1,258,400 research outputs found
DOES FOOD AID STABILIZE FOOD AVAILABILITY?
Get PDFThis paper explores the empirical relationship between U.S. food aid flows per capita and nonconcessional food availability per capita in PL 480 recipient economies. The evidence suggests PL 480, while modestly progressive in its distribution, is if anything procyclical in recipient economies. Food aid fails to stabilize food availability. Both increased domestic food production i.e., agricultural development and commercial trade appear more effective than food aid in advancing food security objectives through the stabilization of food availability per capita in low-income economies.Food Security and Poverty,
Food aid for market development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Get PDF"Food aid remains significant for food availability in many low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, helping to reduce the gap between food consumption needs and supply from domestic production and inventories and commercial imports. Food aid remains a contentious subject, however, and there have been many recent pleas for more effective use of the resource. This study explores how food aid might be used for domestic food market development to facilitate poverty alleviation and economic growth. There are obvious risks to using food aid for market development, just as there have been in using food aid to try to stimulate agricultural development. Because food aid necessarily expands local food supply, it needs to be well targeted if adverse producer price effects are to be avoided. In particular, if food aid can be targeted so as to relieve short-term working capital and transport capacity constraints to the development of downstream processing and distribution capacity in recipient country food marketing channels, for example by helping build farmer cooperative groups, then food aid could have salutary effects on sub-Saharan African agriculture." Authors' Abstract
Food Aid and the WTO: Can New Rules Be Effective?
Get PDFA new Agreement on Agriculture from the Doha Development Agenda negotiations is certain to contain binding rules on food aid shipments. Negotiating parties are concerned that food aid has been used as a form of export competition policy, and they seek the use of coercive WTO legislation to prevent the disposal of surplus agricultural commodities as food aid. Current Uruguay Round food aid guidelines are contrasted with the most recent Doha Development Agenda proposals, and the prospective effectiveness of new rules is assessed. Food aid rules will be difficult to enforce within the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding. Also, exogenous policy changes in donor countries are reducing the relevance of rules that target food aid as a means of surplus disposal. The future of international food aid governance in the event of a Doha Round collapse is also discussed.agricultural trade, development economics, export competition, food aid, WTO, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, O13, O19, Q17, F13,
FOOD AID TARGETING, SHOCKS AND PRIVATE TRANSFERS AMONG EAST AFRICAN PASTORALISTS
Get PDFPublic transfers of food aid are intended largely to support vulnerable populations in times of stress. We use high frequency panel data among Ethiopian and Kenyan pastoralists to test the efficacy of food aid targeting under three different targeting modalities, food aid's responsiveness to different types of shocks, and its relationship to private transfers. We find that self-targeting food-for-work or indicator-targeted free food distribution more effectively reach the poor than does food aid distributed according to community-based targeting. Food aid flows do not respond significantly to either covariate, community-level income or asset shocks, nor to idiosyncratic, household-level income or asset shocks. Rather, food aid flows appear to respond mainly to more readily observable rainfall measures. Finally, food aid does not appear to affect private transfers in any meaningful way, either by crowding out private gifts to recipient households nor by stimulating increased gifts by food aid recipients.Food Security and Poverty,
Alleviating transitory food crisis in Africa : international altruism and trade
Get PDFThis paper focuses on criticism about the use of emergency food aid in sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, it examines the response of the donor community to unexpected or transitory drops in domestic food production in 26 countries. The study compares the role of food aid and commercial food imports in offsetting these shocks and covering the shortfall in food consumption. Several hypotheses that determine the tendency of donors to respond to the needs of different countries are tested. The results suggest that food aid and commercial food imports stabilize food consumption and neutralize the effects of random shocks to domestic production. Food aid compensates for up to 50 percent of the drop in food production; imports make up an additional 30 percent. This paper documents the stylized facts of food insecurity in Africa and shows the relative importance of emergency and total food aid to food production and food shortages. The paper includes an empirical framework for the estimation and analysis of the correlation between food aid and food production and presents the results. Lastly, the paper elaborates on the economic and political determinants that affect the global response to the emergency needs of countries in Africa.Food&Beverage Industry,Food&Nutrition Policy,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Environmental Economics&Policies,School Health
FOOD AID AND COMMERCIAL INTERNATIONAL FOOD TRADE
Get PDF1. This paper was commissioned by the Trade and Markets Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to address the relationship between food aid and commercial international food trade as background to an anticipated OECD study on the export competition aspects of food aid. The terms of reference for this study call for "a critical review of the existing literature on the potential use of food aid as an export support policy or, alternatively, the potential that food aid bears implications similar to those of export supporting policies." 2. This paper can be summarized as follows. Food aid has multiple objectives, modalities and effects and there has been significant movement over time in each of these areas. Concerns about the use of food aid as an export support policy are founded in both the history of bilateral food aid, in the political economy of food aid support in major donor countries, and in some current uses. The effects of food aid on commercial international food trade turn on several key factors, chief among which is its targeting, of which timing of deliveries is an important subfactor. Due to inevitably imperfect targeting at both macro and micro levels, food aid clearly displaces commercial sales of food contemporaneously in recipient economies. The evidence is unclear as to the distribution of these short-term losses across domestic and foreign suppliers in recipient countries, but the evidence somewhat favors the conclusion that most of the displacement comes out of commercial imports. Whether this displacement adversely effects international food markets depends on the manner in which the food aid is obtained, how well integrated the recipient economy market is with the global market, and recipient demand for variety. The longer-term effects of food aid turn on the dynamic income effects of food aid receipt and the extent to which these stimulate future food demand. The crucial questions then are how the short-term losses due to contemporaneous displacement of commercial imports, the global market effects of alternative food aid procurement modalities, and the long-term gains from any derivative income stimulus balance out over time and how these costs and benefits are distributed among donors and third party exporters. Research on these topics has been surprisingly scarce and, largely as a consequence, premature conclusions are too often drawn on the basis of quite limited evidence on the contemporaneous displacement effects of food aid on recipient country markets. Finally, because food aid's effects on trade stem directly from the efficacy of targeting, policymakers exploring the effects of food aid on commercial international food trade must consider explicitly the trade-off between higher expected displacement of commercial trade and higher expected targeting errors of exclusion of intended beneficiaries through restrictive distribution rules.International Relations/Trade, O1, Q17, F1, Q18,
Options for World Trade Organization Involvement in Food Aid
Get PDFWTO members have presented diverse positions on food aid issues to the current round of negotiations on agriculture. Some members desire increased disciplines on food aid, while others are adamant that the WTO needs to fulfill past promises and meet the current need to increase the food security of developing countries. Underlying this debate are questions about the role of the WTO in food aid issues. It is proposed that a new, more cohesive institution for food aid be adopted to partner with the WTO.agricultural trade, food aid, food security, WTO negotiations on agriculture, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade,
Linear programming can help identify practical solutions to improve the nutritional quality of food aid.
Get PDFOBJECTIVES: To assess the nutritional quality of food aid delivered by food banks in France and to identify practical modifications to improve it. DESIGN: National-level data were collected for all food aid distributed by French food banks in 2004, and its nutrient content per 2000 kcal was estimated and compared with French recommendations for adults. Starting with the actual donation and allowing new foods into the food aid donation, linear programming was used to identify the minimum changes required in the actual donation to achieve the French recommendations. RESULTS: French food-bank-delivered food aid does not achieve the French recommendations for dietary fibre, ascorbic acid, vitamin D, folate, magnesium, docosahexaenoic acid, alpha-linolenic acid and the percentage of energy from saturated fatty acids. Linear programming analysis showed that these recommendations are achievable if more fruits, vegetables, legumes and fish were collected and less cheese, refined cereals and foods rich in fat, sugar and/or salt. In addition, new foods not previously collected are needed, particularly nuts, wholemeal bread and rapeseed oil. These changes increased the total edible weight (42%) and economic value (55%) of the food aid donation, with one-third of its edible weight coming from fruits and vegetables, one-third from staples, one-quarter from dairy products and approximately a tenth from meat/fish/eggs. CONCLUSIONS: Important changes in the types and amounts of food collected will improve the nutritional quality of food-bank-delivered food aid in France. Such changes are recommended to improve the diets of deprived French populations
Does food aid depress food production? The disincentive dilemma in the African context
Get PDFFood aid averages only ten percent of total financial aid to developing countries, but in certain African countries - Botswana, Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Mauritania - it represents more than half the food available for consumption. The author applies vector auto-regression (VAR) analysis to data for sub-Saharan Africa to test these hypotheses. The issue is not whether food aid is good or bad but how it can be used to promote economic development and improve the nutrition of the food-insecure. The author found that food aid has a significant positive effect on food production. Any disincentive induced by the additional supply of food is offset by the positive effects. Food aid is also more likely to have a positive effect in countries that use fertilizer intensively. One possible explanation for this is that countries that enjoy a relative abundance of regular food aid can use the resources made available through reduced food imports to invest more in the agricultural sector - which is more likely when such an investment is a condition imposed by the aid donors.Food&Beverage Industry,Food&Nutrition Policy,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Environmental Economics&Policies,School Health
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