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BRICS, the 15-year-old alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has emerged as an important actor on the global political and economic stage, not least by expanding its membership to include middle-power states Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in early 2024. Much like the countries of the G7 and the EU, BRICS members are among the major players in international agri-food markets. BRICS and the G7 have accounted for around one-seventh of each other's agricultural exports in the past decade. However, excessive protectionism and mounting sanctions as well as ideology-driven de-risking strategies are a high-risk venture that could ultimately lead to isolationism and the formation of blocs. Food insecurity is growing, primarily at the expense of poorer people in the Global South. Against this background, it seems advisable to balance geopolitical and geoeconomic interests by turning away from confrontational Stone Age politics and towards more cooperative approaches, such as more diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first to develop food supply and demand projections over the 21st century for Uzbekistan by considering the combined effects of climate change and soil salinization. The study results suggest that rising summer temperatures and soil salinity will considerably reduce wheat production. Projections indicate that a large wheat supply–demand gap will emerge in the midterm, particularly under the SSP3-RCP7.0 scenario. For the two more pessimistic scenarios, supply losses of about 24–29% are expected by the end of the century. Supply–demand gaps of up to 2.7 million tons of wheat would pose serious challenges to national food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that income disparity is expanding and diet‐related environmental footprints are increasing in urban China, this study aims to investigate the heterogeneity in these footprints across various income classes and examine the effect of income distribution on the total environmental footprints. Based on the quadratic almost ideal demand system model and taking into consideration the problems of endogeneity of food expenditure and zero expenditure, we estimate the income elasticities for 10 food categories across seven income classes and project the diet‐related environmental footprints under seven scenarios for various strategies of the income distribution. The results show that per capita diet‐related environmental footprints are greater for higher income classes than for lower income classes, as the former consume more animal‐based food. Compared with high‐income classes, income growth favouring low‐income classes results in a rather significant increase in diet‐related environmental footprints. With further economic growth, the lowest income group makes the greatest contribution to the increase in diet‐related environmental footprints. Thus, policymakers should promote a more sustainable diet on the road to alleviating income inequality to ensure sustainable environmental development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seafood products are mainly provided through trade to international markets and Norway is the major international player for the export of salmon products. It is argued that fresh or chilled salmon, which are perishable products and Norway's main seafood export, need stable trade partners to safely and properly reach consumption markets. In this study, the firm-to-firm level trade transactional data for both exporters and importers for the 2005-2018 period was utilized for a trade duration analysis. The Kaplan-Meier survival estimators, Cox proportional hazard model, and frailty model were used to study the stability of trade relations between the partners through survival and hazard models. The study considers the heterogeneous firm trade model along with a theoretical framework. The results show that, on average, the trade duration for the salmon trade between firms is 2.39 years, which is relatively low for a perishable product such as salmon. It shows that the market entry and exit is relatively fast, and that the survival rate between the EU as a major demand market and non-EU countries is not very different. However, core and periphery markets can be defined by considering the survival rate, as major processing hubs in the EU, such as Poland and France as core markets, have higher survival rates compared with other countries that can be considered peripheries. Both extensive and intensive margins were found to reduce the hazard ratio. Different hazard ratios were also found between different types of exporter or ones utilizing different means of transport. We conclude that the trade duration between the partners can be increased if the competition in the market increases, which is probably possible in markets like the United States where other exporters such as Chile are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening climate resilience requires farmers to select climate adaptation strategies like weather index insurance. Acknowledging that decision-making is not isolated, this study explores simultaneous peer imitation in climate adaptation choices consisting of index insurance, savings, and their interaction. We present results from a lab-in-the-field experiment that introduces innovative index insurance. Findings indicate significant and strong imitation attitudes. While the bigger peer surrounding seems relevant in the static perspective, the closer surrounding gains importance in the dynamic perspective. Additionally, credit, trust, and practical understanding stimulate adoption. Community-based extension interventions and credit-bundled products may increase index insurance diffusion and improve climate resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of Internet usage in rural China is on the rise while improving the nutritional status of Chinese rural residents remains a major issue due to prevalent unbalanced diets and deficiencies in some nutrients. However, there is a scarcity of empirical evidence linking these two aspects. The relationship between Internet usage and dietary quality remains inconclusive in both developed and developing countries. Using data from a survey of 2053 households in rural China, this paper examines the relationship between Internet usage and dietary quality among Chinese rural residents by employing an endogenous switching regression model to address the issue of selection bias. The empirical results reveal that respondents' gender, age, years of education, and household income significantly influenced their decisions to use the Internet, and Internet usage significantly improve dietary quality of their household. The findings of the heterogeneous analysis show that the impact of Internet usage on dietary quality varies based on respondents' dietary knowledge, per capita annual income, and household food expenditure. Through mechanism analysis, we find that Internet usage can improve the dietary quality by increasing the possibility of online food purchasing and fostering a more positive dietary attitude. [EconLit Citations: I12, O15, O33]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive studies have discussed the economic and welfare effects of social pensions worldwide, while scant attention has been paid to their nutritional effects, especially in emerging economies. Using multitopic longitudinal survey data of households and individuals in Kyrgyzstan covering four waves of 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2019, this study aims to examine the impact of an old‐age pension on the nutritional outcomes of the elderly and shed light on their underlying mechanisms. Our empirical identification rests on a propensity score matching with difference‐in‐differences estimation design to address the endogeneity problem of receiving an old‐age pension. Overall, the results indicate that receiving an old‐age pension has a significant and negative impact on body mass index and the probability of being overweight for males, while no significant impact of the old‐age pension has been observed for females. Receiving an old‐age pension has no significant effect on expenditure of food consumption, calorie intake, and macronutrient intake, while it significantly reduces the ratio of protein intake to total calorie intake. We also observe significant heterogeneity in the nutritional effect of an old‐age pension across various education levels and income levels; the negative nutritional effect is more salient for elderly individuals who are relatively poor or who have lower education. Our findings provide profound implications for policies targeting improving the nutritional status of rural residents in emerging economies through the implementation of the old‐age pension [EconLit Citations: H55, I15, I38]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging economies often establish commodity futures markets to discover price signals, manage price risks and improve market integration, but establishing a futures market may not be feasible for agricultural perishables. In this study, we evaluated the function of the world's first fresh fruit futures contract for apples. Combining partial cointegration with state-space modelling, we derived time-varying price discovery metrics for the apple futures market. Our findings revealed a limited and time-varying dominance of price discovery by the futures market, while a substantial share of price discovery occurred in the spot market. Moreover, poor convergence of disaggregated spot prices to the futures price suggests that commercial traders in the apple supply chain tended to focus more on the spot market than on the futures market. Thus, emerging economies should be cautious about the new establishment of futures markets for agricultural perishables. Future research using more specific data on the spot market may provide a better insight on the limited function of the futures market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although universities have expanded in size, it is unclear whether the poor have benefited. If there are high returns to college education, then increasing access of the poor to college has important welfare implications. The objective of this paper is to document the rates of enrollment into college of the poor and to identify the hurdles to doing so. Relying on several sets of data, including a survey of college students from universities in three poor provinces in China, we have found that the college matriculation rate of the poor is substantially lower than students from non-poor families; the same is true for rural women and minorities. Clearly, there are barriers that are keeping the rural poor out. The paper also demonstrates that the real hurdles are not during the years of secondary schooling or at the time of admissions to college. The real impediments keeping the rural poor from pursuing a college education arise long before high school--as early as preschool and elementary school years--and are present throughout the entire schooling system.

Many educational systems have struggled with the question about how best to give out financial aid. In particular, if students do not know the amount of financial aid that they can receive before they make a decision about where to go to college and what major to study, it may distort their decision. This study utilizes an experiment (implemented by the authors as a Randomized Control Trial) to analyze whether or not an alternative way of providing financial aid--by providing an early commitment on financial aid during the student's senior year of high school instead of after entering college--affects the college decision making of poor students in rural China. We find that if early commitments are made early enough; and they are large enough, students will make less distorting college decisions. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)