Food Policy最新文献

To make a difference in lower-income countries, agricultural innovations must be adopted and ultimately diffused across diverse local environments. This study contributes to the ongoing debate about the factors limiting the spread of agricultural innovations by considering the role of heterogenous supply in determining observed demand for the Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) product, which is a commercial insurance product serving historically uninsured pastoralists in the Horn of Africa. Analysis of sales data from 2010 to 2020 in Ethiopia and Kenya shows that local conditions can reduce the likelihood of supply channels reaching prospective clients, effectively excluding them from accessing insurance, while other factors can work towards increasing supply of insurance while also decreasing demand for it. Surveys collected from insurance sales agents reveals considerable heterogeneity in their ability to and effort in suppling IBLI. Discussions with IBLI’s providers confirms the role of supply constraints in observed demand; the firms consistently point towards the cost of last-mile extension and sales as their largest challenge to increasing sales, and emphasize that it is cost-prohibitive to provide equal access to well-trained insurance agents across the areas that they operate. These findings suggest that current investments aimed at increasing insurance coverage by increasing demand, for example through improved product design or by subsidizing premiums, should be accompanied by investments in developing more cost-effective marketing and distribution processes so that demand can be acted upon. On a broader level, the results highlight a need to consider non-random and incomplete supply as a factor when examining observed uptake of agricultural innovations.

Innovations in food home delivery systems have seen rapid growth in the consumption of food prepared outside the home. Such food is often higher in negative nutrients than home-prepared food. Technological advancements in the transport sector are set to amplify the availability of food delivery services via the introduction of autonomous (driverless) vehicles. Very little is known about how consumers are likely to react to this change, and relevant regulatory frameworks are lacking. To address this evidence gap and inform policy in this emerging domain, the aim of the present study was to provide preliminary insights into how and why consumers may choose to use autonomous food delivery services once they are widely available and the potential impacts on their diets. A sample of 100 adults currently residing in Australia participated in one-to-one interviews. Quotas were applied for the attributes of age, sex, and geographical location to ensure appropriate demographic distribution. Around two-thirds of interviewees reported intending to use autonomous food delivery services for receiving groceries and around one-half for receiving fast food. Perceptions of increased convenience dominated interviewees’ expressed reasons for intending to use autonomous delivery services. Overall, interviewees saw few impediments to the widescale use of autonomous delivery services, and some expected to consume more unhealthy food due to increased access. While autonomous delivery services have the potential to substantially increase access to both healthy and unhealthy food products, effective policy actions are needed to ensure health outcomes are optimized.

Poor diet quality increases risks for non-communicable diseases. Interventions that leverage insights from psychology and economic theory are hypothesized to improve diet quality. This study tested the incremental effectiveness of these approaches using a fully operational online grocery store. We conducted a 3-arm crossover trial involving actual purchases with 187 primary grocery shoppers for households randomly exposed to: (1) Arm 1: control store, (2) Arm 2: store with a cost-free social norm-based behavioral intervention, built upon using Nutri-Score (NS), an evidence-based Front-of-Pack (FOP) interpretive label, and (3) Arm 3: Arm 2 plus a loss-framed financial incentive of SGD 5. Nutritional quality measures, including the average quality of the shopping basket based on the validated NS algorithm (primary), were used to assess intervention effectiveness using a linear mixed-effect model with repeated measures. The social norm-based behavioral intervention led to a statistically significant 4.62-point [95% CI: 3.73, 5.52] increase in the weighted average NS of the shopping basket, relative to Control. Adding the 5 SGD incentive increased effectiveness by an additional 2.49-point [CI: 1.61, 3.37]. These changes are equivalent to improving diet quality of the shopping basket, relative to Control, from NS grade low C to grade high C for Arm 2 and to Grade B for Arm 3. These findings suggest that interventions leveraging insights from behavioral science have the potential to improve nutritional quality at little to no additional cost and should be considered for adoption.

When food inflation reached high levels in 2018 in Turkey, municipality-run discount stalls were introduced in Istanbul and Ankara to lower consumer prices. These stalls create a short food supply chain (SFSC) by eliminating intermediaries between producers and consumers. In this study, using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), we analyze the impact of municipality-run discount stalls on the price formation in each level of fresh fruits and vegetables supply chain: producers, wholesale markets, retailers and outdoor farmers markets. In line with the policy intentions, retail prices fell significantly after implementation. On the other hand, the additional retail demand appears to have increased producer and wholesale prices.

The affordability of nutritious food for “all people, at all times” is a critically important dimension of food security. Yet surprisingly, timely high-frequency indicators of food affordability are rarely collected in any systematic fashion despite price volatility emerging as major source of food insecurity in the 21st Century. The 2008 global food crisis prompted international agencies to invest heavily in monitoring domestic food prices in low and middle income countries (LMICs). However, food price monitoring is not sufficient for measuring changes in diet affordability; for that, one must also measure changes either in income or in an income proxy. We propose using the wages of unskilled workers as a cheap and sufficiently accurate income proxy, especially for the urban and rural non-farm poor. We first outline alternative measures of “food wage” indices, defined as wages deflated either by consumer food price indices or novel healthy diet cost indices. We then discuss the conceptual strengths and limitations of food wages. Finally, we examine patterns and trends in different types of real food wage series during well-known food price crises in Ethiopia (2008, 2011 and 2022), Sri Lanka (2022) and Myanmar (2022). In all these instances, food wages declined by 20–30%, often in the space of a few months. In Myanmar, the decline in real wages during 2022 closely matches declines in household disposable income. We strongly advocate tracking the wages of the poor as a timely, accurate and cost-effective means of monitoring food affordability for important segments of the world’s poor.

In this study, we analyze the impact of agricultural mechanization on the local Chinese economy from 2010 to 2020. Findings based on panel data and instrumental variable methods show that agricultural mechanization led to a significant decline in the local gross domestic product. In particular, agricultural mechanization changes the sector’s production and lowers its output value. Agricultural mechanization has reduced the need for labor to such an extent that young Chinese tend to seek jobs in the non-farming sector, leading to a fall in the local agricultural labor supply and household consumption, adversely affecting the development of local industries and service sectors. Mechanization has also led to cash crops being increasingly replaced by grain crops, reducing the total agricultural output. Finally, this paper presents some policy suggestions for agricultural production and rural development.

People often adapt their behavior to the behavior of other people. We test with the help of an experiment whether this also applies to the choice of food and whether the sensitivity regarding others’ behavior increases when the food choice is observable. Participants in the experiment are first-year students who are confronted with different statements about the diets of students already enrolled and studying at the university. Participants then choose between vouchers for vegan, vegetarian, or meat-based foods, with variation as to whether or not this choice is observable. The results show that the overall effects of social norms with and without observability are small and statistically insignificant. This is because women and men respond differently to the interventions; women are much more responsive to social norms than men, especially when their food choice can be observed by others. We discuss how our findings fit with dietary trends and what policy implications they have.

In September 2008, the European Commission harmonized Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) in pesticides across EU Member States. We examine the effect of this policy change on trade, prices and quality via two alternative channels — the relative restrictiveness of a food standard imposed by an EU importer vis-a-vis trading partners from both within and outside the Common Market; and regulatory heterogeneity across EU Member States. We find strong evidence for adverse effects of both dyadic restrictiveness and within-EU regulatory heterogeneity on intra- and extra-EU trade at the extensive and intensive margins in the pre-harmonization period. Our findings further suggest that the EU’s MRL harmonization increased intra-EU trade; the probability and value of exports of its non-EU (both OECD and developing country) partners; and led to quality upgrading and lower prices of the traded products. The harmonization-induced rise in non-EU OECD exports to the EU also underlines the need for UK product standards to be closely aligned with those of EU27 post-Brexit.

Peru is the world’s leading exporter of organic coffee. Peruvian organic coffee is largely marketed through farmers’ cooperatives which have helped small farmers transition to organic production, earn price premiums over conventional coffee, and access extension services and finance. However, rising temperatures, increasingly volatile rainfall patterns, and the proliferation of pests and diseases make organic production riskier, as organic farmers cannot rely on agrochemicals to protect their farms against production shocks. If members of organic coffee cooperatives respond to production shocks by increasing their sales to private buyers (‘side-selling’), then cooperatives’ financial health could be threatened through reduced bargaining power with buyers and a decrease in scale economies. This paper explores the theoretical incentives for members to side-sell in response to production shocks and gives empirical evidence of how production shocks influence side-selling using panel data from members of two Peruvian specialty coffee cooperatives in 2013 and 2015. The study period coincides with a widespread production shock – the Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR) epidemic of 2012/13 – that decimated coffee production in Peru. We find suggestive evidence that the incidence of CLR on farms is correlated with increased side-selling. Particularly, members with high risk tolerance and high levels of non-coffee income increase side-selling when affected by production shocks. This paper contributes to a growing literature on the determinants of side-selling in agricultural cooperatives by examining the role of production shocks, extending existing theoretical frameworks, and analyzing determinants using panel data methods.

Food waste is a significant problem in the United States with over 133 billion pounds of food wasted every year. Best-if-used-by dates (BUBDs) are a cue consumers use in evaluating foods and deciding when to dispose of them. Many consumers believe BUBDs are an expiration indicator; instead, they represent a food’s peak quality, and foods are typically safe to consume beyond their BUBDs. A non-hypothetical experimental auction with 193 participants was utilized to determine how food sensory ratings and BUBD knowledge affects consumer willingness to pay (WTP) and anticipated food waste for foods with varying BUBDs. Through three rounds, consumers evaluated the appearance and taste of salads and deli meat with varying BUBDs, and then stated their maximum WTP for the foods and the percentage of the foods they would waste. Tobit and Cragg double hurdle model results indicate BUBDs and sensory ratings were significant in determining WTP and anticipated waste. As consumers rated the taste and appearance of salads and deli meat higher, they stated they would pay more for, and consume more of, the foods. Sensory evaluations were a stronger predictor of WTP and expected waste than BUBDs in certain scenarios. Implications of this research indicate food waste could be reduced if consumers utilize food sensory evaluations prior to disposing of foods.