World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Seite 52

World Food Policy
stantially in the past three decades. In
China, much of the export products
originated from rural areas right after
the opening-up policy in late 1970s,
and later shifted to special economic
zones, coastal regions and the rest of
the country, which has benefited vast
number of off-farm employment of
rural farmers and contributed to rural
poverty reduction. The literature has
also showed that trade liberalization
has contributed to the reduction of
There are also experiences and poverty in Vietnam (Heo and Doanh,
lessons on agricultural price and mar- 2009), India (Bhagwati and Srinivasan,
keting reforms in facilitating inclusive 2002), and the Philippines (Cororaton
rural transformation in many other and John, 2007).
Asian countries. For example, both In-
dia and the Philippines have faced large 5. Conclusions and
poverty and undernutrition problems policy implications
and thus resorted to in-kind food sub-
any developing countries in
sidy programs with substantial budget-
Asia have experienced struc-
ary outlays (United Nation, 2015). Jha
tural transformations with
and Ramaswami (2010) found that the
overall return to the food subsidy pro- different speeds. Such structural trans-
gram is low. The income impacts on the formation is characterised with the fall
poor of the food subsidy program were of agricultural share in total GDP as
less than 5% of incremental spending in result of more rapid expansion in man-
both India and the Philippines. A recent ufacturing and service sectors and con-
World Bank study also indicates that verging the shares of agricultural GDP
persistent policy distortions, such as and employment in economy.
the rice self-sufficiency policy and large
At the same time, the developing
subsidies for inputs, are part of reasons countries in Asia have also been under-
for the lack of agricultural transforma- going rural transformation. Such rural
tion in the Philippines (World Bank, transformation often started with the
2013).
adoption of modern varieties and in-
a subsidized agriculture through direct
subsidies since the middle 2000s and
the price intervention through gov-
ernment procurement to raise farmers’
income since the late 2000s. The recent
price or market distortions had result-
ed in huge stocks held by government
and misallocations of resources, a les-
son that has forced China to phase out
its government procurement for most
commodities since 2014 (Huang and
Yang, 2017).
M
creasing access to water and modern
inputs (or Green Revolution) on rice
and wheat. Increases in grain produc-
tion due to agricultural productivity
growth has enabled farmers to expand
their production to higher-valued cash
There is also evidence that open
trade is associated with faster economic
growth and poverty reduction (Dollar,
2001). As a model for labour intensive
export-led economy, Chinese and Vi-
etnamese exports have increased sub-
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