Academic article

This article elaborates on the importance of informal seed markets for African family farmers. Using a comprehensive data set with 9660 observations across six countries and covering 40 crops, the authors show that farmers access 90.2 % of their seed from informal systems with 50.9 % of that deriving from local markets. However, current investments are mostly geared towards formal markets instead of informal ones, while the informal sector remains the core for seed acquisition in Africa. »

This article in the World Development Journal studies the effect of livestock gift program in Zambia on household food security. Smallholder livestock ownership has potential to enhance food security by raising incomes of the poor and by increasing the availability of nutrient-dense foods. »

This article employs a calorie-based approach to determine which feed calories do compete with human consumption for crop use and considers to what extent alternative scenarios could have reduced this competition between food and feed. Animal production exerts significant demands on land, water and food resources. However, demand for animal source foods has more than tripled over the past 50 years and the livestock sector has transitioned towards more intensive and concentrated production systems. »

This article examines the impact that export restrictions have on price volatility. Since 2007 food prices have become significantly higher and more volatile. This impacts food security because it affects household incomes and purchasing power. A more and more frequent response to price volatility is the use of export restrictions to stabilize domestic prices. However, when a country is a large exporter, the restrictions can even increase global price volatility. »

n this article in Nature Climate Change Hertel argues that using food prices to assess climate change impacts on food security is misleading. Since climate changes has different impacts on income a broader measure of household well-being, like changes in absolute poverty, is needed. Household food consumption depends on the balance between prices and income. Many farmers and farm workers benefit from higher food prices through better sales, more jobs or higher wages, as long as they sell more than they buy. »

This article explores how sustainable livestock production can be designed to limit its impacts on the environment and available resources. There are several strategies to curb the adverse environmental impacts of the livestock production and implementing sustainable livestock production is one of them. In this strategy livestock feed components that compete with direct human food crop production are reduced. The article shows, zero use of food competing foodstuffs would deliver substantial environmental improvements across a range of indicators as compared with the reference scenario (i.e. business as usual in 2050), and small improvements with the exception of freshwater use. »