Simla Tokgoz

Food security, farming, and climate change to 2050: Scenarios, results, policy options

As the global population grows and incomes in poor countries rise, so too, will the demand for food, placing additional pressure on sustainable food production. Climate change adds a further challenge, as changes in temperature and precipitation threaten agricultural productivity and the capacity to feed the worlds population. This study assesses how serious the danger to food security might be and suggests some steps policymakers can take to remedy the situation.

Land allocation effects of the global ethanol surge: predictions from the international FAPRI model.

We quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on world agriculture using the multimarket, multicommodity international FAPRI model. The model incorporates trade-offs between biofuel, feed, and food production and consumption and international feedback effects of the emergence through world prices and trade. We shock the model with exogenous changes in ethanol demand, first in the United States, then in Brazil and other countries, and compute shock multipliers for land allocation decisions for important crops and countries. The Brazilian ethanol expansion using sugarcane has fewer consequences on existing arable land allocation than the U.S. ethanol expansion does using corn feedstock. (JEL Q17, Q42)

The Global Bioenergy Expansion: How Large Are the Food−Fuel Trade-Offs?

We summarize a large set of recent simulations and policy analyses based on FAPRIs world multimarket, partial-equilibrium models. We first quantify and project the emergence of biofuel markets in US and world agriculture for the coming decade. Then, we perturb the models with incremental shocks in US and world ethanol consumption in deviation from this projected emergence to assess their effects on world agricultural and food markets. Various food-biofuel trade-offs are quantified and examined. Increases in food prices are moderate for the US ethanol expansion and even smaller for the ethanol expansion outside the United States, which is based on sugarcane feedstock, which has little feedback on other markets. With the US expansion, the high protection in the US ethanol market limits potential adjustments in the world ethanol markets and increases the demand for feedstock within the United States. Changes in US grain and oilseed market prices propagate to world markets, as the United States is a large exporter in these markets. With changes in world prices, land allocation in the rest of the world responds to the new relative prices as in the United States but with smaller magnitudes because price transmission to local markets is less than full.

Measuring Distortions to Agricultural Incentives for Value Chain Analysis: Evidence from Indian Value Chains

We extend the nominal rate of protection (NRP) methodology to a value chain framework. We develop our methodology for three types of value chains: a new value chain created by policy, a value chain in which a by‐product is created in the processing of a commodity, and a value chain in which processing of a commodity generates new product(s). We consider two cases of value chains: when the commodity is tradable and when it is non‐tradable. The proposed indicator, value chain NRP, allows policy‐makers to see an aggregate measure of all policy impacts on all the commodities and products in the value chain, normalised at the farm level. We apply the methodology to selected value chains in India. Our results indicate that farmers are subsidised, but at different rates. Both sugarcane producers and sugar producers are protected, but sugar producers are protected at higher rates. Producers of downstream products such as ethanol and molasses are taxed, whereas the crushing industry is subsidised. We observe that there is increasing protection along the value chain from commodity to product for the oilseeds sector, whereas the picture is less clear for the sugarcane value chain.