Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-04-26DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01444-1
Tony W. Carr, Felicity Addo, Amanda Palazzo, Petr Havlik, Katya Pérez-Guzmán, Zakari Ali, Rosemary Green, Genevieve Hadida, Alcade C. Segnon, Robert Zougmoré, Pauline Scheelbeek
{"title":"Addressing future food demand in The Gambia: can increased crop productivity and climate change adaptation close the supply–demand gap?","authors":"Tony W. Carr, Felicity Addo, Amanda Palazzo, Petr Havlik, Katya Pérez-Guzmán, Zakari Ali, Rosemary Green, Genevieve Hadida, Alcade C. Segnon, Robert Zougmoré, Pauline Scheelbeek","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01444-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01444-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>With rising demand for food and the threats posed by climate change, The Gambia faces significant challenges in ensuring sufficient and nutritious food for its population. To address these challenges, there is a need to increase domestic food production while limiting deforestation and land degradation. In this study, we modified the FABLE Calculator, a food and land-use system model, to focus on The Gambia to simulate scenarios for future food demand and increasing domestic food production. We considered the impacts of climate change on crops, the adoption of climate change adaptation techniques, as well as the potential of enhanced fertiliser use and irrigation to boost crop productivity, and assessed whether these measures would be sufficient to meet the projected increase in food demand. Our results indicate that domestic food production on existing cropland will not be sufficient to meet national food demand by 2050, leading to a significant supply–demand gap. However, investments in fertiliser availability and the development of sustainable irrigation infrastructure, coupled with climate change adaptation strategies like the adoption of climate-resilient crop varieties and optimised planting dates, could halve this gap. Addressing the remaining gap will require additional strategies, such as increasing imports, expanding cropland, or prioritising the production of domestic food crops over export crops. Given the critical role imports play in The Gambia’s food supply, it is essential to ensure a robust flow of food imports by diversifying partners and addressing regional trade barriers. Our study highlights the urgent need for sustained investment and policy support to enhance domestic food production and food imports to secure sufficient and healthy food supplies amidst growing demand and climate change challenges.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 3","pages":"691 - 704"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-024-01444-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140800019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-04-22DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01447-y
Yan Jin, Cornelis Gardebroek, Nico Heerink
{"title":"The impact of Chinese rice support policies on rice acreages","authors":"Yan Jin, Cornelis Gardebroek, Nico Heerink","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01447-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01447-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Declining arable land and yield stagnation pose serious challenges to food security in China. Since 2004, the Chinese government has introduced rice support policies to stimulate rice production. A bundle of incentives, including a minimum procurement price, were introduced. Whether they were effective? Rice acreages have increased since the start of this policy, which could also result from rising rice price levels both nationally and globally. Using a natural experiment created by the minimum procurement price policy being introduced in a selected set of Chinese regions, we use a dynamic fixed effects model to perform a difference-in-differences analysis on the effectiveness of these rice support policies. We find that indica rice acreages do respond to changes in the rice prices, and, controlling for rice prices, that China’s rice support policies were effective in increasing rice acreages of both early and late indica after 2004. The paper concludes with policy implications.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 3","pages":"705 - 719"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-024-01447-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140636860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-04-20DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01443-2
Yichao Li, Xintong Xie, Guihua Liu, Dingde Xu
{"title":"How does the improvement of farmers' financial literacy affect food production? Analysis of behavior and constraints based on element substitution and planting structure adjustment","authors":"Yichao Li, Xintong Xie, Guihua Liu, Dingde Xu","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01443-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01443-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Food security is the foundation of national security, yet few studies have explored the impact of financial literacy on food production in the context of deepening rural financial development. Using data from the 2021 China Land Economy Survey, this paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the impact of factor substitution and cropping restructuring behavior on grain production brought about by farmers' financial literacy and further discusses the heterogeneous impact on grain production under different constraints. The results show that: (1) Farmers' overall financial literacy varies widely within the household, and the proportion of planting is still dominated by grain cultivation; (2) The increase of financial literacy has a significant inhibitory effect on grain cultivation area and grain mechanization; (3) Differences in the level of financial literacy and the difficulty of mechanical substitution will lead to heterogeneous effects on outcomes. The study recommends that governments should pay attention to the phenomenon of financial literacy-induced de-fooding. On the one hand, there is a need to make food production more economical and profitable for farmers; on the other hand, there is a need to regulate and advocate for comprehensive financial literacy and to reject profit-seeking.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 3","pages":"721 - 733"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140630687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-27DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01440-5
Liliane Abdalla, Luis F. Goulao
{"title":"Food security and nutrition in refugee camps in the European Union: Development of a framework of analysis linking causes and effects","authors":"Liliane Abdalla, Luis F. Goulao","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01440-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01440-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The literature on food security and nutrition -FSN among refugees found high rates of food insecurity- FI among refugees in both, low- and middle-income - LMIC countries and high-income countries- HIC. Despite high rates of FI among refugees in HIC, little is known about FSN status of refugees and asylum-seekers living in refugee camps in the European Union- EU. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by reviewing issues related to the Food Security and Nutrition-FSN of refugees in the EU and worldwide and provides three main contributions to the existing knowledge. Firstly, it identifies the main drivers of FSN in a refugee context and offer a causal framework describing the main causes and effects of FNI in refugee camps. The immediate causes of FNI are poor Shelter and Settlement, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and Healthcare. Moreover, secondary causes of FNI are the lack of adaptation to a new environment; Lack of culturally adapted food; Inadequate FSN interventions; Poor livelihood strategies. Secondly, it demonstrates that FNI exists in European refugee camps underscoring that EU member states have been unable to deliver sustainable solutions towards the realization of FSN in the E.U. Finally, the paper calls for a multisectoral and non-discriminatory European common policy targeting refugees’ FSN.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 3","pages":"735 - 755"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-024-01440-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140311861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-14DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01430-7
Daniel Ayalew Mekonnen
{"title":"Does household’s food and nutrient acquisition capacity predict linear growth in children? Analysis of longitudinal data from rural and small towns in Ethiopia","authors":"Daniel Ayalew Mekonnen","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01430-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01430-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Nutritious foods are unaffordable to the majority of households in lower-income countries. Hence, starchy staples tend to be the main source of diets for men, women, and children, implying poor diet quality and deficiency in key nutrients that are crucial for child’s physical growth and cognitive development. Much of existing studies on child linear growth or stunting examined the impact of current dietary consumption on physical growth even though the effect of diets and nutrition would only be observed with time lag. This study examined the associations between sustained consumption of animal sourced foods (ASFs) and adequate nutrient intakes (measured by the mean nutrient adequacy (MPA)) and linear growth differences among children in rural and small towns in Ethiopia. Using nationally representative longitudinal data, results of fixed effects estimations suggested that a standard deviation increase in the household MPA was associated with a 10–11% increase in the height-for-age z-score; and a 10% increase in the household MPA was associated with a 3.2 – 5.6% reduction in stunting rate in children 6–59 months of age. Results also indicated some associations between past ASFs consumption and current linear growth outcomes in younger children. The gap in the household MPA was over 41%, indicating the need for nutrient-dense ASFs in the household diets despite the sustainability concerns around ASFs. Key implication is that policies and interventions aimed at improving linear growth outcomes of children in rural and small towns in Ethiopia should improve household’s access to ASFs and nutrient acquisition capacity.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"533 - 550"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-024-01430-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140147354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-13DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01442-3
Paul P. S. Teng
{"title":"Obituary: Klaus Lampe, 1932–2024","authors":"Paul P. S. Teng","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01442-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01442-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"293 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140124511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-09DOI: 10.1007/s12571-023-01429-6
Anika Muder, Jonas Luckmann, Julia C. Schmid
{"title":"Large-scale agricultural investments and local food security – Evidence from a mixed-method case study in Benin","authors":"Anika Muder, Jonas Luckmann, Julia C. Schmid","doi":"10.1007/s12571-023-01429-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-023-01429-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) and their impacts on local communities in host countries have been controversially discussed in recent years. As scholars increasingly call for more structured and comprehensive analyses, we develop a mixed-method approach using an expanded version of the “Right to Food” (RtF) framework to systematically investigate the local food security impacts of a recently established tomato-producing LSAI in Central Benin, West Africa. We find that the LSAI keeps natural resources as accessible as possible for the local community and provides employment opportunities, leading to higher dietary diversity of employees and multiplier effects in the local economy. At the same time, we find inequalities regarding the compensation of former land users as well as high job insecurity for temporary laborers who face high transportation costs to reach the LSAI. We argue that fair and inclusive compensation, improved access to markets and machinery, access to natural resources for often overlooked groups (pastoralists, hunters, fishermen) and social infrastructure are crucial factors in promoting positive outcomes of LSAIs on communities and that strong local institutions play a key role for achieving this. We conclude that the specific characteristics of our case (relatively small size, labor-intensive crop, focus on regional markets) provide favorable conditions for positive impacts on local food security. We encourage further, structured mixed-method studies, ideally including longitudinal and comparative research designs, to investigate the multidimensional effects related to the establishment of LSAIs. The extended RtF framework can thereby serve as a structural lens to systematically analyze the findings.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"511 - 531"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-023-01429-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140072455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01434-3
Ishmael Hashmiu, Faizal Adams, Seth Etuah, Jonathan Quaye
{"title":"Food-cash crop diversification and farm household welfare in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana","authors":"Ishmael Hashmiu, Faizal Adams, Seth Etuah, Jonathan Quaye","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01434-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01434-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Despite the importance of crop diversification in enhancing household income and food security, significant knowledge gaps remain in terms of the precursors and actual impacts of diversified food-cash crop systems. Thus, we assessed the determinants of food-cash crop diversification, and its impacts on the income and food security of farmers using survey data from 408 randomly-selected households in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana. The study employs the multinomial logistic model (MNL) to examine farm households’ decision to practice food-cash crop diversification, while the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) was performed to determine the impact of the diversification on food security and household income. Diversification of cash and food crops impacted positively on household annual crop income and on food security, and these positive impacts further increased as the diversity of tree cash cropping increased, with the addition of cocoa and/or cashew. Our findings emphasise the importance of income from tree cash crops, and complementarities between cash crops and food crop production in explaining the food security merits of diversified food-cash crop systems. Overall, a food-crop-farmers’ decision to diversify into cocoa and cashew in Ghana was significantly predicted by farming experience of the household head, and farm characteristics of the household (fallow land availability, land ownership and livestock ownership), as well as economic (annual crop income and access to off-farm income) and institutional (access to extension) factors. These results imply that enhancing farmers’ access to financial and technical support services and promoting livestock farming could encourage the adoption of diversified cropping systems. However, since land ownership rights in sub-Saharan Africa are oftentimes unclear, contested or poorly enforced, pro-poor and equitable land tenure reforms would be indispensable in promoting diversification into tree cash crops by subsistence farm households.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"487 - 509"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12571-024-01434-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140072137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-08DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01436-1
Danny Ning Dai, Phoebe Stephens, Zhenzhong Si
{"title":"E-grocery as a new site of financialization? Financial drivers of the rise and fall of China’s E-grocery sector","authors":"Danny Ning Dai, Phoebe Stephens, Zhenzhong Si","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01436-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01436-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>During the past five years, the e-grocery sector in China has experienced double-digit growth which accelerated at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of this hypergrowth was fueled by changing consumption patterns and pandemic-induced demand for contactless food delivery. However, this study highlights two other important but understudied drivers of the e-grocery boom -the rising financial investment and the deepening engagement of dot-com companies in the food retail sector. This study characterizes the recent financial investments in China’s e-grocery sector and analyzes the food security implications, which contributes to the scholarly literature on financialization, corporate power, and digitization in the food system in novel ways. This study advances three research findings: a) the e-grocery sector has become a new site of financialization in the food sector; b) this new site was developed partly through pandemic-induced demand for food delivery and partly as a by-product of the expansion of China’s dot-com economy; c) by the last quarter of 2021 and in 2022, many investors fled China’s e-grocery sector after an anti-trust crackdown was launched and as most e-grocery businesses struggled to make a profit. Overall, the boom and bust of the e-grocery bubble in China posed multiple challenges to food security, such as causing cash flow crises for grocery suppliers and compromising fair competition in the grocery market. Furthermore, the twin processes of financialization and digitization have forged a mutually reinforcing relationship that has far-reaching implications for China’s food system as a whole.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"471 - 485"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140072139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Food SecurityPub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.1007/s12571-024-01432-5
Yimin Ye, Papa Gora Ndiaye, Mohsen Al-Husaini
{"title":"Increasing the contribution of Africa’s fisheries to food security through improved management","authors":"Yimin Ye, Papa Gora Ndiaye, Mohsen Al-Husaini","doi":"10.1007/s12571-024-01432-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12571-024-01432-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Africa is the poorest continent, with the fastest population growth, the most acute food shortages, and overfishing. Meeting rising food demand while preserving sustainable production is challenging. We evaluated the full fishery supply chain over the previous 70 years in search of sustainable growth paths, from fish resource status and fishery production to trade and human consumption. Our data show that Africa had the lowest per capita fish consumption of any continent in 2017, with international imports accounting for 35% of this low fish consumption. Meanwhile, foreign vessels fish legally or illegally in African waters, landing 3.1 million tonnes of fish outside of Africa each year. Current fishing practises have resulted in 40% of fish populations being overexploited, causing a loss of 2 million tonnes of fish production per year. Improved management can reduce non-trade fish outflows from foreign vessels fishing and restore overfished stocks to maximum sustainable levels, increasing Africa's fish consumption by 42% and the commercial value of marine fisheries by 53%. Aside from food supply and economic benefits, there are also various social and environmental benefits including job opportunities, support for local livelihoods, and environmental health. These findings can help inform policy and the development of long-term sustainable solutions to challenges in Africa such as overfishing, low fish consumption, hunger, and poverty.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":567,"journal":{"name":"Food Security","volume":"16 2","pages":"455 - 470"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140072386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}