All workshops will be held on Sunday 16 August 2009. Cost for attendance is USD 100 per workshop. Reservation can be made on the registration form.
Pre-conference Workshop #1: Innovative policies and institutions to support agro-industries development
Organiser: Carlos DaSilva
Venue: Room 305B
Background
In collaboration with the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will hold a workshop on "Innovative Policies and Institutions to Support Agro-Industries Development", as part of the technical program of IAAE's Triennial Conference of 2009.
Agro-industries are an important source of employment and income generation worldwide, occupying a dominant position in manufacturing and representing an important demand driver for agricultural products. As part of its mandate to provide food security for the world’s growing population, FAO promotes the development of agro-industries through its technical programs, including activities in the areas of policy advice, capacity building, advocacy, awareness raising, investment promotion and resource mobilization.
Objectives
The workshop aims to gather researchers, government officials, private sector representatives and development practitioners to discuss proven, innovative approaches to promote the development of competitive, equitable and inclusive agro-industries. The goal is to offer a platform whereby novel international experiences in agro-industries development policies and support institutions can be discussed, lessons can be learned and recommendations can be made to improve the effectiveness of agro-industries promotion initiatives by governments and development organizations. Areas of special interest for discussion include:
Workshop Program
| Time | Theme | Presenter |
| 08:30-10:30 | Session 1 - Agroindustrial Development Experiences | |
| 08:30-09:00 | Introduction: Policies and Institutions for Agro-Industries Development | Carlos A. da Silva, FAO - Rome |
| 09:00-9:30 | Agro-industrial Investment Promotion in Tunisia | Mustapha Jouili, Tunisia |
| 09:30-10:00 | China Experience: Policy Reforms for Agribusiness Development | Hugh Deng, Indiana University and Carleton University, USA |
| 10:00-10:30 | Lessons for Agro-Industry Promotion | John Wilkinson, Federal Rural University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00-12:30 | Session 2 - Agroindustry Promotion: Lessons from India | |
| 11:00-11:30 | Institutional Innovations and Models in the Development of Agroindustries: Strengths, Weaknesses and Lessons | Vasant P. Gandhi, Indian Institute of Management |
| 11:30-12:00 | Linking Farmers to Market through Processing - Role of Agro-industry Clusters with Special Reference to Mango Crop in South India | Sudha Mysore, Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, Indian Council of Agriculture Research |
| 12:00-12:30 | Public-Private Partnerships for Agribusiness Development in Thailand and India: Experience, Issues, and Strategies | Sukhpal Singh, Centre for Management in Agriculture, Indian Institute of Management |
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | |
| 13:30-15:30 | Session 3 - Agroindustrial Development Models and Approaches | |
| 13:30-14:00 | Business Networks As Innovative Institutions to Support Agro-Industries Development | Edward Mabaya, Emerging Markets Program, Cornell University |
| 14:00-14:30 | Process and Product Innovations in the Cassava Agro-industrial Sectors in Africa: Stimulating Effect of Presidential Initiatives | Lateef O. Sanni, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria |
| 14:30-15:00 | Public-Private Partnerships for Agro-Industry Development: Sustainability Options for Fertilizer Subsidies | Paul Thangata, International Food Policy Research Institute |
| 15:00-15:30 | Accelerating Post-harvest Technology Commercialization through Industrial Extension: The Philippine Experience | Rodolfo P. Estigoy, Central Luzon State University, The Philippines |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 16:00-18:00 | Session 4 - Further International Experiences | |
| 16:00-16:30 | Promotion of El Salvador Exports through Training and Targeted Financial Support for Small and Intermediate Agroindustries | Francisco J. Bueso, Escuela Agrícola Panamericana, Zamorano |
| 15:30-17:00 | Transiting Cassava into an Urban Food and Industrial Commodity through Agro-processing and Market Driven Approaches: Lessons from Africa | Adebayo B. Abass, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Nigeria |
| 17:00-17:30 | University and Government Partnership Towards a Sustainable Crop Production Sector: The Case of Fruits and Vegetables Seed Center, Nueva Ecija, Philippines | Quirino D. Dela Cruz, Central Luzon State University, The Philippines |
| 17:30-18:00 | Development and Diffusion of Vegetable Post Harvest and Processing Technologies in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region of Asia | Antonio Acedo Jr., The World Vegetable Center, Laos Office |
| 18:00-18:30 | Conclusions and Way Forward | Carlos A. da Silva, FAO - Rome |
Pre-conference Workshop #2: Rural restructuring and the difficult ways of specialization or diversification: Lessons from a cross-country approach
Organiser: Bruno Losch, World Bank
Venue: Room 305C
Workshop Presentation
Developing world economies are engaged in major processes of structural transformation, whose common pattern reveals a progressive shift from agriculture to industry and services, towards urbanization. However, each country follows its own path of economic transition, strongly influenced by the historical conditions of its emergence and integration within the world economy.
In many developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), agriculture still plays a central role in both the national economy (GDP, trade, and labor force) and in the livelihood of the majority of the population. Often trivialized, this evidence is not neutral and implies that the debate on agriculture must be put into perspective with the existing economic alternatives in terms of growth and employment.
Due to the current stage of structural transformation of many low-income and lower-middle-income countries and to the difficulties of economic diversification within the high competition of a global open economy – if compared to other periods of the world history – the evolution of agriculture in the next decades remains critical for development. It will occur in a unique situation where the process of economic development must deal simultaneously with the challenges of globalization and unachieved demographic transitions.
For agriculture, one major dimension of the globalization process is the restructuring of the agrifood markets, characterized by horizontal and vertical integration, leading to differentiation among farmers. In the meanwhile, to cope with the implications of an evolving environment, rural households have developed adaptation strategies, which are reshaping the rural economies. Understanding these two concomitant evolutions is a key for policy design.
The objective of this workshop is to enhance the understanding of these evolutions. Using the results of a recently completed World Bank research program, and adopting a comparative approach between countries, the workshop will highlight the role played by agriculture at different stages of economic transition, stress the changes underway within specific rural situations, and discuss the consequences of these changes in terms of policy implications.
Agenda
8h30 - 9:00 Presentation of the Workshop
This opening session will introduce the context of the workshop. It will briefly present the rationale, the three main hypotheses and the framework of the RuralStruc Program on which several presented case studies are drawn, as well as the main characteristics of the fieldwork implemented by the Program.
Speaker: Bruno Losch, RuralStruc Program coordinator, World Bank, USA
9:00 - 10:30 Session 1: Market Access in a Globalized World: Prospects for Developing Country Farmers
The global restructuring of the agrifood markets and the increasing asymmetry within the international competition lead to the development of differentiation processes among farm, marketing, transformation and distribution structures. What is the balance between the potential integration of farmers in the restructured markets and their possible exclusion? What are the real benefits for farmers who integrate new value chains? What are the amplitude, rapidity, and characteristics of these processes of integration and marginalization? Do they induce differentiation and segmentation dynamics with concentration, marginalization and, sometimes, exclusion, within and from the farm sector leading to the emergence or consolidation of multiple-track agriculture?
Speakers: RuralStruc teams: Lalaina Randrianarison (Madagascar), Francisco Perez (Nicaragua), Ibrahima Hathie (Senegal)
Discussant: Dirk Troskie, University of Western Cape, South Africa
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30 Session 2: Understanding Rural Households' Strategies: Reshaping or Adaptation?
Rural households engage in new configurations of activities and income characterized by a changing role of agriculture and a growing importance of off-farm activities and transfers (private transfers related to migration and, possibly, public transfers linked to specific support systems). What are the characteristics of these new configurations? How do they differ between countries? Is it an overall process? Is the growing diversification a decisive trend toward structural transformation or only a way to adapt?
Speakers: RuralStruc team: Lalaina Randrianarison (Madagascar), Francisco Perez (Nicaragua), Ibrahima Hathie (Senegal)
Discussant: Colin Poulton, SOAS, UK
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 - 16:00 Session 3: Which Type of Policies to Help the Structural Transformation Today?
The careful balance between rural development and growing industrialization, price incentives and the implementation of the technical package of the Green Revolution were powerful policies which helped structural change in Asia. In the current context of globalization, with growing asymmetries between countries, what are the policy options for the "agriculture based" countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa - in order to deal with their structural change?
Speakers: Peter Timmer, Centre for Global Development, USA; Sandrine Fréguin-Gresh, Bruno Losch, RuralStruc Program
Discussant: Goran Djurfeldt, Lund University, Sweden (tbc)
16:00 - 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 - 18:00 Session 4: Knowledge Challenge and Research Agenda
The weakness of the knowledge base and the importance of information gaps regarding agriculture and rural development are a common concern shared by national stakeholders and the international community. However, what are the needs in order to identify the processes of structural change and how is it possible to capture the new rural realities? What does it mean in terms of information systems design? How can one help the broadening of information systems in order to facilitate the understanding of rural households (and not only farm households) and composite systems of activities and income (and not only production systems)?
Speakers: Pierre-Marie Bosc, Centre International de Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France; Agnes Andersson (Afrint/RuDe) and Martin Andersson (RuDe), Lund University, Sweden
Discussant: Catherine Laurent, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), France
18:00 - 18:30 Wrap Up
Pre-conference Workshop #3: Diet and obesity: Role of prices and policies
Organisers: Véronique Nichèle and Jay Variyam
Venue: Room 311 B
Time: 8h30 – 18h00
Scope and Content
Economic analysis of food choice traditionally has focused on the estimation of demand models and Engle functions to characterize the influence of prices and incomes on foods and related consumption goods. Recently, there has been a growing interest in broadening the scope of food choice analysis to better understand the effect of food prices and public policies such as taxes/subsidies, consumer education, and nutrition labeling on diet quality, and on health outcomes such as obesity. This interest stems from several fronts. First, recent work in health economics has argued that decline in relative food prices is a major reason for the increase in obesity rates in many countries around the globe. The price decline is related to both the decline in prices of raw food inputs as well as to improvements in food preparation and processing technologies. Second, some have suggested that high relative prices of nutrient-rich foods such as fruits and vegetables is the reason why people, especially the low-income population, substitute away from these foods to cheaper calorie-dense “junk food.” The resulting increase in calorie intake leads to poor diet quality and obesity. Third, both the previous lines of explanation have led to proposals on raising taxes on energy-dense foods and/or proving price subsidies for nutrient-dense foods as a public policy solution to address poor diets and rising obesity. Fourth, as food have become more processed and pre-prepared and our understanding of the health effects of diet quality has increased, there is greater demand for providing nutrition information to consumers through education and labeling. All these developments have implications for public policy. Assessing the likely effects of food taxes and subsidies requires a clear understanding of how food choices, nutrient intakes, and obesity levels are related to changes in food prices. Yet, until recently, there has been limited empirical research on both the short- and long-term impacts of food prices on poor diets and obesity. There is also growing interest in, and debate around, the effects of agricultural support policies, nutrition education and labeling policies, and food assistance policies on diet quality and obesity.
This pre-conference workshop is intended to bring together a growing body of work in this area. Several proposed papers examine the role of food prices and other policy instruments in addressing poor diet quality and obesity in industrialized countries. Issues addressed include quantifying the long-run role of food prices in explaining the increase in obesity rates, ascertaining how prices vary among foods of different nutritional quality and the potential impact of such variations on diet quality, the impact of food taxes and/or subsidies on diet quality and obesity among consumers, especially low-income groups, the impact of public policies such as agricultural crop supports and nutrition education and labeling, and the use of extensive panel datasets to understand the evolution of demand for foods and food attributes that play a role in diet quality.
The workshop is organized in three sessions. Session I will focus on the role of food prices on diet quality and obesity, Session II will address the role of public policy instruments and food attributes on food choices, and Session III on variation in food demand and prices over time and across regions and implications of such variations and of agricultural support policies for obesity.
Session I
Rapporteur: Lisa Mancino
1. Food prices and obesity: Long-run effects in U.S. metropolitan areas
Xin Xu (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), Jayachandran N Variyam (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA), Jenny Zhao (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), and Frank Chaloupka (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Presenter: Jay Variyam
Discussant: J.M. Gil
2. Modelling quality and quantity in food expenditure surveys: structural approach with an application to the ex-ante evaluation of a nutritional tax on beverages
Fabrice Etilé (PSE and INRA-ALISS UR, France), Véronique Nichèle (INRA-ALISS UR, France), Jean-Marc Robin (Université de Paris 1 and University College London)
Presenter: Véronique Nichèle
Discussant: TBD
3. Food Policy and Price Variation: The effect of price variation on diet quality
Thomas Allen, Olivier Allais, Véronique Nichèle, Martine Padilla
Presenter: Thomas Allen
Discussant: B.-H. Lin
4. The impact of price intervention policies to improve dietary quality in Spain
José Maria Gil, Ana Maria Angulo, Xavier Mitmet
Presenter: José Maria Gil
Discussant: R. Nayga
Session II
Rapporteur: Pierre Combris
5. Price food policy and public health: Who may it concern?
Patrice Bertail (CREST, LS and MODAL'X, University Paris 10, France), France Caillavet (INRA-ALISS UR, France), Véronique Nichèle (INRA-ALISS UR, France)
Presenter: France Caillavet
Discussant: L. Mancino
6. Economic incentives in dietary improvement among food stamp recipients
Biing-Hwan Lin (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA), Steven T. Yen (University of Tennessee, USA), Diansheng Dong (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA), and David M. Smallwood (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA)
Presenter: Biing-Hwan Lin
Discussant: TBD
7. Identifying consumer valuation patterns of alternative nutrition and health labels combinations: Evidence from Spain
Jesús Barreiro-Hurlé (Andalusiam Agricultural Research Institute, Spain), Azucena Gracia (Centre for Agrofood Reseach and Technology, Spain) and Tiziana de-Magistris (Centre for Agrofood Reseach and Technology, Spain)
Presenter: Azucena Gracia
Discussant: Jay Variyam
8. Organic food consumption practices in France
Daniel Hassan (Toulouse School of Economics, GREMAQ-INRA, France), Sylvette Monier-Dilhan (Toulouse School of Economics, GREMAQ-INRA, France), and Véronique Nichèle (INRA ALISS, France)
Presenter: Sylvette Monier-Dilhan
Discussant: K. Rickertsen
Session III
Rapporteur: Azucena Garcia
9. Meat consumption in France from 1965 to 2008: Description and interpretation
Arouna Ouedraogo (INRA-ALISS UR, France) and Véronique Nichèle (INRA-ALISS UR, France)
Presenter: P. Arouna Ouedraogo
Discussant: J. Alston
10. Geographic and time variation in food prices in the U.S: Implications for diet quality
Jessica Todd (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA), Ephraim Leibtag (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA) and Lisa Mancino (Economic Research Service, USDA, USA)
Presenter: Lisa Mancino
Discussant: F. Caillavet
11. Agricultural commodity policy and obesity
Julian Alston, Abigail Okrent
Presenter: Julian Alston or Abigail Okrent
Discussant: P. Combris
12. Can consumer panel data help to understand obesity prevalence in French households?
Pierre Combris, Christine Boizot-Szantai
Presenter: Pierre Combris
Discussant: TBD