Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Food Aid and Food Markets: Lessons from Mozambique |
Authors: | Tschirley, David Donovan, Cynthia Weber, Michael T. |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | Food Policy |
Volume: | 21 |
Issue: | 2 |
Period: | May |
Pages: | 189-209 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Mozambique |
Subjects: | food aid food market maize Economics and Trade Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-9192(95)00078-X |
Abstract: | A consensus has emerged on food aid policy, acknowledging the importance of short-run relief considerations, while emphasizing that such policy must be driven by a long-run, developmental perspective. This requires explicit attention to the effects of food aid on food markets. Yet it has long been clear that short and long-run objectives of food aid may conflict. This tension stands in high relief in Mozambique. The present paper examines the factors determining the effects of yellow maize food aid on markets for yellow maize and white maize (the staple crop) in Mozambique. The paper finds that food aid has helped fuel the growth of a competitive small-scale milling industry and informal marketing system; yellow and white maize are substitutes in consumption; and continued availability of yellow maize food aid at prices well below import parity will depress incentives for producers and traders to invest in the white maize production and marketing system. Recommendations for reforming the monetized food aid programme and coordinating it more effectively with emergency aid conclude the paper. Much of the data used in the paper come from an agricultural market information system (SIMA) in the Ministry of Agriculture of Mozambique which has been collecting price and qualitative market supply data from selected points in the country since april 1991. Bibliogr., notes, ref. sum. |