World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 149

World Food Policy

support provided in emerging economies
has increased significantly over the last
~10 years (see Figure 14). In other words,
governments in the emerging economies
covered here, and most likely also in other
developing countries, engage in farm
policies, including price raising measures
that are not really in the interest of food
security of their people.

From there we can progress to
one eclectic comment on the agricultural
negotiations of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) Doha Round.
One of the issues debated there, very
much pushed by a group of developing
countries known as the G33, with India
being particularly interested in this issue
is whether developing countries should be
allowed to provide price support to those
domestic farmers from which they buy
staple food, to be put that into storage for
food security reasons. For the time being,
WTO rules on domestic farm support
under the Agreement on Agriculture
impose constraints on the extent to which
this is allowed. India has run into problems
with that constraint. From an economic
point of view, providing farm support
in the context of public stockholding
for food security purposes is not at all a
convincing proposition. Storage policies
may be very helpful to be prepared for
an emergency situation, but when a
government intends to stockpile food
it is not at all necessary to provide price
support to domestic producers. Food can
simply be bought into stockpiles at market
prices, and that is exactly what economic
reasoning would advise governments to
do. Speaking more generally, it should
be noted that producer price support
is far less efficient than improving the
enabling environment for agriculture,

i.e., supporting extension, education,
infrastructure, research, technology
development, etc. It is not a matter of
should one or should one not provide
support to agriculture development. It is
a matter of the most effective and efficient
way of doing so.

More in passing, we should also
stress that in the WTO there should
be more talk about disciplining export
restrictions. A number of countries
had embargoed exports in the 2007–
2008 period, and that has very much
contributed to panic in the market place
and among government and, hence, to
driving prices up.

Finally, as far as policies are
concerned, more needs to be done to
support agricultural development and
food security in developing countries.
Consider the long-term evolution of
the share of total Official Development
Assistance (ODA) that is channeled
into agriculture, shown in Figure 15.
We can see that this share had increased
considerably after the world food crisis of
the mid-1970s. At the time everybody was
convinced that the world needed to engage
in a serious effort in order to make the
world more food secure. But when prices
calmed down again, governments simply
forgot about their good resolutions, and
assistance to agricultural development
as a share of overall ODA fell back to the
same low level at which it stood before
that food crisis erupted.

How does that compare to
experience with the more recent world
food crisis of 2007–2008 and subsequent
years? In Figure 15, we can see a marginal
increase of ODA to agriculture after, and
possibly in response to, that recent price
crisis. Yet, that increase is minimal and it

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