Frontiers of Research onForeign Assistance and Food Security

Will MastersProfessor and Chair, Department of Food and Nutrition Policy, Tufts University

www.nutrition.tufts.edu | sites.tufts.edu/willmasters

C-FARE panel on Agricultural DevelopmentAAEA annual meetings, Seattle WA

12-14 August 2012

Frontiers in all directions

Technological change

Research Problems

Development outcomes

Changed priorities for foreign aid

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Multilateral Agencies

Source: Calculated from OECD (2012), Official Bilateral Commitments by Sector, downloaded 8 August 2012 (http://stats.oecd.org/qwids). Agriculture includes forestry and fisheries. Values are billions of constant US dollars at 2010 prices (both axes).

ODA commitments for health, agriculture and in total, 1967-2010

What can we in agriculture learn from the rise in global health programs?

Rank

1 IDA 300.72 IDA 538.88 United States 463.07 IDA 867.01

2 AfDF 152.04 AfDF 226.81 IDA 399.16 BMGF 367.23

3 Denmark 114.98 France 141.80 BMGF 391.77 United States 323.58

4 United States 102.30 EU Institutions 114.79 France 342.42 EU Institutions 181.73

5 IFAD 80.72 BMGF 99.03 AfDF 235.65 Canada 155.20

6 Germany 66.88 IFAD 87.50 EU Institutions 186.30 IFAD 129.49

7 Belgium 66.43 United States 84.78 IFAD 122.76 France 95.13

8 EU Institutions 65.75 J apan 66.12 J apan 73.36 Germany 87.25

9 J apan 58.42 Sweden 60.58 Korea 56.63 Belgium 77.42

10 United Kingdom 45.06 Germany 54.31 Germany 56.33 J apan 75.13

11 Canada 43.48 Belgium 53.48 Belgium 53.20 Ireland 41.81

12 Netherlands 36.19 Norway 50.34 Canada 41.40 Norway 35.39

13 France 32.14 United Kingdom 30.70 Norway 40.64 Italy 32.36

14 BMGF 24.80 Ireland 22.56 Denmark 31.46 Denmark 29.17

15 Norway 20.80 Netherlands 19.01 Ireland 24.79 Spain 19.31

20082005 2006 2007

Changed leadership in foreign aid

Top 15 donors’ foreign aid commitments to African agriculture, 2005-2008

Note: Exact amounts for BMGF have been obscured because methodology differs from that used by the DAC. Source: P. Pingali, G. Traxler and T. Nguyen (2011), “Changing Trends in the Demand and Supply of Aid for Agriculture Development and the Quest for Coordination.” Annual Meetings of the AAEA, July 24–26, 2011.

Chris Elias, M.D.

Raj Shah, M.D.

Jim Kim, M.D.

The top three donors to African agriculture are led by health-care experts!

Agriculture Health

Public support of private markets for most inputs and outputs, Collective action for public-domain resources

Innovations

Interventions

Agriculture =?= HealthSimilar but different:

Stylized innovations and interventions in agriculture and health

Similar problems, different solutions

Location-specific: Diverse agro-ecologies

call for local trials from global crosses

Disease-specific: Shared human biology

calls for local access to global knowledge

Delivered geographically: Market infrastructure and institutions

Delivered individually: Non-market service delivery

and behavior change

Agriculture =?= Health

Public domain knowledge, common property resources and other social structures

Farm input suppliers

Many diverse farmers

Farm output marketers

Many diverse food consumers and health-care beneficiaries

Health care providers

Health input suppliers

Similar but different: Stylized industry structure

==> A very different research agenda!

Frontiers of agri-health research

Core hypotheses of integrated agriculture-nutrition-health programs

• Focus on:• Service provision for individual beneficiaries• Household production of nutritious/healthy things• Advisory services and knowledge

• Focus off:• Markets (no competition among alternative suppliers)• Income (no separability between production & consumption)• Information (no optimization by consumers)

• This is not crazy! • It is well suited to the needs of health service providers