Professional Documents
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224 S
224 S
Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, emeritus, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
The evolution of the food policy perspective simplistic in methodology and too anecdotal in presentation).
It has been more than 25 years since Food Policy Analysis (1) Instead, we targeted the message at practitioners, an ill-defined
was published and more than 30 years since the initial outline for group of analysts in need of an understanding of how a
the book was circulated among the authors. It is fair to say that complicated and interconnected food system actually worked.
the volume has been very influential in thinking about food Training these practitioners has turned out to be the main
policy issues since its publication and it remains in use as a mission of the book.
textbook for a number of university courses (2). The early drafts of Food Policy Analysis (henceforth FPA)
Its academic success is a bit surprising, because the audience were stimulated by the attention to high food prices following
was not primarily university faculty (for whom it seemed too the world food crisis in 1973–74 and the fears of a repeat in
1979–80. But by the 4th full draft, in 1982, it became apparent
that surpluses were returning to world food markets. A volume
predicated on a world running out of food would have been out-
1
Published in a supplement to The Journal of Nutrition. Presented at the of-date before the ink was dry and a full-scale revamping of the
workshop “The Impact of Climate Change, the Economic Crisis, and the analytical messages was needed. The new theme, which has
Increase in Food Prices on Malnutrition,” held in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, January
stood the test of a quarter-century of market fluctuations, was
25, 2009. The workshop was organized by Martin W. Bloem, United Nations
World Food Programme, Rome, Italy; Klaus Kraemer, Sight and Life, Basel, the need for flexibility to cope with market instability.
Switzerland; and Richard D. Semba, Johns Hopkins University School of Such flexibility is not a natural feature of domestic policy
Medicine, and with the support of an educational grant from Sight and Life, making, in the food sector or elsewhere, and providing the
Basel, Switzerland. Supplement contents are solely the responsibility of the analytical tools for understanding how to create flexible responses
authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the organization
that they are affiliated with. Publication costs for this supplement were defrayed
both to high and low price environments turned out to be a real
in part by the payment of page charges. This publication must therefore be challenge. But the relevance of the approach remains to this day,
hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely accounting for the continued usefulness of an analytical guidebook
to indicate this fact. Supplement Coordinator disclosures: Martin Bloem, Klaus that is a quarter-century old. The approach presented here builds
Kraemer, and Richard Semba have no relationships to disclose. Supplement
on FPA (1,2), Getting Prices Right (3), and ongoing analysis of the
Guest Editor disclosures: A. Catharine Ross and Richard Semba have no
relationships to disclose. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of 2008 world food crisis, e.g. “Causes of High Food Prices” (4).
the authors and are not attributable to the sponsors or the publisher, Editor, or
Editorial Board of The Journal of Nutrition. The changing global environment
2
Author disclosure: C. P. Timmer, no conflicts of interest.
3
Present address: 415 Oak Point Place, Santa Rosa, CA 95409.
The international context for domestic food policy decision
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ptimmer63@gmail. making has changed substantially since FPA was drafted in the
com. early 1980s. Five basic trends stand out:
The future agenda: human capital and The political economy of food policy
institutional capacity Finally, there are a set of questions that revolve around the
Stepping back from the details of how to do food policy analysis, political economy of food policy. When politics is in command,
several other questions arise: who will do the analysis and where which seems to be the normal state of affairs for most developing
will they be trained; what is the appropriate institutional base countries, how do efficiency issues stay on the agenda?
for food policy analysts; and why do this difficult analysis if When markets are in command, which seems to be the main
politics is in command? policy advice from the donor community to poor countries, how
do distributional and welfare issues stay on the agenda?
Where (and how) will food policy analysts be trained? More broadly, how do we educate policymakers as well as
The role of scholar-practitioners analysts? In democratic societies, it would seem to require
The human capital investment needed to train skilled food educating citizens so that they could be informed voters, but the
policy analysts is substantial and the educational institutions time horizon implied by this approach is very long indeed.
capable of providing the training are hard to find. A successful Other articles in this supplement include (10–25).
food policy analyst needs an unusual blend of technical skills,
mostly economic, and a broad vision of how food systems Acknowledgment
interact and evolve over time. University Ph.D. programs have The sole author had responsibility for all parts of the manuscript.
basically stopped doing this kind of training. Economics
programs, e.g., increasingly focus on microeconomic decision
making that needs to be understood through careful experimen-
tal design of the data needed for analysis. Some extraordinarily Literature Cited
smart students have come out of these programs with field 1. Timmer CP, Falson WP, Pearson SR. Food policy analysis. Baltimore:
experience in rural settings and their journal articles are Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank; 1983.
technical gems. But it is rare for these students to be trained in 2. Food policy analysis, pages 1–301 [cited 2009 1 Oct]. Available from:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/FRI/indonesia/documents/foodpolicy/
the macroeconomics of growth and development, much less
fronttoc.fm.html.
economic history. Such students have little intuition about how
3. Timmer CP. Getting prices right: the scope and limits of agricultural
complex food systems function and change. Undergraduates price policy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; 1986.
seeking graduate programs to train them as food policy analysts 4. Timmer CP. Causes of high food prices. Asian development outlook
have nowhere to go. update. Manila: Asian Development Bank; 2008. Available from: http://
The failure of academic programs to provide coherent training www.adb.org/documents/books/ADO/2008/Update/Part02-Food-Prices.
in food policy analysis is partly due to the lack of clear career tracks pdf
for such analysts. Just where are the jobs? What institutional base 5. World Bank. The East Asian miracle: economic growth and public
policy. London and New York: Oxford University Press; 1993.
provides the best opportunities for food policy analysts to do good
6. Timmer CP. A world without agriculture: the structural transformation
work and be effective advocates for sound policies and programs? in historical perspective. The Henry Wendt lecture. Washington, DC:
The historical record is quite fuzzy, as successful food policy units American Enterprise Institute; 2009.
have functioned in planning agencies, food logistics agencies, trade 7. Timmer CP, Akkus S. The structural transformation as a pathway out of
and commerce ministries, ministries of health, even ministries of poverty: analytics, empirics and politics. Working paper 150. Wash-
228S Supplement