 TRANSITION AND FOOD CONSUMPTIONWilliam Liefert (), Bryan Lohmar and Eugenia Serova No 25844, 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa from International Association of Agricultural Economists Abstract: This paper examines why transition from planned to market economies in the countries of the former Soviet bloc has changed their mix and volumes of food consumption. During transition, consumption of high value products, such as meat and dairy products, has plummeted, while consumption of staple foods such as bread and potatoes has remained steady, or even increased. The paper shows that in the pre-reform planned economy, planners "desired" the production and national consumption of high value (and cost) foodstuffs more than consumers. When market reform resulted in consumer prices adjusting to reflect the full cost of production, consumer demand switched from high cost foods to other goods and services. The demand-driven nature of food restructuring in these countries has implications for food security, reinforcing the argument that any food security problems are not mainly the result of inadequate aggregate supplies of agricultural products. Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae03:25844 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC. |
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