Food Policy最新文献

As over-consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is considered a major contributor to the rising prevalence of obesity and associated diseases, public authorities from different countries are considering the introduction of SSBs taxation. In this study, we evaluate the potential impact of the upcoming Italian sugar tax on SSBs and sugar consumption, also accounting for differences across socio-economic groups. We also analyze alternative SSBs tax designs (i.e., excise tax on sugar and two-tier tax based on sugar content) to compare their effectiveness and provide a more general analysis about the outcomes of SSBs taxation. In our empirical analysis, we first estimate consumers’ demand for SSBs using the random coefficient logit demand model (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995) and Nielsen Household Panel data of SSBs purchases for the period 2019–2020. Then, the estimated demand parameters and marginal costs for SSBs are employed to conduct counterfactual simulations to derive the new market equilibria under the simulated SSBs tax scheme scenarios. Our results show that the Italian sugar tax is the most effective in reducing SSBs and sugar consumption (on average, by 18% and 24% respectively) among all the simulated tax scenarios. This is also due to the strategic reactions of SSBs manufacturers who over-shift the change in marginal cost (i.e., tax rate) to final prices. Moreover, despite being financially regressive, taxes on SSBs may be progressive from a health perspective, as low-income groups experience the greatest fall in SSBs and sugar consumption. Reinvesting tax revenues in health-related programs targeting the most vulnerable socio-economic groups (i.e., low-income households with children) may minimize the regressivity of SSBs taxes.

Transforming waste in the production stage to food (upcycling) can contribute to increased environmental sustainability in the food systems. The side-stream in potato starch production contains protein, and gene-editing enables upcycling of potato-protein while avoiding the use of chemical processes in the extraction of food grade protein. We explore the demand for products containing this upcycled protein. Data were collected via an online survey of 1508 Swedish consumers who completed a choice experiment in which they selected among different sausages made from meat, soy, peas or potato-protein. Although meat is the most preferred product type, respondents choose potato-protein over soy and pea-protein. Upcycled potato-protein products are predicted to draw on the market share for meat more than from soy and pea-protein, suggesting considerable potential environmental benefits. The acceptance of upcycled products is not significantly different depending on if the upcycling is achieved by a chemical process or gene-editing (CRISPR-Cas9) techniques. We discuss the importance of the legal status of gene-editing and the role this may play in reducing food waste. Further, we discuss how policy makers can play an important role in reducing food waste, by means of regulations and by encouraging public and private initiatives that accommodate upcycling in the different stages of food production.

This study investigates the impact of the Food Purchase Programme (PAA), a Brazilian public food procurement initiative, on the production value of family farmers. Using a combination of Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences methods for the period spanning from 2007 to 2016, we observe a significant positive effect of 13.1% on the production value of participating family farmers compared to non-participants. This effect is particularly pronounced among farmers operating smaller and lower-income establishments. Our analysis suggests that increased productivity may serve as a potential mechanism explaining our findings. Additionally, we provide evidence that the PAA program contributes to stabilizing rural incomes and expenditures. Our results have significant policy implications for public food procurement policies, including the importance of focusing on small and low-income agricultural establishments, which may enhance production and alleviate poverty while contributing to family income.

It is well known that livestock production involves long biological lags. Failure to account for these biological lags can result in the misspecification of supply chain relationships and adjustments to market shocks, which can have significant implications for policy decisions. An example is the 2022 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) event that caused high mortality rates in domestic poultry supply chains and reduced egg production. We use the 2022–2023 HPAI event to highlight the implications of misspecification of disease dynamics in agri-food systems. Specifically, we examine the impact of HPAI on U.S. egg prices in 2022–2023. To do this, we estimate a hedonic model of retail egg prices that controls for quality, regional, and temporal factors. The model allows for the effect of HPAI on egg prices to accumulate over time, reflecting the biological adjustment to replace commercial flocks that were depopulated because of HPAI. The preferred model specifications estimate that HPAI caused weekly retail egg prices to increase on average by 5.3 percent. We calculate changes in consumer surplus to provide economic context for the main econometric results. When we extend these results to consumer surplus, we find that models that ignore the cumulative nature of HPAI estimate gains in consumer surplus, and models that ignore the post-outbreak recovery of layer inventories overestimate the consumer surplus loss by a factor of 3 to 4. Our findings have important policy implications, particularly concerning disease outbreaks that can significantly impact agricultural production. This analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding context-specific outcomes for agri-food supply chain research.

Recently developed cost and affordability of healthy diet (CoAHD) metrics have quickly become mainstream food security indicators. However, published research on the sensitivity of estimation methods is limited. This paper focuses on two important innovations in CoAHD measurement at the global level. First, we develop a demographic scaling factor to adjust healthy diet costs for cross-country differences in age structures, since younger populations generally require fewer calories than older populations. Second, we improve the way in which household expenditure available for purchasing food (“food budgets”) are derived. In addition, we explore sensitivity of global CoAHD estimates to potential problems with the representativeness and food product coverage of global food price data and vary assumptions for activity levels that shape energy expenditure requirements. We apply these explorations to the EAT-Lancet reference diet in 137 countries using price data from 2017. Relative to the conventional methods, we find that demographic scaling and improved food budget derivation substantially reduces the estimated population who cannot afford a healthy diet, from 3.02 to 2.13 billion. Adjustments for low product coverage can lead to modest reductions for specific regions and food groups, while higher physical activity assumptions increase the share of people who cannot afford a healthy diet, though perhaps implausibly so. Methods clearly matter in CoAHD estimation, and more accurate and timelier CoAHD estimates have substantial scope to improve policy analysis, design and targeting.

Client choice food pantries allow individuals, many of whom are food insecure, to select a preferred bundle of food. To date, interventions to improve the nutrition of food choices in pantries have not included price incentive programs like those employed in the retail food sector because pantries do not charge for food. However, economic incentives may still play a role in food pantry choices through choice architecture. We examined a natural experiment involving two client-choice regimes that effectively altered the opportunity cost of food selections. Longitudinal individual fixed effects models provide evidence that pantry clients responded to changed opportunity costs by selecting more foods that became relatively less expensive and fewer foods that became relatively more costly. Our study highlights the impact of choice architecture, and in particular relative trade-offs, on food selections in the food pantry context.

The transmission of commodities prices from international to local markets is an interesting and deeply investigated topic. A fast and strong link between the two levels of the market is seen by economists as a sign of local market efficiency, allowing actors to respond fast to signals coming from the international market. However, empirical evidence on the topic is mixed, ranging from a very weak linkage between prices in the two markets to a high-speed and almost complete transmission. The present paper aims to advance the knowledge on the topic by focusing on the price transmission of four main cereals – maize, rice, sorghum, and wheat – in 23 developing and fragile economies. Employing a recent World Bank dataset with prices for several local markets in select countries, we estimate panel vector autoregressions (PVAR) to analyze the pass-through effects of international price shocks on local food prices. We find evidence for a relatively strong price transmission elasticity for all commodities except sorghum. Furthermore, the observed transmission of shocks is almost immediate. We present the policy implications of these findings.

With the rising interest in urban agriculture (UA), community gardens have emerged as a common instrument in UA policies aimed at addressing issues related to food security, environmental sustainability, and equality in urban development. As an impure public good, they deliver both private benefits, such as fresh produce, and public benefits, including ecosystem services. However, there has been limited research estimating the value of various features of community gardens. Consequently, assessing the benefit–cost ratio of community garden development policies is a challenging task. Furthermore, many existing community gardens might have been established without a comprehensive understanding of public preferences. To address this gap, we adopt a discrete choice experiment to quantify residents’ willingness to contribute money and time to community gardens in Los Angeles County, California. Our findings indicate that while residents highly value the gardens’ private benefits, they are not inclined to contribute to their public benefits. Additionally, residents’ preferences for community gardens differ based on their socioeconomic status and level of accumulated gardening experience.

Agricultural policy goals should be legitimised by the population, as agriculture is an important recipient of governmental support in Europe. Questions arise as to how people assess these policy goals, which factors affect the perception of agricultural policy goals and to what extent cultural differences influence this assessment. We address these questions by conducting an online survey among 1,542 respondents in the German-, French- and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland. We find that the multifunctional role of agriculture is strongly anchored in the population’s perception of agricultural policy. The stated preferences of the participants show that increasing animal welfare is clearly the most important agricultural policy goal for Swiss citizens. Controlling for a range of sociodemographic characteristics and personal attitudes, we find evidence of differences between language regions and thus of cultural differences in the assessment of individual agricultural policy goals. For example, compared to respondents in the other two language regions, German-speaking respondents found increasing domestic food production significantly more important, whereas reducing food prices for consumers, increasing farmers’ income, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions were perceived as significantly less important goals. Environmental attitudes were closely related to the perceived importance of agricultural policy goals; thus, we can expect heated discussions in the future, especially if environmental objectives continue to be missed.

From the early 1990s, Mozambique experienced sustained economic growth and both consumption and multidimensional poverty reduced until 2014/15. Starting in the second half of 2015, a deep economic crisis hit. Economic growth plummeted and the national currency devalued significantly, leading to a general increase in prices, especially food prices. Since food products account for more than half of the consumption of poor families, and a high percentage of households are net food buyers, we argue that the food price rise is likely a major factor behind the significant upsurge in the poverty rate observed in 2019/20. Using various analytical approaches and robustness checks, we analyse and link the price trends and the shocks experienced between 2014/15 and 2019/20, in an attempt to examine and uncover how they influenced poverty. While being clearly relevant for policy makers and development partners in Mozambique, who may not have fully appraised the consequences of recent shocks on household welfare, our study is relevant to other developing countries. This is especially so for those that depend on imported food, and characterised by a high percentage of net food buyer households, who spend a large part of their income on food, and experiencing contemporary shocks involving price surges, regional disparities and weak governance. This seems even more important now after the surge in global inflation that followed the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.