Food Policy最新文献

Outsource agricultural service enterprises emerged a century ago in high-income countries and in the past several decades in developing regions. We contribute by analyzing and illustrating the emergence of these services from the perspective of phases of the Product Cycle. These services help farmers adapt to international and domestic agrifood value chains: (1) in the commoditization phase, e.g., with rice combine harvesting services in China and Myanmar for domestic and export markets; (2) in the early product differentiation phase into quality traits, e.g., with horticultural services to Ethiopian and Indonesian farmers for urban wholesale markets; (3) in the advanced product differentiation phase into environmental traits, e.g., with A-Z services to help French farmers grow eco-labeled vegetables for supermarkets. These services addressed farmers’ shortfalls in information, skills, labor, and equipment. The services are supplied by medium/large farmers with excess capacity say of a combine; by wholesalers who want to reduce search costs and risks; by input “agro-dealers”; and by agribusinesses servicing their outgrowers. In new cases shown in France, outsource firms partner with farm input companies such as Bayer or with robot/drone companies. Governments have – and can do much more to – support the emergence of these services such as in developing regions today through: (1) promotion of a business ecosystem, based on policies of investment in hard and soft infrastructure, favoring the coadaptation of these firms with farmers’ needs; (2) policies facilitating access, such as through import liberalization, of equipment and seeds and chemicals.

Agri-food global value chains (GVCs) are failing to provide healthy and affordable diets within planetary boundaries. Many cutting-edge technologies are being developed to address the sustainability challenges throughout agri-food GVCs. While several studies seek to analyze the impacts of specific innovations on socioeconomic and environmental dimensions, the relationship between industry structure and the process of technological change has not received much attention in the value chain literature. Here, we focus on the entrepreneurial landscape of innovation in agri-food GVCs to 1) identify which technologies have been receiving most support from investors and 2) analyze the corporate strategies of the largest agri-food multinational companies regarding their investments in new technologies. Using Crunchbase as our primary data source and machine learning for natural language processing, we have identified around 15,500 companies developing innovations linked to agri-food GVCs, from farming to last-mile delivery. However, our analyses show an imbalanced scene in which downstream technologies capture most investors’ interest. Then, we use these results to explore the direction of investments by dominant agri-food firms, where we identify three trends: upgrading strategies to improve their core activities, defensive strategies to control technologies competing with their core business, and corporate portfolio strategies to seize profit opportunities.

This paper explores the evolution and resilience of global value chains (GVCs) in the agrifood sector, which intensified since the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement. Using unique data from the FactSet database, along with Fortune 500 lists, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of approximately 17,500 agribusiness companies worldwide, examining over 150,000 supplier and customer connections from 2014 to 2022. Our findings reveal that large corporations, acting as central nodes, have increased their network centrality in GVCs, particularly through geographic diversification and a concentrated supply strategy. The study also indicates a correlation between the complexity and depth of firm-to-firm linkages and increased resilience, suggesting that firms with greater connectivity are less likely to exit the industry. This analysis not only contributes new insights into the structure and dynamics of agribusiness networks but also highlights the role of firm linkages in navigating recent disruptive global events such as the US-China Trade War, COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather episodes, and geopolitical tensions.

This study investigates the impacts of product certification and e-commerce on various production and profitability outcomes for grain and cash crop producers in China, using nationally representative survey data. Employing multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) estimations, we find that agricultural producers who adopt e-commerce, product certification, or both strategies have significant price premium, increased sales revenue, and greater profitability, despite the increased production costs, with cash crop producer and large-scale producers gaining more benefits. Additionally, we find a synergistic effect: agricultural producers benefit more from adopting both product certification and e-commerce simultaneously than the sum of the effects of adopting two strategies separately. This positive reinforcement between the two strategies is more pronounced among cash crop producers compared to grain crop producers, as well as among larger-scale producers compared to their small-scale counterparts. These findings provide valuable policy implications for assisting agricultural producers in adopting suitable strategies, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and profitability within the global value chains of agri-food.

Improvement of diets through increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables is of global importance. However, existing information about the factors affecting fruit and vegetable consumption often is insufficient for the development and implementation of effective policy and programmatic efforts. This research integrates choice experiments evaluating five potential attribute improvements (two quality levels, safety/hygiene, pre-cutting and lower acquisition time costs) with participatory value-chain modeling to evaluate the potential impact of these attribute improvements on spinach consumption in Kenya. Choice experiment data from 300 households in six counties of Kenya, analyzed with random parameter logit and panel Tobit models indicates quality, safety and hygiene, and acquisition time affect purchase probabilities and expected purchase quantity, but the effect of increased convenience is lower. Analyses with a dynamic value-chain model including farmers, marketing intermediaries, vendors and consumers indicate that all of the attribute improvements would increase consumption even in light of higher value-chain costs, but also facilitate larger sales and profits by value chain actors. These results suggest that a focus on increasing demand through the improvement of product attributes may be an important strategy for simultaneously increasing fruit and vegetable consumption and benefitting value chain participants in low- and middle-income country settings.

Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing disproportional increases in overweight or obesity rates. Parallel to this trend, many LMICs are witnessing significant growth in their participation in global food value chains (GFVCs). This paper aims to shed light on the public health implications of increasing participation in GFVCs. Leveraging macro- and micro-level data spanning 25 years, we study the relationship between countries’ participation in GFVCs and women’s overweight or obesity rates. We explore heterogeneous implications by disaggregating countries’ participation into backward and forward linkages in GFVCs, as well as across rural and urban areas. We find that temporal increases in countries’ participation in GFVCs are significantly associated with increasing overweight or obesity rates, primarily when countries participate in backward linkages and for urban populations. Participation in GFVCs involving forward linkages appears to have negligible implications, and the relationship between participation in GFVCs and obesity disappears for rural women. Furthermore, we find that an increase in countries’ participation in GFVCs is associated with an increase in consumption of energy-dense foods such as sugar, commonly linked with obesity. Our findings have important implications for informing public policies aimed at addressing the increasing obesity rates and associated economic and health burdens in LMICs.

The evolution of agricultural value chains is influenced by numerous societal and economic dynamics, including trade and servicification of the economy. In this paper we analyze margins along agrifood value chains, proxied by the share of the Global Food Dollar accruing to farmers, controlling for differences in GDP and economic development levels. International trade and the increasingly diverse roles played by services in upstream and downstream activities shape the distribution of the value-addition generated along the value chains. Trade regimes and services that favour domestic processing of agricultural products increase the share of consumer food expenditures returned to farmers.

Children’s exposure to heat is related to both chronic and acute nutritional status. However, there is limited empirical evidence on how a rise in temperature affects dietary quality. Using the most recent rounds of the Demographic Health Survey for India, conducted in 2015–16 and 2019–20, combined with geospatial data from various sources, this study empirically explores the relationship between temperature and dietary diversity of children in the age group of 6 to 23 months. The study highlights that higher temperatures are associated with a modest yet statistically significant decrease in the dietary diversity of children aged 6 to 23 months. We also find that, while minor temperature variations may have minimal effects, larger shifts within specific temperature ranges can lead to more pronounced alterations in children’s dietary diversity. Moreover, factors such as children’s age, historical climate context, and seasonality influence the magnitude of this relationship. Additionally, access to infrastructure and maternal education significantly mediate the adverse effects of temperature on children’s dietary patterns, highlighting the importance of targeted interventions in vulnerable communities..

Theoretical considerations suggest that production contracts systematically lead to higher market concentration and increase contracting firms’ ability to mark down farm gate prices compared to marketing contracts. Existing research on contract farming rarely differentiates market power in different types of contracts. This study investigates the impact of marketing and production contracts on farm gate prices and net profits. The analysis is based on survey data from okra production in India and controls for unobserved heterogeneity between farmer villages, a novel procedure that circumvents the problem of multicollinearity between the treatment variable and village fixed effects. Findings indicate that monopsonist production contractors depress farm gate prices below the level of oligopsonist marketing contractors. The net profits are, however, still higher for farmers with a production contract. A subsequent scenario simulation quantifies the potential income gains for farmers if contractors’ market power could be reduced, finding that the incomes of production contract farmers could increase by one-fourth in the absence of market power. Policymakers could design incentives to increase competition between contracting firms and, thus, enhance the benefits of production contracts to smallholders in contract farming.

This paper assesses the effects of deep trade agreements on agri-food global value chain (GVC) integration. We employ a theory-consistent gravity model and utilize a detailed bilateral GVC flow dataset covering 1991 to 2020. Our findings indicate that such trade agreements favor forward integration into agri-food GVCs more than backward integration. The analysis of how these effects unfold over time suggests a delay of up to four years before significant changes in GVC integration are observable. Moreover, deeper trade agreements exert a stronger influence on GVC integration, with specific provisions related to the regulation of standards and foreign investment acting as catalysts for agri-food GVC integration. Conversely, clauses regarding intellectual property rights and geographical indicators obstruct GVC integration, while developed countries benefit most from GVC integration. These insights are vital for policymakers seeking to mitigate the unequal benefits of deep trade agreements in agri-food GVC integration.