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PurposeGeographical indication (GI) labels aim to improving farmers' and processors' income. This article studies how characteristics related to GI groups and their reputation (e.g. the producer group size, longevity and production decisions) are related to prices at the origin, final (consumption) prices and marketing margins.Design/methodology/approach The authors use 8 years of annual data for the Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) GI market encompassing 46 GI EVOOs. Estimated parameters characterizing the relationship between the GI's group features and prices (at origin and at consumption) are obtained via Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS).FindingsResults show that the number of GI operators is related to consumption prices, while is weakly related to prices at the origin. GIs' age is not associated with higher consumption prices, while origin prices are lower for older GIs compared to younger ones. Higher farmers' olive/oil conversion rate is associated with lower origin and consumption prices, whereas the extent of vertical integration is related to higher prices at the origin and a higher share of the marketing margins going to producers.Originality/valueTo the best of their knowledge, the authors offer the first empirical evidence on how structural characteristics and production decisions of a GI group relate to prices and marketing margins.

Este artículo examina las dinámicas y características de del macro-proceso de financiarización de la agricultura y los alimentos. Hace referencia al rápido crecimiento del sector financiero y a la concomitante tendencia a la titulización de las actividades económicas, es decir al proceso que reduce todo el valor de la economía a instrumentos financieros. Una vez señalados los componentes básicos de la financiarización de la agroalimentación, este artículo propone la hipótesis de que la evolución del sector está dirigida en gran medida por un grupo de actores que operan dentro del sector financiero. El artículo concluye que las soluciones a los problemas actuales y el análisis del sector agroalimentario requieren de la atención a su dimensión financiera. Se llega a esta conclusión a través de una revisión de la literatura y un análisis de la evolución y contradicciones del fenómeno de la financiarización agroalimentaria.

Private labels (PLs), originally introduced by food retailers as low-priced alternatives to national brands, have expanded in recent years in premium market segments. This article examines how the ...

Desde fines del siglo XIX, los empresarios cafetaleros de la región Soconusco en Chiapas, con el apoyo del Estado, establecieron vínculos de producción, transformación y distribución del producto con importadores y torrefactores estadounidenses y europeos. El propósito del artículo es examinar las estrategias y alianzas establecidas por estos empresarios, principalmente desde la década de 1990 del siglo XX, para hacer frente a la reestructuración de la industria cafetalera y el ascenso de las empresas transnacionales en el contexto de la globalización. Entre esas estrategias se encuentra la diversificación de las actividades empresariales, la especialización en el negocio del café y la revalorización del territorio y el agroecosistema. En la investigación se emplearon principalmente métodos cualitativos para recuperar las experiencias y perspectivas de los principales agentes que participan en las cadenas de producción —empresarios finqueros del café, distribuidores, torrefactores—, miembros de organizaciones cafetaleras y de entidades públicas de la región y del estado. La principal conclusión es que los empresarios cafetaleros conformaron un grupo con diferentes grados de alianzas y disputas con actores transnacionales para consolidar diversas formas de inserción en la industria mundial del café; de tal forma que la globalización no implicó un control directo del flujo de recursos y procesos en la cadena del café.

School meals provide nourishment to a large portion of US schoolchildren. Research has examined the relationship between the consumption of school meals and the quality of schoolchildren's diets, with little emphasis on studying spillovers at the household level. Using National Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey data and unconditional quantile regression, we study the relationship between a household's quality of food‐at‐home acquisitions and the number of school meals acquired, subsampling households by their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation status. We do not find strong evidence supporting beneficial spillovers of school meals on a household's quality of food‐at‐home acquisitions. JEL CLASSIFICATION C31; D12; I14; Q18

Policies incentivizing store entry or store improvements are aimed at increasing access to healthy foods; however, findings about their effectiveness to improve diets are mixed. Similarly, little is known about whether food stores' presence affects consumers' perceived barriers to purchasing healthy foods, which reflect the subjective hardships experienced by shoppers to purchase and consume healthier foods. In this study, we assess the relationship between the two most widely studied perceived barriers to purchasing healthy foods (price and availability) and the local retail food environment using individual‐level survey data collected across the northeastern US and census data on the numbers of grocery stores and warehouse clubs and supercenters. Our results indicate that unobserved heterogeneity plays an important role in determining the sign and magnitude of the relationship between store presence and perceptions. The likelihood that an individual cites price or availability as a perceived barrier depends upon the barrier considered, whether respondents live in the zip code where they shop, and the method of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Thus, policies focusing on improving access to a given store type may only mitigate some of the negative perceptions associated with one's food environment.

Farm to school programs (F2SPs) operate in 42% of school districts and are supported in part through federal and state policies as well as philanthropic funding. Although research evaluating the effects of farm to school–related activities on student outcomes is growing, a systematic review of the results and thus a synthesis of implications for future programming have not occurred. The primary objective of this systematic literature review is to summarize and evaluate studies on student outcomes associated with farm to school–related activities up to 1 September, 2017. Four databases spanning 4 research disciplines were used to identify full-text, English-language studies. Twenty-one studies were reviewed: 7 explicitly investigated F2SPs, and 14 evaluated the impact of school-based interventions that were relevant to activities reported in the 2013 and/or 2015 Farm to School Census. All of the F2SP studies (n = 7) and 85.7% of farm to school–related activity studies (n = 12) were multicomponent, and there was a wide variety of implemented intervention components across the reviewed studies. Results from F2SP and farm to school–related activity studies consistently show positive impacts on food and nutrition-related knowledge; most studies also suggest a positive relation between farm to school–related activities and healthy food selection during school meals, nutrition self-efficacy, and willingness to try fruits and vegetables. The impact of farm to school activities on fruit and vegetable consumption and preferences is unclear. The most common F2SP study limitations were study designs that preclude causal inference, outcome measurement with no reported or limited psychometric testing, lack of long-term outcome evaluation, and challenges related to quantifying intervention implementation. These findings underscore the need for more conclusive evidence on the relation between farm to school–related activities and changes in fruit and vegetable consumption.

Due to correlations between purchasing patterns and diet disparities, differences in food shopping patterns and strategies across income levels and other socio-economic characteristics is a widely-studied research area. Most extant literature uses either primary or secondary data, which are often characterized by, respectively, limited geographical scope and considerable level of detail, or wide geographical reach but low detail. That literature also reveals contrasting results based on methods, data sources and geographic location. In this paper, we use three different datasets to characterize the differences in purchasing patterns across income levels, rural–urban status and other variables of food shoppers in the Northeastern USA and compare these trends with existing research. While many of the findings corroborate previous studies, new findings include less reliance on superstores overall, except for rural respondents, and a greater reliance on limited assortment supermarkets for SNAP and low-income households. Food purchasing differences are described by race and ethnicity, income and education, and children in the household. The analysis presented here includes a portion of the work performed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers engaged in the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative project Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE). By using primary data from shoppers' intercept surveys, and secondary data from two large datasets, one of household food purchases and the other of food expenditures, we identify purchasing decisions holding at both the case-study (limited geography) and broader geographic (entire Northeast) levels, which both support previous findings and reveal the need for additional research in this area.

U.S. Congress repealed Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for beef and pork in December 2015 to avoid retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico. We simulate and compare economic impacts from these retaliatory tariffs with scenarios where COOL was repealed using a global economic modeling framework. Retaliation would have decreased North American trade, decreased U.S. welfare, and increased welfare for Canada and Mexico. Simulated effects of the COOL repeal show modest welfare increases in the United States, Mexico, and globally, with heterogeneous welfare effects for Canada. We discuss whether recent U.S. protectionist policies may lead to similar outcomes to those simulated here.

The mislabelling of agricultural and food products is one of the most common types of food fraud. Despite the frequency with which labelling fraud occurs, there is no empirical framework to study its welfare implications, the probability that it may occur, and the measures that can limit its occurrence. We present an empirical framework to study the economic consequences of food labelling fraud in a differentiated products food market. Such framework requires the availability of sales data and the use of an ‘attribute-space’ demand model. The model is applied to the Italian extra-virgin olive oil market to simulate the occurrence of fraudulent ‘100 per cent Italian’ claims. Our results indicate that potential consumer losses due to overpayments for a false claim are higher than manufacturer gains, suggesting that labelling fraud results in welfare losses and not just in welfare transfers. Simulation results indicate that the level of the current administrative fines is not likely to be effective to discourage ‘100 per cent Italian’ labelling fraud. Imposing larger fines or other measures negatively affecting a firm’s image could be more effective in deterring labelling fraud.

The chapter contends that the neoliberal claim of superiority of the free-functioning market has been critiqued and replaced by new and diverging views that address the crisis of neoliberalism and the rise of protectionist, ultra-nationalist, and racialized views advanced by populist, far-right, authoritarian movements and regimes. The rationale behind this argument rests on the tenet that capitalism is a contradictory system whose outcomes need to be rationalized and accepted by subordinate groups that do not benefit from them. Following this approach, the chapter discusses the historical conditions that supported the acceptance of neoliberalism. It also briefly reviews the implementation of neoliberalism and globalization by stressing the historical elements that allowed for their development. It further illustrates the crisis of neoliberalism and the populist reaction that followed. It underscores that the emergence of high levels of socioeconomic inequality and uncertainty along with the intervention of the state to address the crisis emanating from the Great Recession of 2008-2009 created the conditions for a restructuring of capitalism in the form of an emergent global neoliberal authoritarian capitalism. It concludes by pointing out the inability of neoliberalism, Trumpism, and right-wing populism to address the fundamental contradictions of contemporary capitalism, arguing that calls for economic protectionism, political isolationism, and the repressive control of global flows of labor run counter not only to fundamental democratic principles but also to the requirements of global capitalism and its form of capital accumulation today.

Purpose Psychological factors, such as body image dissatisfaction and the negative feelings associated with it may be related to the adoption of unhealthy eating behaviours. Also, body image dissatisfaction may lower the likelihood of engaging in long-term healthy eating habits and in the level of attention paid to the quality of the food consumed. As a result, body image may be related to consumers’ choice to purchase and consume health-enhancing food products. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach A pilot study of a small sample of Italian yogurt consumers was employed to explore if there is a relationship between respondents’ level of body image dissatisfaction and the number of health-enhancing yogurt choices. The data were collected by means of a virtual-shelf technique and were analysed using a negative binomial regression. Findings Results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading functional yogurt brands, selected a higher number of functional yogurts from the virtual shelf compared, especially among women. Research limitations/implications The results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading health-enhancing yogurt brands selected a higher number of health-enhancing yogurts options from the virtual shelf compared to others, especially among women. Originality/value The relationship between body image dissatisfaction and health-enhancing food choices has not been investigated in the consumer science and marketing literature. Additionally, this is one of the few papers that use a virtual shelf as a data-collection method.

Food manufacturers that offer credence attributes, whose presence cannot be determined a priori, may fail to differentiate their products effectively and achieve higher prices if asymmetric information (on the producers' side) impairs their ability to reach consumers with higher willingness to pay. In this article, we assess whether manufacturers carrying products with credence attributes in their portfolio are able to obtain higher prices. To this end, we use a large database of yoghurt sales in Italy and a hedonic price model estimated using a stochastic frontier estimator. The results indicate that manufacturers that offer more credence attributes in their portfolios have the ability to price their products systematically at higher levels.

We investigate the demand for ready‐to‐eat (RTE) breakfast cereals in the United States using censored, household‐level purchase data matched with product‐level nutrition data. Instead of using a multi‐equation based approach, we propose an alternative approach that relies on Pinkse, Slade, and Brett's (2002) distance‐metric (DM) method, which is highly practical and less burdensome computationally than some multiple‐equation methods. Among other results, we find that households with children are less price sensitive to cereals with whole grain as the first ingredient and to cereals that contain a higher number of fortified vitamins. In addition, we find that households tend to switch between products with similar fiber content and whole grain content profiles.

Access to affordable and nutritious food is a widely-debated public policy issue in the U.S. In non-metro (including semi-urban and rural) U.S. areas, poor food access is mostly the result of lack of food stores, and in particular the absence of large ones (e.g., full-line groceries or superstores). Any policy designed to improve food access in non-metro U.S. areas should recognize that improving stores’ profitability is crucial to policy success in the long-run. We adapt an empirical entry model to assess the effectiveness of two types of policies to improve food access – demand-stimulating policies (DSP), such as increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars, and supply-side policies (SSP), such as subsidies to reduce establishment costs – by estimating the minimum market size needed for one or more large food stores in non-metro U.S. counties to be profitable. We find that neither type of intervention is preferred a priori and that the cost-effectiveness of each policy type depends upon the presence of an adjacent metropolitan county, the number of pre-existing stores, and the duration of the demand-side stimuli. Additionally, our results suggest that the cost-effectiveness of broad-based policy solutions to improve physical access to large food stores or to stimulate demand may be limited when it comes to easing entry in areas with multiple stores.

A goal of food nutrition labeling policies is to help consumers make informed choices regarding the healthiness of the food they purchase. Yet, findings regarding the effectiveness of label use to decrease negative health outcomes, such as overweight and obesity, are mixed. As most studies focus on estimating mean effects of labels, little is known on whether labels have any effect at the tails of the body weight distribution, which, given the social gradient of obesity, often includes at-risk groups. Additionally, label use, overweight and obesity vary across population subgroups. Thus, the relationship between using food nutrition labels and body weight may be characterized by marked heterogeneity, which the current literature has failed to address. This study explores the non-linearity of the relationship between reading ingredients on the food label and Body Mass Index (BMI) using an unconditional quantile regression estimator and one year of data on adult Italians from the Multipurpose Household Survey. We study this relationship across the BMI distribution and for different groups of respondents, divided by gender, income above and below the sample average, education level, perceived hardships to access food, and regular practice of sport. The results indicate that reading ingredient labels has a negative association with BMI, mostly at higher BMI quartiles (overweight and obese), although a relationship at the highest quartile is only found in a few subsamples. Females, and individuals with a higher risk of being overweight and obese such as low-income, low educated, or those who do not practice sport seem to garner the highest benefit from reading ingredients in the food label. The paper concludes with policy implications, tapping into the recent debate regarding the revision of food labeling in the European Union.

Recent developments in modern agri‐food markets have called into question the predictive capability of the traditional models and tools used by agricultural economists to assess and measure market power. As a result, agricultural economists are on a quest for novel methods and approaches that surpass the traditional market power construct. In this article, we present an essential overview of the evolution of the literature concerning power relationships in agrifood value chains. The goal of this review is to emphasize recent conceptual and empirical approaches, as well as highlight topics of interest that are likely to shape the direction of future analyses of market power and bargaining in the agrifood sector. [EconLit citations: L1, L2, L3, Q13, Q18].

After a strong expansion across the United States, farmers markets’ (FMs) growth rate has declined in spite of policymakers’ interest in promoting them. In this study we model farmers’ participation in FMs and investigate what market factors affect FMs’ location using zip-code-level data for the New England states. Our results suggest that market size, education, presence of children in the household and SNAP participation lend to the establishment of FMs, more than income per se. Farming activities has a positive association with the likelihood of FMs, while proxies for establishment costs and the presence of traditional distribution channels may play a limiting role in their formation.

The policy debates on plant protection products (PPPs) in the European Union (EU) are dominated by the environmental implications of crop protection (in particular, the use of herbicides) and the concentration of the herbicide industry. This article aims at presenting an overview of the patterns herbicide usage over time between and within European countries, and an overview of the industry structure. Potential determinants driving some of these differences are discussed, such as the recent PPP policies adopted by the EU. Results show that herbicides are the most important input used in crop protection, but regional differences are substantial. The concentration of the industry is high, but below levels that would raise concerns by EU regulators. The sector is also highly regulated, which contributes to a high concentration and a consequent decline in innovations. This finding raises the possibility of substituting bans of active ingredients in herbicides with alternative solutions.

Italy has one of the largest per-capita consumption rates of fruits and vegetables (FV) among European Union countries. However, the number of adult Italians consuming the recommended daily amounts of FV is declining, especially in regions where the food retail industry’s expansion is lagging. In this article we investigate the effect of the food environment on the likelihood of adult Italians consuming five or more daily portions of FV, and on the probability of consuming more portions of FV. We combine individual-level data on adult Italians’ lifestyle with regional food retail structure measures. To correct for the endogeneity of the food environment, we use an identification strategy based on aggregate drivers of food stores’ location, and on the regional political climate affecting retail liberalization reforms. The results show that increased access affects positively the probability of consuming the daily-recommended amounts of FV, as well as the probability of consuming more portions of FV. However, the role of the food environment is less marked for individuals declaring it to experience a hardship to access supermarkets.

Introduction Alessandro Bonanno, Kae Sekine and Hart N. Feuer Part I Theoretical Assumptions 1. Geographical Indication in Agri-Food and its Role in the Neoliberal Global Era: A Theoretical Analysis Alessandro Bonanno Part II The Asian Context 2. Geographical Indications out of Context and in Vogue: The Awkward Embrace of European Heritage Agricultural Protections in Asia Hart N. Feuer 3. The Impact of Geographical Indications on the Power Relations between Producers and Agri-Food Corporations: A Case of Powdered Green Tea "Matcha" Kae Sekine 4. Provenance for Whom? A Comparative Analysis of Geographical Indications in the EU and Indonesia Cinzia Piatti and Angga Dwiartama Part III Cases from Europe 5. How to Use Geographical Indication for the Democratization of Agricultural Production: A Comparative Analysis of GI Rent-seeking Strategies in Turkey Derya Nizan 6. Geographical Indications - A Double-Edged Tool for Food Democracy. The Cases of the Norwegian GI-Evolution and the Protection of Stockfish from Lofoten as Cultural Adaptation Work Atle Wehn Hegnes and Virginie Amilien 7. The Decline of the French Label of Origin Wine Romain Blancaneaux 8. Modern Resilience of Georgian Wine: Geographical Indications and International Exposure Anastasiya Shtaltovna and Hart N. Feuer Part IV Cases from the Americas 9. The Multi-level, Multi-actor and Multifunctional System of Geographical Indications in Brazil Paulo Niederle, John Wilkinson and Gilberto Mascarenhas 10. The GI of Mezcal in Mexico: A Tool of Exclusion for Small Producers Marie-Christine Renard and David Rodolfo Dominguez Arista 11. Whose Labor Counts as Craft? Terroir and Farm Workers in North American Craft Cider Anelyse Weiler 12. The Potential Role of Geographical Indication in Supporting Indigenous Communities in Canada Donna Appavoo and Monika Korzun 13. Conclusions: Comprehensive Change and the limits and Power of Sectorial Measures Alessandro Bonanno, Kae Sekine and Hart N. Feuer

Sustainable community development relies on cumulative investments in a broad range of capital assets, yet little research sets forth comprehensive measures of their stocks or the relationships of capital assets to community outcomes. Building off conceptual frameworks for wealth creation, we develop a comprehensive set of indicators associated with stocks of community-based wealth at the county level. Including such indicators when evaluating community outcomes addresses a missing-variables problem of prior efforts and allows one to control for and quantify the importance of community capital assets in concert with traditional modeling efforts. To illustrate their use, we evaluate the association between the percentage of farms selling through direct-to-consumer channels and community capital stocks for both metro and nonmetro counties, capturing direct and indirect spillovers. Our results demonstrate clear differences in the association of capital stocks and the percentage of farms’ direct-to-consumer channel adoption across counties classified as metro and nonmetro (and their adjacency to metro counties), suggesting that the success of food system interventions, policies, and strategies for local economic development may hinge on the preexisting levels of community capitals and/or the need for planners to develop them further.

Among the various food school programs adopted in the U.S., the Farm to School Program (FTSP) is unique in its aims to improve school children’s dietary outcomes and to support farm income. As repeated food school interventions/programs are more likely to affect students’ dietary outcomes than one-time efforts, school districts’ continued participation in FTSP activities is paramount for the program’s effectiveness. We use data from the Farm to School Census to evaluate differences across school districts participating in the FTSP which decided to continue or not the program, and to assess the determinants of their continuation decision, using a sample-selection probit estimator. Mean comparisons show that, compared to school districs staying in the program, school districts ceasing FTSP are smaller, more reliant on federal assistance programs, with a higher share of students on federal benefits programs, lower overall per-student expenditures, higher per-student food services expenditure and lower awareness of the USDA geographic preference option. However, these factors do not appear to be direct determinants of the probability of continuation, except the awareness of the USDA geographic preference option, which is strongly associated with continuation. Also, we find that the types and number of FTS activities (particularly promotional activities, and activities taking place in the cafeteria) contribute to explaining the decision to continue FTSP more than the challenges experienced when procuring local foods. We find mixed results regarding the association between state-level policies and a school district's probability of participating and continuing in FTSP. In summary, while policy efforts to ensure continued FTSP participation by smaller and more disadvantaged school districts are needed, efforts to increase awareness of the federal geographic procurement preference option, and policies focusing on promotional and cafetia based activites, may sustain continued FTSP participation in the long-run.