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Sur les marchés internationaux, les prix des céréales (blé, maïs) et des huiles végétales (colza, tournesol, soja, palme) ont augmenté à partir de la mi-2020. Les biocarburants jouent un rôle majeur dans cette hausse et la guerre en Ukraine, qui a débuté en février 2022, l'a exacerbée. Les biocarburants lient en effet le prix de ces denrées à celui du pétrole : lorsque le prix du pétrole augmente, l'industrie des biocarburants accroît sa demande de maïs et d'huiles végétales. Limiter provisoirement cet usage industriel ferait baisser leurs prix. De plus, en cas de hausse du prix du riz, une solution serait d'autoriser le Japon à exporter son stock de riz constitué dans le cadre des règles de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC). Afin de prévenir les crises futures, ces deux leviers pourraient être déclenchés dès que les prix internationaux de ces denrées agricoles atteignent des niveaux prédéfinis.

On international markets, prices of grains (wheat, maize) and vegetable oils (rapeseed, sunflower, soybean, palm) have been rising since mid-2020. Biofuels play a major part in this increase, and the war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has exacerbated it. Biofuels in fact link the price of these commodities to that of crude oil: when the crude oil price rises, the biofuels industry increases its demand for maize and vegetable oils. Temporarily limiting this industrial usage would reduce the price of these commodities. Moreover, in case of an increase in rice prices, one solution would be to authorise Japan to export the rice stock it has built up under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. In order to prevent future crises, these two levers could be activated as soon as world prices of these agricultural commodities reach predetermined levels.

This study analyzes the public policy in the context of rural Amazonian populations, with an example of the Minimum Price Guarantee Policy for Socio-biodiversity Products. The objective is understanding, from the perspective of açaí extractivists, the motivations and bottlenecks that lead them to not access the policy and therefore receive the subsidy to which they are entitled when selling below the minimum price. The research was conducted with extractivists from Mazagão, the second municipality of the Amapá state in terms of fruit production. Bibliographic research, documentary investigation, field diary, focus group, application of questionnaires and interviews were the methodologies used. The results of the study show that the motivations are linked to four main bottlenecks that discourage extractivists and prevent them from accessing the PGPM-BIO: 1) little dissemination of qualified information for the producer; 2) the informal, relational based model, the supply chain governance; 3) the absence of internet infrastructure; and 4) the use of bureaucratic means that are distant from the extractivists' reality. The PGPM-BIO, despite starting from the rural workers' demands and being relevant as a supplement of income, has little impact on açaí extractivists in the north of the country, and in particular in Amapá.

Les exigences européennes sur la qualité du cacao conduisent au développement de la certification, pour améliorer la production et la gestion post-récolte des fèves. Cependant, la certification reste peu développée au Cameroun. Cet article mobilise le modèle de la transition sociotechnique pour analyser les déterminants d'adoption de la certification. Des entretiens auprès de 11 acteurs de la filière cacao ont été menés, ainsi qu'une enquête auprès de 90 producteurs. Les résultats mettent en exergue l'incomplétude du système acteur de la certification, qui se traduit par sa faible diffusion. Cette tendance est accentuée par l'absence d'un différentiel de prix aux producteurs entre cacao certifié et cacao ordinaire. La conclusion interroge la capacité des normes de certification à transformer le secteur cacao.

La volatilité des prix du lait en poudre sur le marché mondial en 2007avait créé un certain consensus en faveur d'une régulation publique des marchés. A partir du cas du Sénégal, ce papier tente de comprendre comment s'est construite la régulation du marché du lait en poudre durant la flambée des prix sur le marché mondial en 2007.Notre cadre théorique mobilise l'approche instrumentale de l'action publique(Lascoumes et Simard, 2011)et la sociologie des logiques d'action (Amblard et al., 2005). Il s'appuie sur l'analyse documentaire et sur 38 entretiens conduits auprès des acteurs impliqués dans ces processus. Les résultats montrent que les concertations entre les services étatiques et les autres acteurs, les mouvements sociaux de la société civile et des partis politiques ont grandement influé sur la régulation des marchés. Les logiques d'action stratégique, cognitive et institutionnelle sont mobilisées par les acteurs. Pour chaque acteur, une logique d'action dominante est notée. Cependant, les actions d'une même catégorie d'acteurs peuvent s'appuyer sur plusieurs logiques d'action.

Agricultural commodity prices have increased since the early 2000s in response to a combination of causes on the demand side (demographic growth, increased animal product consumption in emerging countries and biofuel mandates) and on the supply side (the phasing out of agricultural policies subsidising food supply in the European Union and United States, lack of public investment in agriculture, reaching ceilings in cereal yields in already high-yield countries and an increase in energy prices). The succession of food crises between 2008 and 2012 has brought the agricultural price regime and its implications for food security back to the forefront. Even though the increase of average agricultural prices could profit some farmers, part of the price increase corresponds to increased costs and urban dwellers, as well as many food-insecure food producers, depend on the market for their supply. In addition, environmental policies concerning the protection of biodiversity, climate mitigation and pesticide reduction could make these issues even more acute.

Extreme food price volatility is extremely damaging to food and nutrition security. It is likely to increase in the future because: (i) food markets will probably become more vulnerable to shocks; (ii) supply shocks can be expected to increase because of climate change, emerging diseases and armed conflicts that could affect production and trade; (iii) demand shocks are predicted to rise due to the growing links between the food, energy and financial markets.

Stylized facts set agendas and shape debates. In rapidly changing and data scarce environments, they also risk being ill-informed, outdated and misleading. So, following higher food prices since the 2008 world food crisis, robust economic growth and rapid urbanization, and climatic change, is conventional wisdom about African agriculture and rural livelihoods still accurate? Or is it more akin to myth than fact? The essays in “Agriculture in Africa” Telling Myths from Facts aim to set the record straight. They exploit newly gathered, nationally representative, geo-referenced information at the household and plot level, from six African countries. In these new Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture, every aspect of farming and non-farming life is queried—from the plots farmers cultivate, the crops they grow, the harvest that is achieved, and the inputs they use, to all the other sources of income they rely on and the risks they face. Together the surveys cover more than 40 percent of the Sub-Saharan African population. In all, sixteen conventional wisdoms are examined, relating to four themes: the extent of farmer's engagement in input, factor and product markets; the role of off-farm activities; the technology and farming systems used; and the risk environment farmers face. Some striking surprises, in true myth-busting fashion, emerge. And a number of new issues are also thrown up. The studies bring a more refined, empirically grounded understanding of the complex reality of African agriculture. They also confirm that investing in regular, nationally representative data collection yields high social returns.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the World Bank introduced conditionalities to reform the forest concession regime in Central Africa and continuously intervened, inter alia, in Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and the DRC up to 2010. The reforms were designed to achieve two immediate objectives: (i) increase the price of the resource through competitive market procedures or, if inapplicable, through taxation, (ii) break down the patronage system that governed the forest permits allocation. These efforts have been supported by national reformers, and fought against by various vested interests such as the timber companies, but also officials in the forest departments. Because of the difficult political economy, reform ambitions have been lowered, and only a certain proportion of the policy measures initially contemplated has been implemented. This called for a completion of the reform agenda and fine tuning. But by the middle of the 2000s, the evolution of paradigms in tropical forestry gave the critics of the WB policy of concession reforms opportunities to challenge the orientations followed hitherto in Central Africa. The 2013 Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) report of the WB forestry policy, criticizing the WB's management efforts to reform concession regimes in Africa, testified to this change of paradigm. The critics are of mixed mind, with community advocates favoring more pressure on the African governments to dismantle the concession regime and proponents of "performance-based aid" seeing REDD+ as an opportunity to withdraw from direct sectoral intervention. Paradoxically, in spite of REDD+ initiatives and rhetoric, forestry has tumbled in the national policy agendas and forest concessions or protected areas are encroached by agribusiness plantations and mines with the implicit support of large fractions within governments.