Food Policy最新文献

This study explores the impact of fertilizer (urea) prices on local deforestation by exploiting the exogenous variation in the world price of urea inclusive of trade costs from the world market to the local market. The empirical analysis relies on a unique geo-coded dataset on the market price of urea across 158 subnational hub markets in 21 African countries and satellite-derived forest loss estimates over the period 2003 – 2012. The results suggest that fertilizer prices positively affect deforestation rate and forest cover loss. On average, a 1 % increase in local urea prices corresponds to 97.65 Ha of forest loss within a particular local market catchment. Specifically, the results reveal a price elasticity of approximatively 1 between urea prices and forest loss. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that the effects of urea prices on forest loss tend to be concentrated in markets with subtropical and tropical ecological features. Furthermore, I provide evidence for the land-conversion mechanism, implying that urea prices are positively associated with the expansion of agricultural land. Estimating an event study around exposure to a sustained jump in urea prices reveals a persistent response of deforestation and forest cover loss to fertilizer prices.

First Nations peoples have the right to participate in all decisions affecting them. This includes food policy decision-making. In the Australian state of Victoria, the Food Policies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (FoodPATH) project aimed to determine the food policy actions that are likely to be effective and acceptable for Victorian Aboriginal Communities. Community-based workshops were held with six Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) in urban and regional Victoria during 2022. A team of at least three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander facilitators guided participants (n = 53) through a series of workshop activities using group model building methods. Group model building is a participatory systems science research method which enables community stakeholders to develop a shared understanding of the system-level drivers of complex problems and co-design actions to address them. Workshop discussions coincided with real-time creation of a visual system map of the interconnected determinants of food choice. Participants used these maps to develop and prioritise actions for improving food environments and nutrition in the community. Participants identified a diverse array of interconnected factors influencing food choice and nutrition in Aboriginal Communities across Victoria. Food access and affordability, junk food marketing, food knowledge and skills and diet and disease were common themes across all sites, while access to junk food, growing local food, traditional Aboriginal foods, and family, Community and culture were key themes in most sites. Results informed a Community-driven agenda, comprising five Community-led actions and five government policy recommendations for improving food environments and nutrition for Victorian Aboriginal Communities.

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.

African swine fever (ASF) has never been detected in the U.S., but the current global outbreak threatens to change that. Although ASF poses no known risk to human health and is not a food safety concern, little is known about the response in U.S. consumer demand in case of an outbreak. We use an online survey experiment, following the one-and-one-half-bound dichotomous choice contingent valuation approach to estimate changes in consumers’ willingness to pay for pork in case of an ASF outbreak. Using these estimates, we find that demand for unprocessed pork (processed pork) products in the U.S. is predicted to shift downward by approximately 32 % (30 %) in the case of an ASF outbreak. Overall, the total annual welfare loss is predicted to be $55.46 billion in the pork market. We find that those consumers who are unaware about ASF, perceive it to be a risk to human health, and eat pork infrequently have a relatively larger reduction in willingness to pay for pork following an outbreak. Further, about 23 % of the survey respondents would stop purchasing pork products altogether following an ASF outbreak. Results also indicate that government institutions are most trusted when it comes to sharing news about food safety, strongly suggesting the importance of public institutions in generating awareness prior to and during an ASF outbreak.

Voluntary food reformulation agreements may often be ineffective due to a lack of industry compliance. This paper examines demand responses and resulting (dis)incentives for companies to reduce the sugar content of children’s cereals in Germany. We estimate the effects of sugar content on consumer choices using a random-coefficient logit model. Subsequently, we simulate how simultaneous and unilateral sugar reductions affect sales, sugar quantities purchased, and consumer welfare. The results identify simultaneous sugar reduction as being most effective in reducing sugar uptake and less harmful to firms’ sales compared to unilateral reformulation. Product reformulation is not strongly compromised by substitution behaviour.

Claims about animal welfare and other sustainability characteristics are often used in market communication to promote food products. When such claims are suspected to be deceptive, accusations of greenwashing may appear. One method to counteract greenwashing is to substantiate the claims with additional information, i.e., with qualifications. However, the effectiveness of such qualifications has been critically debated. Based on two experimental surveys carried out in Denmark on animal welfare claims for pork and chicken and their qualifications, we show that such qualifications can both reduce and enhance consumers’ evaluation of the degree of animal welfare of the product advertised. In addition, we show that the effect of such qualifications on consumers’ purchase intentions depends on whether they process the information under a time constraint – as would be typical in everyday purchasing – or not. Contrary to common assumptions, we provide evidence that a time constraint can lead to consumer information processing becoming more focussed on the qualified claim, and that this claim then has more impact on purchase intention. We interpret these effects based on dual processing theory. The results have implications for the regulation of animal welfare claims and their qualifications.

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.