{"title":"Inter-district food flows in Malawi","authors":"Maxwell Mkondiwa, Jeffrey Apland","doi":"10.1007/s12571-022-01302-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Data on inter-district food flows are typically not collected and are thus unavailable for most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and for many parts of world. Given the volatile and frequent regionally specific deficits in food production in Malawi, evidence on food flows under different scenarios is needed for food policy decisions. This paper develops a spatially explicit mathematical programming model for the Malawian food sector to calibrate inter-district food flows and to assess how transport cost variations affect these flows. The food sector modeling approach we develop and implement allows for a natural estimation of inter-district trade flows in data sparse environments. In addition, we restrict crop mixes to those within the range of observed historical crop land use unlike modeling approaches that are prone to overspecialization. The calibration results for our baseline model indicate that about 7% of Malawian maize production flows between districts as compared to 66% for rice, 74% for beans, and 46% for groundnuts. A simulation experiment of varying unit transport costs shows that reductions in per unit transport costs increase the share of production that is traded inter-regionally, although the traded shares vary among the crops included in our model. The effectiveness of spatially targeted food production and marketing policies in Malawi therefore depends on these baseline food flows and the associated inter-district trade costs. Future research agenda on generating agricultural statistics in Malawi should focus on introducing intra-national commodity flow surveys.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"14 6","pages":"1553 - 1568"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Food Security","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12571-022-01302-y","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Data on inter-district food flows are typically not collected and are thus unavailable for most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and for many parts of world. Given the volatile and frequent regionally specific deficits in food production in Malawi, evidence on food flows under different scenarios is needed for food policy decisions. This paper develops a spatially explicit mathematical programming model for the Malawian food sector to calibrate inter-district food flows and to assess how transport cost variations affect these flows. The food sector modeling approach we develop and implement allows for a natural estimation of inter-district trade flows in data sparse environments. In addition, we restrict crop mixes to those within the range of observed historical crop land use unlike modeling approaches that are prone to overspecialization. The calibration results for our baseline model indicate that about 7% of Malawian maize production flows between districts as compared to 66% for rice, 74% for beans, and 46% for groundnuts. A simulation experiment of varying unit transport costs shows that reductions in per unit transport costs increase the share of production that is traded inter-regionally, although the traded shares vary among the crops included in our model. The effectiveness of spatially targeted food production and marketing policies in Malawi therefore depends on these baseline food flows and the associated inter-district trade costs. Future research agenda on generating agricultural statistics in Malawi should focus on introducing intra-national commodity flow surveys.
期刊介绍：
Food Security is a wide audience, interdisciplinary, international journal dedicated to the procurement, access (economic and physical), and quality of food, in all its dimensions. Scales range from the individual to communities, and to the world food system. We strive to publish high-quality scientific articles, where quality includes, but is not limited to, the quality and clarity of text, and the validity of methods and approaches.
Food Security is the initiative of a distinguished international group of scientists from different disciplines who hold a deep concern for the challenge of global food security, together with a vision of the power of shared knowledge as a means of meeting that challenge. To address the challenge of global food security, the journal seeks to address the constraints - physical, biological and socio-economic - which not only limit food production but also the ability of people to access a healthy diet.
From this perspective, the journal covers the following areas:
Global food needs: the mismatch between population and the ability to provide adequate nutrition
Global food potential and global food production
Natural constraints to satisfying global food needs:
§ Climate, climate variability, and climate change
§ Desertification and flooding
§ Natural disasters
§ Soils, soil quality and threats to soils, edaphic and other abiotic constraints to production
§ Biotic constraints to production, pathogens, pests, and weeds in their effects on sustainable production
The sociological contexts of food production, access, quality, and consumption.
Nutrition, food quality and food safety.
Socio-political factors that impinge on the ability to satisfy global food needs:
§ Land, agricultural and food policy
§ International relations and trade
§ Access to food
§ Financial policy
§ Wars and ethnic unrest
Research policies and priorities to ensure food security in its various dimensions.
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