Global Food Security-Agriculture Policy Economics and Environment最新文献

The incidence of food insecurity among migrant and diasporic communities living in rich global North cities is growing. A key dimension of this is the absence of culturally appropriate food which is integral to both feeding and nourishing mobile bodies. In this paper, we deploy an intersectional approach to cultural food in/security to explore the foodscapes of Zimbabwean communities living in British cities. We unpack how and why food cultures are critical in shaping migrant experiences of food in/security and the diversification of food cultures over time and place and mediated by intersectional subjectivities. We map local, regional and transnational food supply chains as migrants seek to redress issues of access and availability to source foods familiar to them to maintain the cultural significance of food and food practices within families and diaspora communities.

Agricultural and rural development interventions can reduce global poverty by providing growth-oriented tools, including access to finance, training, and markets. While such interventions effectively reduce monetary poverty (e.g., $1 a day poverty line), there is increasing interest in incorporating non-monetary poverty indicators, such as education, health, and living standards, to capture inherent multidimensionality in poverty. This study analyzes data from 16 impact evaluation studies conducted between 2019 and 2023 to examine whether and to what extent agricultural and rural development interventions affect multidimensional poverty of small-scale producers. Our analysis shows a 4 percent reduction in multidimensional poverty for treatment households compared to comparison households. Our findings suggest that agricultural and rural development interventions play a positive role in reducing poverty and have the potential to improve the long-term well-being of poor households.

Food systems are composed of interrelated activities that transform agricultural products into food. Their operations need to meet several food security, food safety, and sustainability requirements. Therefore, risk assessment of food systems must be multidisciplinary and include food safety, nutrition, environmental, economics, and social criteria. However, combining these criteria to assess multiple impacts remains a challenge in complex and multi-stakeholder systems. Until now, only a few holistic assessments, whether domain-oriented or generic and with different levels of quantification, have covered all criteria and the whole food systems. We reviewed and presented the various assessment methods and their applications in food systems, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. Recommendations were made for a tiered approach combining different holistic assessment methods.

Between 2015 and 2021, the World Food Programme (WFP) carried out “Fill the Nutrient Gap” (FNG) analyses in 37 countries. Apart from a few early FNG analyses, each analysis calculated the cost of energy-sufficient diets, staple-adjusted nutrient-adequate diets, and the non-affordability of the latter at the subnational level during a specific period decided by in-country stakeholders and data availability. In 2021–2022, all FNG output data were compiled into one dataset, which is provided as an online supplement to this paper. Here, we describe the parameters and data used in these FNG analyses and the process for standardizing diet costs for time (to January 2020) and in currency (PPP USD and MER USD). The objective of this paper was to provide the dataset utilized in the other papers in this GFS special issue on diet cost and affordability analyses conducted as part of FNG analyses by WFP and partners, and to provide a description of the considerations and methods employed for compiling this dataset.

We conducted an ecological study using data from 373 subnational units in 32 countries collected from 2011 to 2020, to explore the associations of non-affordability of nutrient-adequate diets and of food insecurity (percentage of people with poor or borderline Food Consumption Score) with indicators measuring dietary quality and nutritional status. We found a strong negative monotonic correlation between non-affordability of nutrient-adequate diets and minimum dietary diversity in children 6–23 months ($r_s=-0.65,p<0.01$), and a weaker correlation between poor or borderline Food Consumption Score with the same dietary diversity indicator ($r_s=-0.39,p<0.01$). The relations between non-affordability and nutrition outcomes (prevalence of stunting and the composite indicator of ‘people deprived in nutrition’) were also highly significant at the subnational level, and had larger coefficients than indicators focusing on caloric adequacy. Examining these relations subnationally could provide relevant information for policies and programs aiming to address the risk of nutrition insecurity due to economic inaccessibility. Compared to dietary quality indicators, non-affordability is a relatively easy indicator to calculate and has the potential to use secondary data already captured through existing government systems.

We investigate the historical effects of non-reciprocal preferential trade agreements (NRPTAs) on food exports and food availability per capita in 112 countries in the Global South to address concerns about their potential non-trade effects. Our empirical analyses use FAO Food Balance Sheet data for the years 1961–2013, covering 14 food categories and 91 product groups. We assess the link between NRPTA intensity - measured at the country level as the annaul sum of NRPTAs a country has in place - and the two outcomes using fixed effects dummy variable regressions. Our findings show that NRPTA intensity has a positive effect on food export performance and on food availability per capita, with heterogeneities across least developed, transition, and developing country groups, and its export effects do not jeopardize food insecurity.

Fruits and vegetables (FV) are critical components of nutritious and healthy diets, but there are growing concerns about food safety risks linked to their consumption. In this article, we explore consumers’ concerns about pesticide-related food safety risks and how they relate to the choice of FV outlets, using survey data from 8644 consumers in five low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Results show that pesticide residue is the most frequently cited source of food safety concern in each country, partly due to the intensive use of synthetic pesticides in FV production. We also find that FV retail environments are dominated by traditional open-air markets, despite the rapid growth and reach of modern retail outlets (e.g., supermarkets) in LMICs. Generally, consumers pay more attention to convenience and price when making FV purchase decisions, but pesticide-related food safety concerns also influence their FV outlet choices. Regression results of the associations between pesticide concerns and choice of FV outlets are heterogeneous across countries, but we find evidence suggesting that consumers who cited concerns with pesticides are more likely to demand FV from specialist shops and avoid purchasing from street hawkers. Our findings highlight the need to address pesticide risk concerns that can undermine consumer demand for nutritious foods, such as FV.

Understanding food environments and how they shape dietary and nutrition outcomes is key to ensuring that food systems can support healthy and sustainable diets for the most vulnerable. Using subnational data from 20 low and lower-middle income countries, we explored how assortment, relative and absolute food prices relate to the dietary intake of children aged 6–23 months. We found that greater assortment of nutrient-dense foods in the market showed a positive association with dietary intake (foods rich in iron or vitamin A) of children 6–23 months of age at the subnational level. Higher relative price of nutrient-dense foods compared to starchy staples was negatively associated with intake of foods rich in iron or vitamin A and minimum dietary diversity. We also found negative association between minimum price of nutrient-dense foods and the same dietary intake indicators. This provides evidence on the degree to which assortment and the relative price of foods influence household food choices. The variability in assortment and price within countries highlights the importance of collecting information on food environments at the subnational level, as they determine which foods households can access, and by extension, how diverse and nutritious the diets of children aged 6–23 months in the household, can be.