Agricultural and Food Economics最新文献

Introduction: Projected dementia incidence in Latin America and the Caribbean for the next decades is overwhelming. Access to local data, stratified by sex, is imperative for planning precise dementia-prevention strategies.

Methods: We analyzed the individual and overall weighted population attributable fraction (PAF) of nine modifiable risk factors for dementia, in dementia-free subjects ≥45-years-old, using the 2016-2017 Chilean National Health Survey.

Results: The overall weighted PAF for modifiable risk factors was 45.8% (42.2% to 49.3%). Variables with the highest PAF were lower education, high blood pressure, hearing loss, and obesity. Women showed a greater overall weighted PAF: 50.7% (45.3% to -56.1%), compared to men: 40.2% (35.4% to 45.0%), driven by a higher PAF for physical inactivity and depression in women.

Discussion: The PAF for modifiable risk factors for dementia in Chile is higher than in previous world reports, due to a greater prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors. Women have a higher potential for dementia prevention.

Highlights: The proportion of dementia associated to modifiable risk factors in Chile is 45.8%.The main modifiable risk factors are high blood pressure, obesity, and hearing loss.Women had a greater prevalence of physical inactivity and depression than men.Chile had a greater prevalence of metabolic risk factors than other world regions.

Increasingly, rural households in developing countries are shopping for food online, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend. In parallel, dietary guidelines worldwide recommend eating a balanced and healthy diet. With this in mind, this study explores whether online food shopping boosts dietary diversity-defined as the number of distinct food groups consumed-among rural households in China. Because people choose to shop for food online, it is important to account for the self-selection bias inherent in online food shopping. Accordingly, we estimate the treatment effects of online food shopping on dietary diversity using the endogenous switching model with a count outcome variable. The results indicate that online food shopping increases dietary diversity by 7.34%. We also find that education, asset ownership, and knowing the government's dietary guidelines are the main factors driving rural households' decisions to shop for food online.

Fish is an important source of healthy proteins and an important economic sector in Mediterranean countries. Despite the wealth of knowledge acquired in Western countries, a gap has been found in studies in developing countries, as in the Mediterranean southern shore. Therefore, we aimed to investigate consumers' perceptions of finfish attributes, with qualitative tools as focus groups, given the exploratory nature of the research. The focus groups have been held in Italy, Lebanon, Spain, and Tunisia; in each country, one was held in seaside areas and one in inland areas, in order to control for the availability of fish that shapes consumers' evaluations and expectations. The focus groups have been analysed through content and semantic analyses. Results of the study yielded main themes recurring in the discussions that have been categorized along such dimensions: (1) definition of fish products; (2) context; (3) search attributes; (4) experience attributes; and (5) credence attributes. Among attributes, the ones mostly guiding consumers' choices seem to be freshness and fish species, which are used as proxies for quality and sensory attributes. Most of the respondents preferred delicate white fish, while some exceptions were found in Tunisian respondents preferring blue fish and they also were the only ones who were not looking for convenient and already cleaned products. Trust also represented a critical element in guiding the decisions of consumers: with a lack of trust, consumers deviate from preferring local products, as noticeable especially in Lebanese respondents' opinions. Credence attributes such as animal welfare and sustainability received a minor attention from all the respondents.

Social media marketing is a promising tool for successful product placement of new healthy luxury food products, a subcategory of superfoods. Despite its growing popularity, no studies have investigated how social media marketing affects consumers' quality perception process for such superfoods and whether this provides opportunities for farmers to gain a competitive advantage in direct marketing channels. Therefore, we integrate media richness theory into the food quality guidance model, compile a data set of 697 German fruit consumers from May to June 2020, and analyze this sample via partial least square analysis. Results show that social media marketing is a viable tool for new healthy luxury food products if media content is highly experience providing. Furthermore, it offers opportunities for the formation of shorter food supply chains as farmers could, through the provision of engaging social media marketing content, sell new healthy luxury food products directly to the final consumer. This research provides implications to farmers, retailers and policy makers to exploit the social media marketing potential of new healthy luxury food products.

Known in the literature as underutilized, neglected or orphan crops, these crops have been cited as having the potential to improve food and nutritional security. The literature also highlights however that consumers in developing countries are increasingly abandoning their traditional diets that these crops are part of, and are replacing them by western diets. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumption and nutritional implications of expanding the participation of underutilized crops in current diets. This was done using a modified version of the microeconomic consumer problem. This was augmented with a linear constraint using generalized rationing theory that can be found in the economics literature. The method was applied to the case study of the consumption of millet (finger millet, botanical name: Eleusine coracana) by rural, urban-poor and urban-affluent Ugandan socioeconomic groups. The results indicated that millet could contribute to improving the intake of macronutrients and of some micronutrients, though the overall picture is complex. However, under current preferences and given its demand inelasticity, to achieve a substantial increase in the quantity of millet in the diet will require a significant reduction of its price. Otherwise, the net impact on nutrition as measured by the mean adequacy ratio will be only slightly positive for rural and urban-poor households. Our findings indicate that supply-side initiatives aimed at increasing the productivity of underutilized crops (reducing crop price) are likely to produce disappointing results in restoring their importance unless accompanied by specific interventions to expand demand.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40100-021-00206-3.