Posts tagged…Food
Illustrated USDA economic research
Thu, Apr 09 2009This should be fun. Unfortunately the 'interactive' version loads slowly and has 'panes' that make it difficult to view the info-graphics. The (16.8mb!) downloadable version may be better. But the download crawled, so I gave up.
"This book contains a sampling of recent ERS research illustrating the breadth of the Agency’s research on current policy issues: from biofuels to food consumption to…
Read more…Bartering for food ‘security’
Tue, Jan 27 2009Counter-trade, or 'bartering', is not a sustainable way to finance commodity supply. It attracts attention from time-to-time; such as when the former Soviet states were split from the mother-ship in 1990 and found themselves short of cash. Experience shows, every time, that it means trading one form of illiquidity (lack of credit) for another even less tractable (too many Soviet trucks, or…
Real food price below historic high
Wed, Jun 04 2008
The documents for the FAO Conference on Food Security show that real food prices (deflated by the index of manufactures exports) have spiked but are still some way below their peak in the 1970's.
High food prices accelerate structural change in Europe
Wed, May 28 2008Thirty years on, the Common Agricultural Policy—or, rather, most of the CAP's market intervention but not the payments to farmers—is being dismantled faster than planned due to high food prices that have seen both border barriers and 'intervention' buying dropped.
"The €45bn-a-year common agricultural policy has been blamed for dumping subsidised food on to poor country markets, displacing…
A ‘magic’ recipe for global food shortages
Thu, Apr 17 2008
There is no 'famine' nor even a long-term food scarcity. But poor people are paying more for food—when they can get it—than they should because governments have screwed-up. There is a well-attested solution to this problem, that looks like magic. You can have your cake and eat it too, with both higher prices for producers and lower prices and better supply for consumers.
Victor Mallet in the…
International impact on food regulations
Sat, Feb 10 2007
Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission engaged Inquit to survey the costs that obligations under international agreements and the requirements of trading partners impose on food producers, processors and wholesalers in the state of Victoria. More than two-thirds of Victorian food production is for the export market.
We found that the regulations that impose costs are Australian…