"The growing importance of global value chains (GVCs) in the international organisation of production increasingly challenges the traditional way of measuring countries’ export performance and hence international competitiveness. As a result of growing production fragmentation, a country’s export bundle nowadays incorporates imports of intermediate goods representing a (large) part of its value. In this case, simply looking at the evolution of exports may misrepresent the international competitive position of a country. This paper discusses the export performance of countries along the value chain by distinguishing upstream activities (i.e. the production of intermediate inputs) and more downstream activities (e.g. the final assembly of products). The empirical analysis first shows how imports of intermediates increasingly determine the export competitiveness of countries in final products. Second, the paper analyses the developments at the intensive and extensive margins of trade and studies how structural changes in terms of geographical and sectoral composition, largely outside the influence of national policies, have contributed to countries’ export performance."

"Some authors have concluded that higher prices in agriculture augmented the rate of adoption of new technology, while others have suggested that productivity and technical efficiency are negatively related to agricultural protection. This paper examines the effects of agricultural policies on technical efficiency and Total Factor Productivity growth in 20 advanced countries during the period 1961–2002. A panel stochastic frontier regression model is used to simultaneously estimate the stochastic frontier production function and the equation of inefficiency, following the one-stage model suggested by Battese and Coelli (1995). The inefficiency model shows that technical efficiency is negatively related to farmers’ protection in both the Cobb-Douglas and Translog specifications of the model. Consistent with the previous literature, this paper finds that technical efficiency is positively associated with human capital. Countries with smaller land holdings are associated with higher efficiency (in the Cobb-Douglas model), and inequality in land distribution is negatively related to efficiency. Here, TFP growth has been estimated following Kumbhakar and Lovell (2000). The co-integration test of Westerlund (2007) leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis of no long-term relation between TFP growth and agricultural protection. Finally, as suggested by a random-effect IV regression, TFP growth is lower in countries that had past (lagged) high levels of agricultural protection to famers."

"In this paper we examine levels and trends in agricultural output and productivity in 93 developed and developing countries that account for a major portion of the world population and agricultural output. We make use of data drawn from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and our study covers the period 1980-2000. Due to the non-availability of reliable input price data, the study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to derive Malmquist productivity indexes. The study examines trends in agricultural productivity over the period. Issues of catch-up and convergence, or in some cases possible divergence, in productivity in agriculture are examined within a global framework. The paper also derives the shadow prices and value shares that are implicit in the DEA-based Malmquist productivity indices, and examines the plausibility of their levels and trends over the study period."

"This 2012 report provides an economic overview of the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system. It is meant to be a multi-purpose reference document to provide:

•an introduction to the agriculture and agri-food system;
•a snapshot of structural changes that are occurring throughout the system in response to various factors; and
•background data and information to inform public discussions on challenges and opportunities facing the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system."

"Trade deficits and surpluses are sometimes attributed to intentionally low or high exchange rate levels. The impact of exchange rate levels on trade has been much debated but the large body of existing empirical literature does not suggest an unequivocally clear picture of the trade impacts of changes in exchange rates. In addition, much of the evidence on this subject considers currencies of large economies, and overwhelmingly the United States.

This study examines the impact of exchange rates and their volatility on trade flows in two small, open economies – Chile and New Zealand – with three major trading partners, in two broadly defined sectors – agriculture on the one hand and manufacturing and mining on the other. It finds that exchange volatility impacts trade flows in the small, open economies more than was found for larger economies. Findings do not clearly indicate the direction of the impact, i.e. whether this volatility increases or decreases trade in all countries and sectors. Exchange rate levels, on the other hand, affect trade in both agriculture and manufacturing and mining sectors although their magnitude differs depending on the trading partner and sector. Moreover, this study indicates that a depreciation in the exchange rates in Chile and New Zealand would not lead to a strong change in their trade balances with three main trading partners across the board."

"This paper examines the degree to which world price signals have been transmitted into domestic prices for eight countries and ten commodities, a total of 31 country/commodity pairs. The main characteristic of these countries was that they all undertook substantial policy reforms during the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The paper investigates the effect of reforms on the speed at which signals were transmitted to domestic markets and on the extent of price transmission. We find that Chile, Mexico, and Argentina are the only countries whose domestic commodity markets were integrated with world markets. For the remaining cases (Ghana, Madagascar, Indonesia, Egypt, and Colombia) in only a few country/commodity pairs is there some passthrough of world price changes. In terms of the effects of policy reforms, in the majority of the cases the hypothesis of a structural break following the reform year is rejected. "

SECTION 3. Managing risks across food systems

"Accurate estimates of farm-level crop yield probability density functions (PDF's) are crucial for studying various crop insurance programs and production under risk and uncertainty. Unfortunately, farm-level crop yield PDF's are difficult to estimate due to the lack of sufficient farm yield data. County yield data cover much longer time periods than farm yield data, but using county yield distributions to conjecture about farm yield distributions is dangerous. The theoretical reason is that county yield is the average of correlated farm yields, for which there is no recognizable probability density function (PDF). This paper investigates the relationship between farm and county yield distributions using both statistical theory and the Monte-Carlo simulation method. Results show that under suitable farm yield correlation and density structures, the shape of yield distribution at the farm level is similar to that at the county level. A method is then developed for estimating and simulating farm yield distributions based on county yield PDF estimates and information contained in farm yield data. Six candidate yield models: normal, beta, Weibull, inverse hyperbolic sine transformation, a mixture of normals, and kernel density estimators are applied to Branch County corn yields after detrending nonstationary yield data. Goodness-of-fit results for normal, beta and Weibull distributions show that Weibull best fits county yields. The method for simulating farm yields is illustrated using kernel density estimates."

Ward WA, Deren BJ, D'Silva EH (1991)

"The questions this report seeks to answer are how an organization that manages public funds for research and extension could sustain organizational innovations over extended periods, and how it could learn and adapt to maximize its impact on the agricultural innovation system. Previous studies found that human resources, organizational cultures and governance structures are three of the most important factors influencing institutional change and innovative capabilities. Despite their importance, these factors have been largely neglected in the literature on agricultural research and extension policies. This document analyzes what role these factors played in the Mexican experience"

Abstract: "Scenarios play a prominent role in policy debates over climate change, but questions continue about how best to use them. We describe a new analytic method, based on robust decision making, for suggesting narrative scenarios that emerge naturally from a decision analytic framework. We identify key scenarios as those most important to the choices facing decision makers and find such cases with statistical analysis of datasets created by multiple runs of computer simulation models. The resulting scenarios can communicate quantitative judgments about uncertainty as well as support a well-defined decision process without many drawbacks of current approaches. We describe an application to long-term water planning in California."

Source: The World Bank (forthcoming). Economic Evaluation of Climate Change Adaptation Projects: Approaches for the Agricultural Sector and Beyond. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

"Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in many commodity prices. This report examines the question of whether commodity price volatility has materially changed with the rapid run up in world prices in 2006-09, followed by an equally sharp decline in many commodity prices. The report analyses international price volatility for selected agricultural commodities over the past half-century and their relationship with crude oil, fertiliser and the euro-dollar exchange rates. The analysis utilises different data sources, frequency of price observations, periods of observation, price volatility measures and a number of statistical tests to examine the various dimensions of the issue."

"This paper looks at commodity stocks, their role in price determination for storable commodities, and past efforts of international stockholding arrangements with economic provisions in stabilising world prices. Low stocks to use ratios of recent years were one of a number of contributory factors to the grain price spike in 2007-08, the paper finds. However, the experience with past international commodity agreements (ICAs) with price band provisions and stockholding obligations suggests that they had only limited success in reducing the volatility of the prices they set out to stabilise, as well as being prone to many other operational problems. The paper also suggests that as a possible response to apparently inadequate private storage, public sector storage would be costly, ineffective in countering price spikes once stocks are fully exhausted, and would crowd out private storage. Some market-based approaches to countering food price volatility are also examined as alternatives to commodity storage."

"The objective of this project is to develop a Western Canadian
corn market model to be included in the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Food and Agriculture Regional Model (FARM). Corn has gained importance recently in the feed grain market in Western Canada. The substantial increase in livestock production, rise in malting barley exports, increased incidence of fusarium in Manitoba and the recent drought conditions have significantly contributed to the rapid reduction of the feed grain surplus in this region of Canada. As a result, corn imports from the United States have become the safety valve of this market in Western Canada. For these reasons, a detailed analysis of the Western Canadian feed grain and livestock markets cannot be undertaken without incorporating a corn component."

"...The variability of farm market revenue is found to be positively related to the likelihood of off-farm work and the level of off-farm employment income, in particular for operators of relatively large farms. Hence, farm operators' production decisions appear to be conditioned on an income portfolio that includes a substantial amount of off-farm income for all sizes of farms. Social implications – These results reinforce the need to consider the portfolio effect induced by the integration of farm resources within the non-farm sector. This is particularly relevant to risk management farm policies that have typically considered decisions made in the agricultural sector in isolation. "

"We analyze consequences of changing the terms of trade between agriculture and industry on capital accumulation and on welfare of workers in different sectors. The issue was central to Soviet industrialization debate and it remains important in today's developing world. Through a simple general equilibrium model, we show that a price squeeze on peasants increases accumulation (as Preobrazhensky argued), but it makes both urban and rural workers worse-off (contrary to Preobrazhensky's contention). The desirable changes in terms of trade are shown to depend on intertemporal valuations, but, within a range, not on rural-urban welfare trade-off. Our characterization of the optimal terms of trade is remarkably simple, in which the roleof welfare weights and of relevant empirical parameters are easily as certained.We then extend our analysis to economies with labor mobility and unemployment and, using a simple model with rigid industrial wage, show that the optimal terms of trade entail a tax on urban sector,a subsidy to rural sector, and a level of urban employment such that the urban wage exceeds the marginal product of urban worker."

"Recent events in the financial and insurance markets, as well as the looming challenges of a globally changing climate point to the need to re-think the ways in which we measure and manage catastrophic and dependent risks. Management can only be as good as our measurement tools. To that end, this paper outlines detection, measurement, and analysis strategies for fat-tailed risks, tail dependent risks, and risks characterized by micro-correlations. A simple model of insurance demand and supply is used to illustrate the difficulties in insuring risks characterized by these phenomena. Policy implications
are discussed."

"Genetic diversity in crop plants is crucial for long-term world food security. This diversity is sustained in the field primarily by poor farmers in developing countries, who receive no compensation for providing this external benefit to humankind. When agricultural imports displace local production in centers of genetic diversity, this threatens both rural livelihoods and the continued provision of this external benefit. The North American Free Trade Agreement’s impact on Mexican maize farming illustrates the problem. The prospects for remedial policies are shaped by the distribution of the costs and benefits of action and inaction."

“The article reassesses the contribution of Sir Arthur Lewis’s 1954 article entitled ‘Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour’ to our understanding of economic development, and to the establishment of development economics as an academic discipline. It argues that Lewis’s key insight into the structural dualism characterising developing countries mapped out a new and distinctive field for development economics and policy. The article has had a profound impact over the last fifty years and continues to yield valuable lessons for understanding the nature of economic transformation.”

how to get good compliance

"Earlier this year, chemical-laced pork in China caused a food-safety scandal, state media said Saturday. As a result, more than 100 people, including more than 12 Chinese government employees, were sentenced in connection to this scandal – and one person was sentenced to death, according to The Associated Press."

I've just been told that clenbuterol hasn’t been banned in Canada for very long- 1997. One use: to relax the uterus before doing a caesarian section in beef cows. Apparently you can feel the uterus relax in your hands. It was also commonly used as a bronchodilator in horses with heaves…… Body builders still use a lot of clenbuterol. But it's hard on the heart and can cause allergic reactions.

S.3.3. "This section considers the incorporation of risk preferences and personality traits into the decision-making of the agents. This topic does not appear to be a well developed area of agent-based models in agriculture. There are a few papers that have modelled risk in their agents, thus these equations could be used to construct agents with different levels of
riskiness."

"We investigate an economic system in which one large agent - the Japan government changes the environment of numerous smaller agents - the Japan agriculture producers by indirect regulation of prices of agriculture goods. The reason for this intervention was that before the oil crisis in 1974 Japan agriculture production prices exhibited irregular and large amplitude changes. By means of analysis of correlations and a combination of singular spectrum analysis (SSA), principal component analysis (PCA), and time delay phase space construction (TDPSC) we study the influence of the government measures on the domestic piglet prices and production in Japan. We show that the government regulation politics was successful and leaded (i) to a decrease of the nonstationarities and to increase of predictability of the piglet price; (ii) to a coupling of the price and production cycles; (iii) to increase of determinism of the dynamics of the fluctuations of piglet price around the year average price. The investigated case is an example confirming the thesis that a large agent can change in a significant way the environment of the small agents in complex (economic or financial) systems which can be crucial for their survival or extinction."

"Develop an ex ante policy framework for disaster assistance. Until recently, assistance related to natural catastrophes has been provided on the basis of ad hoc decisions, which were largely influenced by political pressures. The subsidised multiperil crop insurance and other types of climatic insurance introduced earlier were the principal steps to base disaster assistance on a formal contract. However, irrespective of how successfully these insurances will perform, it is unlikely to become a solution to all the potential consequences of disasters. The government will continue to face economic and political necessity to provide disaster assistance. It is therefore important that the government’s responsibility with respect to such assistance is explicitly defined."

"The direct effect of the crisis on U.S. agriculture will probably not be strong."
"The main indirect effects of the crisis will come from its impacts on GDP and income in overseas markets, especially countries that are large importers of U.S. agricultural goods, on energy prices, which are falling because of the decline in world economic activity, and on the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar vis-à-vis foreign countries’ currencies."

"Canada should be poised to capitalize on this opportunity to feed the world. ...And yet despite this unprecedented opportunity for Canada to again become a global food superpower, the Canadian agriculture and agri-food business is not even keeping pace. Our share of world markets is falling, not rising, our agricultural
productivity is falling, not rising, our influence in world trade talks about agriculture is falling, not rising. As a result, our
rural communities are foregoing greater prosperity, our food processors are losing out on export opportunities and our economy is missing out on potential growth. That is a missed opportunity for Canada. But it is also far more: at a moment when it is not clear that the world can meet the growing demand for food, it is a potential humanitarian tragedy for the globe. Canada faces both an economic and a moral imperative to do better."

"For many low-income countries, the impact of structural reforms on
economic growth and poverty alleviation crucially depends on the
response of aggregate agricultural supply to changing incentives. Despite its policy relevance, the size of this parameter is still largely unknown. This paper discusses the different approaches which may be employed to quantify the agricultural supply response. It turns out that none of these approaches is likely to deliver unbiased estimates. While in cross-country regressions the problem of unobserved country characteristics cannot be fully eliminated, time-series estimations tend to suffer from the Lucas critique. Any comprehensive empirical analysis should thus rely on more than one technique in order to check the robustness of results."

"Survey data suggest that cropsharing contracts exhibit a much higher degree of uniformity than is warranted by economic fundamentals. We propose a dynamic model of contract choice to explain this phenomenon. Landowners and tenants recontract periodically, taking into account expected returns as well as conformity with local practice. The resulting stochastic dynamical system is studied using techniques from statistical mechanics. The most likely states consist of patches where contractual terms are nearly uniform, separated by boundaries where the terms shift abruptly. These and other predictions of the model are borne out by survey data on agricultural contracts in Illinois."

" Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood."

d.r. - BPS?
" His ministry therefore signed an agreement with a national statistics agency, which must provide the ministry with data on food crops, horticulture and livestock farming for the next four years."

2006. PSE considerations

We propose a methodology to fully calibrate agricultural production models with
fixed proportions specification subject to multiple constraints. The model is calibrated
against an observed acreage allocation pattern and a set of exogenous own-price supply
elasticities, and has the ability to capture important resource and policy constraints
faced by farmers at a regional level. We delineate the sets of supply elasticities that
are compatible with the observed allocation, in the sense that calibration against the
reference allocation and the exogenous supply elasticities is feasible. As the number
of constraints increases, the structure of the calibration criterion expands like a set
of matryoshka dolls, with calibration conditions for the K-constraint model nesting
calibration conditions for a virtual (K − 1)-constraint model, itself nesting calibration
conditions for a virtual (K − 2)-constraint model,...

"Four different programming models dealing with the agricultural sectors in
Canada, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark are analysed. The purpose
is to construct a knowledge base for the development of a new sector
model for Danish agriculture. This analysis has created a valuable set of
resources for use in the development of the model."

Modelling section: The simulation of future scenarios with an integrated
cross-sectoral model highlights the characteristics of
the green economy approach and allows the reader
to assess the broad impact of both green investments,
relative to business-as-usual (BAU). p.46 Box A1: The Cobb-Douglas production function in T21 for agriculture,
industry and services macro sectors

Abstract:
Economists and agricultural economists have done parallel research in estimating quantitative economic relations for various economic sectors. This study is an attempt to bring together the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors by grafting onto a master model of the total economy a set of estimated relationships for the agricultural sector. In this way it is possible to trace the effects of changes in the non-agricultural economy through the agricultural sector and in turn to make some estimates of the contribution of agriculture to the total. In estimating supply, demand and price relationships within agriculture twelve product categories are examined. This permits the results to be applied as forecasting devices for disaggregated commodity groups within agriculture. The results are not as gratifying as one would wish and consequently many of the relationships are being re-examined and re-estimated.

"The talks among ministers meeting in Geneva from 21 July 2008 broke down on 29 July over the special safeguard mechanism (SSM). What exactly is the problem?

The problem is not about protecting poor farmers in general — that is already covered by what has been agreed on the formula for developing countries to cut tariffs; smaller or no cuts for “special products”; different treatment for small and vulnerable economies, recent new members and special cases such as Bolivia; and exemptions for least-developed countries. It is not even about the SSM itself. This is about one particular circumstance."

"The United States and other members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have made
commitments to limit various types of support they provide their domestic agricultural sectors.
The Food and Agricultural Policy Research at the University of Missouri (FAPRI‐MU) has
developed a framework to evaluate how a future WTO agreement on domestic support policies
might affect U.S. farm programs."

How should organized futures markets be regulated?

"This paper examines the factors behind the rapid increase in
internationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimates the contribution of various factors such as the
increased production of biofuels from food grains and oilseeds, the weak dollar, and the increase in food
production costs due to higher energy prices. It concludes that the most important factor was the large
increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and the EU. Without these increases, global wheat and maize
stocks would not have declined appreciably, oilseed prices would not have tripled, and price increases due
to other factors, such as droughts, would have been more moderate. Recent export bans and speculative
activities would probably not have occurred because they were largely responses to rising prices."

Final report

There are increasing signs that Asian policymakers are favouring micro managing the economy through interventionist policies to counter too strong capital inflows, property price bubbles and food price inflation. So far this month, China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand have all imposed either new macro-prudential measures or capital controls. These interventionist polices are now starting to spread to the agriculture market. Taiwan plans to cut import tariffs on soy flour, cornstarch and sugar in a bid to increase local supply, while China’s State Council announced it may impose price controls on “important daily necessities” with specific mention of grain, sugar, edible oil and vegetables…

Van. Sun

- Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products

- Swedish National Food Administration was given the task of creating new food guidelines giving equal weight to climate and health.