Marc F. Bellemare Posts

This weekend, India’s Economic & Political Weekly–a peer-reviewed policy journal which, over time, has published articles by the likes of Abhijit Banerjee, Angus Deaton, Esther Duflo, and so on–published a piece by Tom Reardon, Ashok Mishra, Chandra S.R. Nuthalapathi, David Zilberman, and me on the prospective impacts of COVID-19 on Indian food supply chains.

Here is the abstract:

COVID-19 has created high transaction costs and uncertainty in India’s transformed food supply chains, putting food security at risk as 92% of food consumption in India is purchased, predominantly from the private sector. Government faces the challenge of marshalling resources between mitigating the impending food crisis and containing the contagion as the risk of sociopolitical tensions looms large. It is recommended that the government concentrate on sustaining the food supply chains towards eventual rebound, recognising that government food distribution cannot replace even a tenth of the market.

Here is a link to the full piece.

Everyone is now stuck at home (with varying degrees of household responsibilities, to be sure, but stuck at home nevertheless), so my PhD student Jeff Bloem and I thought it would be a good idea to launch the Online Agricultural and Resource Economics Seminar (OARES).

The seminar will be held on Wednesdays at 11 am Central US time. Though this makes it difficult for our colleagues in Asia and Oceania to join in, that time slot allows colleagues from the West Coast to join in a little after breakfast, and colleagues in Europe to join in just before dinner time.

Our first seminar will be held on May 6, 2020. Leah Bevis, from Ohio State, will be presenting her paper with Digvijay Singh Negi titled “Long-Term Nutrition Impacts of the Green Revolution in India.” Here is their abstract:

We examine the impact of the Green Revolution on nutritional status for the first time, as far as we know, in India — the poster-child for the Green Revolution. We additionally piece together multiple nationally representative datasets to examine the impacts of the Green Revolution on cropping patterns, crop prices, and consumption patterns. We find that the Green Revolution improved women’s height, though the benefit accrued largely to urban women. In rural areas, the Green Revolution increased acreage to rice and wheat, usurping acreage to coarse cereals and pulses. It also (marginally) increased rural prices of coarse cereals and pulses relative to rice and wheat, and (marginally) decreased rural consumption of coarse cereals and pulses relative to rice and wheat. While the Green Revolution positively impacted women’s health, a Green Revolution that had included high-yielding pulse varieties would have likely been even more beneficial, particularly in rural areas.

If you would like to register, see the OARES website here, and make sure to sign up with your institutional address. The OARES website includes a schedule of forthcoming talks as well.

I had been meaning to post about this earlier but did not get a chance to do so until today given the decreased productivity those of us with younger children are currently experiencing.

At the request of IFPRI’s new director general Jo Swinnen, Tom Reardon, David Zilberman, and I wrote for a post for the IFPRI blog on the prospective effects of COVID-19 on food supply chains in developing countries. Here are the opening paragraphs:

COVID-19 is spreading through the developing world. Many low- and middle-income countries are now reporting growing numbers of cases and imposing rigorous lockdown regulations in response, which impact all aspects of the economy. How will COVID-19 affect food-supply chains (FSCs) in developing countries?

The evidence suggests that the impacts will be felt widely, but unevenly. Farm operations may be spared the worst, while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in urban areas will face significant problems. Governments will have to develop policies to respond to these varied impacts to avoid supply chain disruptions, higher food prices, and severe economic fallout for millions of employees.

You can find the rest of the post (with translations in French and in Spanish) here.