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It’s spring break at the University of Minnesota, which means that I have a whole week to spend at Señor Tadpole’s getting a margarita made in my mouth that I can dedicate to working on research papers. It also means that I am unlikely to post anything until the middle of next week.

I will also be going to the Centre for the Study of African Economies conference at Oxford next weekend to present my work with Tara Steinmetz and Lindsey Novak on female genital cutting. I will be presenting on March 24, from 4:30 until 6:30, in the Junior Common Room Lecture Theatre, in the “Health and Gender” session. I suspect many readers of this blog will be at the conference. If you are going to be there, please come say “Hi!”

A new article by Tufts University’s Steven Block in Oxford Economic Papers explores why African yields have fallen from 1960 until 1980, then risen back to their initial, post-independence levels from 1980 until 2000:

In this paper new estimates are presented for the path of TFP growth in African crop agriculture. With adjustment for the quality of inputs TFP growth rates declined from a rate of 1.5% per annum in the early 1960s to less than 0.5% per annum by the late 1970s. Since then the growth rate has risen steadily so by the early 2000s it was close to the levels achieved at the beginning of the period. These results follow from using a novel semi-parametric econometric approach to estimating TFP. Recent advances in panel econometrics are used to show the heterogeneity of TFP growth rates across countries. Expenditures on agricultural R&D, along with the reform of macroeconomic and sectoral policies have played a substantial role in explaining this pattern of TFP growth.

For the same reason debates about which band is best in a given category usually end in a screaming match: because (i) to quote Nietzsche, God is dead, and (ii) people see the foods they eat as an expression of their identity and thus become ego-invested in certain foods. Like Paarlberg (2013) notes on pp. 182-183 in the second edition of his Food Politics (a must-read for anyone interested in food and agricultural policy):

Groups in society have always sought solidarity through the foods they eat, or the foods they agree not to eat. Within most religious traditions, patterns of food consumption are carefully regulated. …

In today’s less religious world, we should not be surprised to see the emergence of new food rules to express solidarity around secular values. The new rules that emerge (organic, local, or slow) may be attractive or practical only for relatively small subcategories of citizens, or perhaps only for a small part of the diet of those citizens, but the exclusivity and difficulty of the rule can be part of its attraction. The goal is to express through the diets we adopt a solidarity with others who share our identity, our values, or our particular life circumstances. The scientific for these modern food rules may at times be weak, but the social value can nonetheless be strong.