{"title":"Fast Food as an Actual Form of Modern Gastronomic Culture","authors":"I. Sokhan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2430142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2430142","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the actual gastronomic practice of fast food. Traditional gastronomic culture is undergoing transformations in the modern world. New gastronomic scares are developing that are related to an inability to predict ingredients in consumed foods. Fast food is neutral on the basis of ethnic gastronomic cultures and is becoming a prevailing eating style. As opposed to fast food, alternative gastronomic practices are becoming more essential. They bear a relation to the establishment of individual patterns, the search for and selection of new diets, care for the information aspect of food, and a need to know its cultural and historical connotations. Those gastronomic practices that appear to reflect the primitive nature of human existence are registering present and future changes in people’s ways of life in a most adequate manner.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124526747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
V. Krishna, D. Spielman, P. C. Veettil, S. Ghimire
{"title":"An Empirical Examination of the Dynamics of Varietal Turnover in Indian Wheat","authors":"V. Krishna, D. Spielman, P. C. Veettil, S. Ghimire","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2417342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2417342","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the challenge of increasing the rate of varietal turnover to prevent depreciation of improved cultivars over time. It examines the supply of and demand for improved cultivars of wheat in India to illustrate this challenge in a unique manner, combining national-level data on breeder seed production with primary data on cultivar adoption. The analyses show that the rate of varietal turnover for wheat has slowed in India from an average of 9-10 years a decade ago to 13-14 years in 2010. By focusing on a sample of farmers and villages in Haryana, where seed and information networks are relatively well developed, the study finds that wheat farmers still prefer cultivars that were released 9-10 years ago.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132391034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Social Rate of Discount, Climate Change and Real Options","authors":"P. Scandizzo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2397881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2397881","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the controversial problem of the choice of the social discount rate in development projects, by focusing on the investment required to adapt to climate change, considering the threats to food security and the needs for human and natural capital, especially for developing countries. Because climate change introduces negative trends and time increasing volatilities both in production and in consumption, social rates of discount can only be estimated within a framework of dynamic uncertainty. For this purpose, climate change can be modeled as a twin stochastic process of the geometric Brownian motion variety, affecting both consumption and productive capacity. Unlike the case of deterministic neoclassical growth, and contrary to the usual estimates for project evaluation, the stochastic nature of climate changes links the social discount rate (SDR) to volatility in two distinct and important ways. On the side of consumption and growth, the SDR is reduced by the likely negative effects of climate change (CC) on growth and food security. It also becomes dependent on the fact that the volatility of growth favors the accumulation of precautionary savings and thus reduces the rate of fall of the value of consumption over time. On the side of production capacity, the SDR is also reduced by the negative effect of CC on the productivity of capital and by the fact that the opportunity cost of the displacement of private investment under dynamic uncertainty is lowered by the value of the options to invest when more information will be available.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127939823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joachim De Weerdt, Kathleen G. Beegle, J. Friedman, J. Gibson
{"title":"The Challenge of Measuring Hunger","authors":"Joachim De Weerdt, Kathleen G. Beegle, J. Friedman, J. Gibson","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-6736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-6736","url":null,"abstract":"There is widespread interest in the number of hungry people in the world and trends in hunger. Current global counts rely on combining each country's total food balance with information on distribution patterns from household consumption expenditure surveys. Recent research has advocated for calculating hunger numbers directly from these same surveys. For either approach, embedded in this effort are a number of important details about how household surveys are designed and how these data are then used. Using a survey experiment in Tanzania, this study finds great fragility in hunger counts stemming from alternative survey designs. As a consequence, comparable and valid hunger numbers will be lacking until more effort is made to either harmonize survey designs or better understand the consequences of survey design variation.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125424406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Statures, BMIs, and Weight: A Reassessment","authors":"S. Carson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2378291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2378291","url":null,"abstract":"Much has been written about the modern obesity epidemic, and historical BMIs are low compared to their modern counterparts. However, interpreting BMI variation is difficult because BMIs increase when weight increases or when stature decreases, and the two have different implications for human health. An alternative measure for net current biological conditions is body weight. After controlling for height, African-American and white weights decreased throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Farmers had greater average weights than workers in other occupations. Individuals from the South had taller statures, greater BMIs, and heavier weights than workers in other US regions, indicating that even though the South had higher 19th century disease rates, it had better net nutritional conditions.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130576987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agricultural Development and Technical Cooperation Toward Green and Inclusive Growth in East Asian APEC Economies","authors":"Shinyoung Jeon","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2369165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2369165","url":null,"abstract":"East Asian APEC economies should expand cooperation, as they have common goals to achieve greater food self-sufficiency and food security by 2020. In Asia, the issues of undernourished (particularly China), small-scale farming due to limited farmland and consequently low levels of mechanization, aging and feminizing farm workforce are crucial. These problems will be exacerbated to be solved due to increasingly open markets through the proliferation of free trade agreements. To tackle these challenges, through increasing agricultural productivity and production, and adequate agricultural trade development, economies should improve food security and tackle related social issues. In this regard, agricultural technical cooperation among East Asian APEC economies has advantages: they share relatively common problems of and approaches to agricultural labour force and agricultural economy; in addition, agricultural trade among APEC Asian economies is growing faster than any other region. They can form collective responses while sharing best practices and experiences, technical and financial assistance, common responses to environmental and climate change issues, development of data infrastructure, minimizing the negative impact from agricultural open market. Concretely, East Asian APEC member economies can better gather and share alternative indicators that measure emerging contemporary agricultural issues by including them into statistical systems. Through this, they can build more adequate policies. It is also necessary to create collective solutions for transition of agricultural labour force, especially small-scale farmers, into higher-value and ecological farming or productive non-farm sector through skills development and for better coping with consequent shocks and adjustments from increasing free trade agreements. In order to do so, they need to bring up collective commitment to agricultural development and investment for the long term. Achieving such cooperation will require strong, effective, and well-resourced driving agents. Despite the limitations of APEC's current institutional bodies on agricultural technical cooperation, if APEC is committed to the Food Security Road Map of improving food security by 2020, then it must extend its cooperative efforts such as the Agricultural Technical Cooperation Working Group (ATCWG) and Policy Partnership on Food Security (PPFS) to be increasingly focused and include a wider range of actors, including farmers – the true agents of change in any agricultural system.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131802343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Organizational Partnerships for Food Policy Research Impact: A Review of What Works","authors":"A. Mabiso, T. Van Rheenen, Jenna Ferguson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2373216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2373216","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contributes to our understanding of food policy–research partnerships and provides a review of the theory and empirical literature about the factors that contribute to effective food policy–research partnerships. The literature points to the emergence of organizational partnerships as primarily driven by subjective perceptions about potential partners, the complex and uncertain external environment, access to resources through partnership and expectations of potential impact of the partnership.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115373638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Estimates of Substitution Elasticities in Agriculture","authors":"T. Wei","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2334216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2334216","url":null,"abstract":"The paper estimates substitution elasticity between labor and capital in a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function for agriculture of seven major producers. I adopt the normalized system approach suggested by Leon-Ledesma et al. (2010) and the data from World Input-output Database (WIOD) to study to what extent time period matters for the estimated elasticities. The elasticities are estimated on the basis of data from 1995 to one of the years among 1999-2009 respectively. The results show that the time period has almost no effect on the estimated elasticity for India, longer time period lead to lower estimates of elasticity for China, Higher for Brazil, relatively stable for USA and Russia, and inconclusive for Australia and Canada.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115951555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Speculation on Agricultural Commodities: A Brief Overview","authors":"I. Pies, S. Prehn, T. Glauben, Matthias G. Will","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2333087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2333087","url":null,"abstract":"This short essay on financial speculation with agricultural commodities offers (1) a survey of the real economy factors that caused recent hunger crises, (2) an overview of academic research on the impact of index-based financial speculation on agricultural futures markets, and (3) a discussion of political measures that are appropriate for im-proving global food security. The arguments are supported by numerous graphs.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131241182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Headey, Mekdim Dereje Regassa, Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, A. Josephson, A. Taffesse
{"title":"Land Constraints and Agricultural Intensification in Ethiopia: A Village-Level Analysis of High-Potential Areas","authors":"D. Headey, Mekdim Dereje Regassa, Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, A. Josephson, A. Taffesse","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2343179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2343179","url":null,"abstract":"Highland Ethiopia is one of the most densely populated regions of Africa and has long been associated with both Malthusian disasters and Boserupian agricultural intensification. This paper explores the race between these two countervailing forces, with the goal of inform two important policy questions. First, how do rural Ethiopians adapt to land constraints? And second, do land constraints significantly influence welfare outcomes in rural Ethiopia? To answer these questions we use a recent household survey of high-potential areas. We first show that farm sizes are generally very small in the Ethiopian highlands and declining over time, with young rural households facing particularly severe land constraints. We then ask whether smaller and declining farm sizes are inducing agricultural intensification, and if so, how. We find strong evidence in favor of the Boserupian hypothesis that land-constrained villages typically use significantly more purchased input costs per hectare and more family labor, and achieve higher maize and teff yields and higher gross income per hectare. However, although these higher inputs raise gross revenue, we find no substantial impact of greater land constraints on net farm income per hectare once family labor costs are accounted for. Moreover, farm sizes are strongly positively correlated with net farm income, suggesting that land constraints are an important cause of rural poverty. We conclude with some broad policy implications of our results.","PeriodicalId":314250,"journal":{"name":"Food Politics & Sociology eJournal","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127197879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}