Frontiers of Research on
Foreign Assistance and Food Security
Will Masters
Professor and Chair, Department of Food and Nutrition Policy, Tufts University
www.nutrition.tufts.edu | sites.tufts.edu/willmasters
C-FARE panel on Agricultural Development
AAEA annual meetings, Seattle WA
12-14 August 2012
Frontiers in all directions
Development outcomes
Research
Problems
Technological change
Changed priorities for foreign aid
ODA commitments for health, agriculture and in total, 1967-2010
United States
6
5
4
35 24
Agriculture
30
Health
25 18
Total (right axis)
3
20
15
2
10
1
5
0
0
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Multilateral Agencies
70
Agriculture
Health
Total
60
50
40
12
30
20
6
10
0
0
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
What can we in agriculture learn from the rise in global health programs?
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).
Changed leadership in foreign aid
Top 15 donors’ foreign aid commitments to African agriculture, 2005-2008
Rank
2005
1
IDA
2
AfDF
3
Denmark
4
United States
5
IFAD
6
Germany
7
Belgium
8
EU Institutions
9
Japan
10
United Kingdom
11
Canada
12
Netherlands
13
France
14
15
2006
300.72 IDA
152.04 AfDF
2007
538.88 United States
226.81 IDA
2008
463.07 IDA
399.16 BMGF
114.98 France
102.30 EU Institutions
141.80 BMGF
114.79 France
391.77 United States
342.42 EU Institutions
80.72 BMGF
66.88 IFAD
99.03 AfDF
87.50 EU Institutions
235.65 Canada
186.30 IFAD
66.43 United States
65.75 Japan
84.78 IFAD
66.12 Japan
122.76 France
73.36 Germany
58.42 Sweden
45.06 Germany
60.58 Korea
54.31 Germany
56.63 Belgium
56.33 Japan
43.48 Belgium
36.19 Norway
53.48 Belgium
50.34 Canada
53.20 Ireland
41.40 Norway
BMGF
32.14 United Kingdom
24.80 Ireland
30.70 Norway
22.56 Denmark
40.64 Italy
31.46 Denmark
Norway
20.80 Netherlands
19.01 Ireland
24.79 Spain
867.01
367.23
323.58
181.73
155.20
Jim Kim, M.D.
129.49
95.13
87.25
77.42
75.13
41.81
Chris Elias, M.D.
35.39
32.36
29.17
19.31
The top three donors to African agriculture are led by health-care experts!
Raj Shah, M.D.
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.
Agriculture =?= Health
Similar but different:
Stylized innovations and interventions
in agriculture and health
Agriculture
Health
Similar problems,
Public support of private markets for most inputs and outputs,
different
solutions
Collective action for public-domain resources
Innovations
Interventions
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
Similar but different: Stylized industry structure
Public domain knowledge, common property resources and other social structures
Farm input
suppliers
Health input
suppliers
Many diverse farmers
Farm output
marketers
Health care
providers
Many diverse food consumers and health-care beneficiaries
==> 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