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Published estimates of 2050 food demand exhibit an enormous range of values. This paper projects a 50–60 percent increase in total global food demand between 2019 and 2050. Our analysis indicates a substantial slowing of rice demand, a growing share of palm oil in world fats and oils markets, and a continued shift to poultry as the dominant form of meat consumption. In contrast to most existing food models, we integrate fish consumption into the analysis of vegetable and animal protein and highlight the dangers of using commonly cited feed ratios for projecting feed grain demand. More broadly, we demonstrate the value of a commodity by region approach for understanding complexities in the world food system.

We use household-level panel data from China and a quantitative framework to document the extent and consequences of factor misallocation in agriculture. We find that there are substantial within-village frictions in both the land and capital markets linked to land institutions in rural China that disproportionately constrain the more productive farmers. These frictions reduce aggregate agricultural productivity by affecting two key margins: (1) the allocation of resources across farmers (misallocation) and (2) the allocation of workers across sectors, in particular the type of farmers who operate in agriculture (selection). Selection substantially amplifies the productivity effect of distortionary policies by affecting occupational choices that worsen average ability in agriculture.

This article examines the impact of a property rights reform in rural China that allowed farmers to lease out their land. We find the reform led to increases in land rental activity in rural households. Our results indicate that the formalization of leasing rights resulted in a redistribution of land toward more-productive farmers. Consequently, output and aggregate productivity increased by 8% and 10%, respectively. We also find that the reform increased the responsiveness of land allocation across crops to changes in crop prices.

Purpose For a wide range of market actors, including policymakers, forecasting changes in commodity prices is crucial. As one of essential edible oil, peanut oil’s price swings are certainly important to predict. In this paper, the weekly wholesale price index for the period of January 1, 2010 to January 10, 2020 is used to address this specific forecasting challenge for the Chinese market. Design/methodology/approach The nonlinear auto-regressive neural network (NAR-NN) model is the forecasting method used. Forecasting performance based on various settings, such as training techniques, delay counts, hidden neuron counts and data segmentation ratios, are assessed to build the final specification. Findings With training, validation and testing root mean square errors of 5.89, 4.96 and 5.57, respectively, the final model produces reliable and accurate forecasts. Here, this paper demonstrates the applicability of the NAR-NN approach for commodity price predictions. Originality/value On the one hand, the findings may be used as independent technical price movement predictions. Conversely, they may be included in forecast combinations with forecasts derived from other models to form viewpoints of commodity price patterns for policy research.

Xylella fastidiosa is the causal agent of plant diseases that cause massive economic damage. In 2013, a strain of the bacterium was, for the first time, detected in the European territory (Italy), causing the Olive Quick Decline Syndrome. We simulate future spread of the disease based on climatic-suitability modeling and radial expansion of the invaded territory. An economic model is developed to compute impact based on discounted foregone profits and losses in investment. The model projects impact for Italy, Greece, and Spain, as these countries account for around 95% of the European olive oil production. Climatic suitability modeling indicates that, depending on the suitability threshold, 95.5 to 98.9%, 99.2 to 99.8%, and 84.6 to 99.1% of the national areas of production fall into suitable territory in Italy, Greece, and Spain, respectively. For Italy, across the considered rates of radial range expansion the potential economic impact over 50 y ranges from 1.9 billion to 5.2 billion Euros for the economic worst-case scenario, in which production ceases after orchards die off. If replanting with resistant varieties is feasible, the impact ranges from 0.6 billion to 1.6 billion Euros. Depending on whether replanting is feasible, between 0.5 billion and 1.3 billion Euros can be saved over the course of 50 y if disease spread is reduced from 5.18 to 1.1 km per year. The analysis stresses the necessity to strengthen the ongoing research on cultivar resistance traits and application of phytosanitary measures, including vector control and inoculum suppression, by removing host plants.

We study the effect of US food aid on conflict in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in US wheat production and cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any US food aid. According to our estimates, an increase in US food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts, but has no robust effect on interstate conflicts or the onset of civil conflicts. We also provide suggestive evidence that the effects are most pronounced in countries with a recent history of civil conflict.

We conduct a disaggregated empirical analysis of civil conflict at the subnational level in Africa over 1997 to 2011 using a new gridded data set. We construct an original measure of agriculture-relevant weather shocks exploiting within-year variation in weather and in crop growing season and spatial variation in crop cover. Temporal and spatial spillovers in conflict are addressed through spatial econometric techniques. Negative shocks occurring during the growing season of local crops affect conflict incidence persistently, and local conflict spills over to neighboring cells. We use our estimates to trace the dynamic response to shocks and predict how future warming may affect violence.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one-quarter to onethird of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. We develop a simple framework to systematically think about food waste based on the life cycle of a typical food item. Based on our framework, we identify problems with extant measures of food waste and propose a more consistent and practical approach. In so doing, we first show that the widely cited, extant measures of the quantity and value of food waste are inconsistent with one another and overstate the problem of food waste. By misdirecting and misallocating some of the resources that are currently put into food waste reduction efforts, this overstatement of the problem could have severe consequences for public policy. Our framework then allows documenting the points of intervention for policies aimed at reducing the extent of food waste in the life cycle of food and the identification of interdependencies between potential policy levers.

The panel approach with fixed effects and nonlinear weather effects has become a popular method to uncover weather impacts on economic outcomes, but its ability to capture long-run climatic adaptation remains unclear. Building upon a framework proposed by McIntosh and Schlenker (2006), this paper identifies empirical conditions under which the nonlinear panel approach can approximate a long-run response to climate. When these conditions fail, the obtained relationship may still be interpretable as a weighted average of underlying short-run and long-run responses. We use this decomposition to revisit recently published climate impact estimates. For spatially large panels, the estimated temperature-outcome relationship mostly reflects the long-run climatic response; this is not so for precipitation. We find some evidence of long-run climatic adaptation for crop yield outcomes in the United States and France.

Stakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors.