prices and Riots: Estimating How the Level and Volatility of Food Prices Shape Social Unrest in the Developing world, 1990-2011.” I presented results from this paper, which I have often talked about on this blog. The slides for my talk are available here.

One of the interesting things about presenting in the MADS series is that you get a discussant. My discussant was my friend and colleague Ed Carr, who is an associate professor of geography at the University of South Carolina and who is currently on leave at the US Agency for International Development.

It was very nice to get Ed’s very insightful comments given how much work he has done on agricultural development and on the environment (he discusses a lot of his work in his recent book, Delivering Development). And given his expertise on climate change, Ed was the ideal person to discuss my paper, given my use of natural disasters to identify the causal relationship flowing from food prices to social unrest.

Published December 1, 2011

More on Admitting Failure and Corporate Social Responsibility

Back in October, I wrote a long post about the seeming trend toward admitting failure (and learning from failure) among nonprofits. In that post, I made the point that admitting failure was the not-for-profit world equivalent of corporate social responsibility in the for-profit world.

The post generated quite a bit of buzz, and Valerie Bauman, a Seattle-based reporter, got in touch with me to discuss the idea of nonprofits admitting failure — and its relationship with corporate social responsibility.

Here is an excerpt from the article Valerie wrote at the time for the Puget Sound Business Journal:

Marc Bellemare, a development economist who teaches public policy and economics at Duke University, views admitting failure as a public relations move to enhance credibility and reputation, similar to touting corporate social responsibility efforts in the for-profit world.

“When I started hearing about admitting failure, it is very nice, but there’s nothing that prevents you from learning from your own failures without having to admit them,” Bellemare said. “For me, it really is a marketing tool more than anything.”

However, he said the move toward disclosure could eventually have a positive effect overall, when it reaches a tipping point and every nonprofit has to be more forthcoming about failure.

“We may soon be moving toward a new equilibrium where everyone has to admit failure, and say ‘where did we go wrong?'” Bellemare said. “Everyone has to look contrite in a way — or else they start looking suspicious.”

Still, disclosing the failure of a project or cost overruns is less scary for nonprofits than disclosing financial mismanagement or fraud, Bellemare said.

“That’s a whole different ball game,” he said. “I think it’s much more likely to scare away donors than failure of projects.”