Food insecurity and its determinants

Peter Warr

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2014, vol. 58, issue 4, 519-537

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="ajar12073-abs-0001">

Expansion of aggregate food supplies within developing countries themselves is strongly associated with reduced undernourishment. It is not sufficient to rely solely on aggregate economic growth or reductions in poverty incidence to deliver improved food security. But the evidence also shows that higher food prices significantly increase the rate of undernourishment. It is therefore important to stimulate agricultural output without raising domestic food prices. Improvements in agricultural productivity achieve that, but agricultural protection aimed at food self-sufficiency does not, because the objective of reducing imports is achieved through an increase in domestic food prices. Although this process delivers benefits to those food insecure people who are net sellers of food, in most poor countries their number is exceeded by the food insecure people who are net buyers of food. Increased food prices make the latter group more food insecure. Food self-sufficiency does not imply food security.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ajar.2014.58.issue-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: Food insecurity and its determinants (2014)
Working Paper: Food Insecurity and its Determinants (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:58:y:2014:i:4:p:519-537

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-8489

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics is currently edited by John Rolfe, Lin Crase and John Tisdell

More articles in Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().