Since the 2007–08 food crisis, many thoughtful analyses have addressed the causes and impacts of high and volatile international food prices and proposed solutions to the crisis. These studies have covered global as well as local food price dynamics and policy reactions. The food price problem...

We assess the relative impacts of receiving cash versus food transfers using a randomized design. Drawing on data collected in eastern Niger, we find that households randomized to receive a food basket experienced larger, positive impact on measures of food consumption and diet quality than...

Global agriculture must significantly increase production to meet by mid-century the demands for food, feed, and fiber posed by the world’s enlarging population. An important requirement to meeting those demands is a lifting of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates. The...

The Global Food Price Crisis of 2007-2011 had mixed effects on the poor in developing nations. By some estimates, the Crisis lifted nearly 24 million poor farmers out of poverty; however, it also cast 68 million net food buyers into poverty. In this paper, we analyze the distributional impacts...

In this paper we examine the effects of media coverage of commodity prices increases and decreases on the price of the commodity and how media coverage in other commodities affects prices. We provide evidence of the relationship between media coverage and its intensity to the price level of...

This study uses nationally representative data from 360 farm households in Benin to estimate how access to storage technologies and storage losses from insects affects a smallholder African farmer’s decision to hold grain from production, in an environment of high price variability. We find...

The literature on the impacts of biofuels on food prices is characterized by contradictory findings and a wide range of estimates. To bring more clarity to this issue, we review studies on U.S. corn ethanol expansion released between 2008 and 2013. Normalizing corn price impacts by the increase...

Agriculture’s reliance on irrigation and concerns over water scarcity raise the question of how global food output and trade could be affected if the issue of water shortfall needs to be resolved on the back of agriculture. To understand changes in food production and international...