Showing papers in "Food Policy in 2005"

TL;DR: A brief introduction to the evolution and nature of private food safety and quality standards, highlighting the resultant impacts on the structure and modus operandi of supply chains for agricultural and food products and the challenges posed for processes of agricultural development is provided in this paper.

TL;DR: Third-party certification (TPC) has emerged as a significant regulatory mechanism in the global agrifood system It reflects a broader shift from public to private governance Traditionally, government agencies were responsible for monitoring food safety and quality standards However, the globalization of the agri-food system, the consolidation of the food retail industry, and the rise in private retailer standards have precipitated a shift in responsibility for this task to third-party certifiers as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess a variety of scenarios for adoption of organic farming, localised food systems and sustainable transport to indicate the substantial potential to reduce environmental costs in the UK food system.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector and address four questions: (1) are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets? (2) To what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests? (3) Is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries? (4) What is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings?

TL;DR: In the context of near-absence of public food safety and quality standards, or the lack of eective implementation of them where they exist, and in order to increase product quality and consistency and differentiate their product from traditional produce retailers, leading supermarket chains in Central America are imposing private standards on their fresh produce suppliers as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: The authors examines how European retailers are using private standards for food safety and quality as risk management and competitive tools and the strategic responses of leading Kenyan and other developing country supplier/exporters to such standards.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the evolution of the organisational architecture of agricultural research in Africa and argue that the notion of a global agricultural research system, and associated efforts to create a coordinated, multi-layered, supra-national research infrastructure, are at odds with both the realities of research at national level, and the bio-physical and socio-economic heterogeneity that characterises rural Africa.

TL;DR: In this article, a case study of two villages in the Transkei area of South Africa is presented, where the majority of households now buy their main food items from supermarkets rather than from local shops and farmers.

TL;DR: The case of Hortico Agrisystems illustrates the considerable challenges and costs faced by supermarket suppliers in sourcing from a broad base of small-scale producers in the context of evolving food safety and quality standards as mentioned in this paper.

TL;DR: In the process of searching for sustainable trajectories in the food system, the authors reviewed and discussed the importance of tightening feedback loops between ecosystems, actors in food production, and discussed how to find the optimal trajectories.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze how the levels and the monitoring systems of the standards formulated and enforced by governments, influence the strategies of retail chains, leading to conclusions regarding what variables governments should take into account when they define minimum quality standards.

TL;DR: Examination of the factors that influence overweight and obesity among school-age children in the United States finds that Black and Hispanic children seem to associate more with the development of at risk for being overweight and overweight.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the spatial determinants of the prevalence of poverty for small spatially defined populations in rural Malawi and used these to develop global and local models of poverty prevalence.

TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of decoupling on farming in Ireland is assessed using profit maximising multi-period linear programming models and the number of farmers that would financially benefit from disengaging from production is projected.

TL;DR: This paper used small area estimation methods and spatial analysis to generate high-resolution poverty maps and combined them with geo-referenced biophysical data relevant to maize-based agriculture in Mexico.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the development of public and private standards for milk as an input to the dairy processing sector in Argentina and Brazil, focusing on the use of private standards to drive down costs in the supply chain in order to reduce the consumer prices.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify and map critical spatial factors grouped into natural, human, social, financial and physical capital assets, which largely determine livelihood options, strategies and welfare of agropastoral communities in a semi-arid district of southern Kenya.

TL;DR: This article examined the geographic dimensions of food consumption in Ecuador, which has one of the highest rates of chronic infant undernutrition in Latin America and found that the food poor are concentrated in certain locations with a significant cluster identified in the central Andean region.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the Divisional Secretariat poverty map, derived by combining the principal component analysis and the synthetic small area estimation technique, as the data source, to analyse its spatial clustering in Sri Lanka.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the correlates of underweight status among children using two complementary methods in a framework that allows incorporating both environmental and household-level factors, using individual children as the units of analysis in 19 African countries, and subnational survey strata in 43 African, Asian and Latin American countries.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the geographic distribution of poverty in Vietnam by applying small area estimation methods to household budget data and population census data and the resulting district-level poverty estimates suggest that the incidence of poverty is highest in the remote northern and central highlands and lowest in the south-east and in large urban centres.

TL;DR: In this article, a special issue of Food Policy includes examples of poverty and food security mapping used to support policy development in agricultural and rural areas and illustrate advances in our capacity to assess welfare over large areas and at detailed spatial resolutions.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors determined the spatial variation of rural poverty in Bangladesh and its relation to people's livelihood assets affecting their ability to procure food, indicating the need for continued focus on providing education and access to income-generating opportunities so that the poor can better meet their food needs.

TL;DR: In this paper, a representative survey of Romanian households highlights the importance of subsistence food production to consumer welfare, and the characteristics of those engaged in food production are profiled and sub-groups identified using a combination of factor and cluster analysis.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the reality and intensity of such a risk and found no evidence that presence of GM crops in a country causes negative perception of non-GM food imported from that country.

TL;DR: In this paper, a study of fresh produce markets in Brazil showed that the importance of the product in the firm's activities or sales, market power, scale of operations, and investment in brand capital and reputation are key firm-specific factors encouraging the use of private grade and standards regimes over public ones.

TL;DR: A path analysis of attitudinal, motivational, demographic and behavioural variables that influence consumer dispositions towards biotechnology is presented in this paper. But, despite current findings that consumers, on average, have negative attitudes to biotechnologies such as cloning and genetic engineering, considerable variability can be found in the direction and strength of these attitudes.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for a more systematic allocation of technical assistance to developing countries, based on relevant data and comparisons of benefits and costs of different kinds of capacity building.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the application of the Precautionary Principle to food and agricultural policy, but also raise issues associated with unintended consequences arising from it and provide a general model of political economy that includes both precaution and consequences, discusses issues related to precaution and irreversibility, and illustrates how unintended consequences can affect welfare.

TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative model is used to analyze the possible economic impact of commercializing a crop for which there may be sizable consumer resistance, and under what conditions, the economic benefits from biotech wheat could be outweighed by economic costs.