Browsing by Subject "Biofortifikation"

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Prices, governance challenges and contracts in scaling of biofortification
(2023) Richard, Alioma; Zeller, Manfred
Micronutrient deficiency remains a global health challenge, especially in developing countries, despite government and development partners programs, numerous policies, and interventions to decrease its prevalence. Micronutrient deficiency adversely affects pregnancy, child growth, disease susceptibility, and cognitive development. Populations suffer from deficiencies due to low intake of micronutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin A and iodine in their diets. Therefore, many interventions and policies have aimed at increasing the intake of micronutrients by the target populations. Some of these interventions include fortification, that is to increase the micronutrient content of foods or condiments, biofortification which entails breeding staple crops with higher content of bioavailable micronutrients, supplementation, and dietary diversity. These interventions face numerous challenges to scale to larger populations mainly because of behavioural attributes, prices, and governance challenges. The importance of prices stretches from academia to policymakers because of its substantial impact on the consumption behaviour of poor households affecting micronutrient intake. Existing literature on prices concentrated on the cost of micronutrient-dense foods compared to starchy staple foods and the price change for different food items. The second challenge in the scaling of interventions is governance challenges. Governance challenges exist in formal and informal institutions affecting the value chain for biofortified seeds or foods. These challenges jeopardize positive development outcomes and may as well pose significant obstacles to scaling the use of biofortified seed and food. Lastly, there has been a growing focus on the involvement of aggregators, processors, and retailers in the development of food value chains in low-income countries, yet the role of supply contracts is unknown. The objectives of this thesis are threefold: 1) to estimate the long-term trends in prices and volatility of micronutrient-dense food as opposed to starchy staple food and derive hypotheses for factors that might have contributed to the observed divergence in the past long-term growth of prices of micronutrient-dense versus starchy food 2) to identify the governance challenges facing farmers, seed multipliers, aggregators, processors, and retailers as one of the scaling pathways and empirically test one pathway to address the governance challenge in Uganda and 3) to determine the distribution and performance of aggregators, retailers, and processors in Nigerias vitamin A food value chain. This cumulative thesis has three papers. The first paper seeks to answer as main question: “Do prices of micronutrient-dense food commodities grow faster than prices of starchy staple food items”. The second paper poses the following as its main question: “What are the governance challenges in scaling biofortified crops”. The third paper addresses the question of which factors determine the distribution and performance of aggregators, processors, and retailers in the development of value chains for staple food crops. In the first paper, we used the autoregressive and panel autoregressive distributed lag models to analyze the trends in relative prices and the effects of income growth. The data set was price data for micronutrient and calorie-dense foods from FAO STAT-GIEWS, IMF, and the World Bank. The results showed that micronutrient-dense food prices in real terms grew on average by 0.03% per month more than starchy staple food prices, with the expectation of a 12% growth gap in the next 30 years. The volatility of micronutrient-dense food items exceeds starchy staple foods in most domestic markets. Also, the prices of micronutrient-dense foods were more volatile in international markets than in most developing countries. Income growth in developing countries is hypothesized to be one of the factors that contributed to the faster growth in demand for and, therefore, prices of micronutrient-dense food commodities. Other factors, such as the growth in the production of staple foods may have caused price trends to persist. After having presented evidence that prices of micronutrient-dense foods have grown faster in the past 30 years, and if this trend continues, interventions for scaling biofortification, among others, will gain importance for eradicating hidden hunger. In the second paper, we provide insights into the governance challenges of biofortification in Uganda. This paper aims to identify the governance challenges facing farmers, seed multipliers, aggregators, processors, and retailers as one of the scaling pathways and empirically test one pathway to address the governance challenge. This pathway was information provision through training. We used a Process Net-Map to elicit information from respondents regarding processes, actors, and challenges in the food value chain of biofortified crops. The Process Net-Map involves the identification of actors, their roles, their influence on the scaling of biofortification and challenges in the processes. The field lab experiment was used to collect data on the effect of information provision on the identification of iron beans. We analysed the data from field lab experiments through a correlated random effects model. The results demonstrate that vine multipliers face challenges in the supply of vines, and households face a trade-off between allocating land for orange-fleshed potatoes and other varieties. In addition, the value chain actors adulterate iron beans while consumers are unwilling to pay a premium for orange-fleshed sweet potato roots and iron bean grains. These challenges may result from information asymmetry, merit goods, collective action, and free riding. Though information provision can improve the identification of iron beans, its effect was insignificant as from the field lab experiments. Increasing access to biofortified seed through subsidies would increase the production of biofortified crops that would saturate the markets. Creating awareness of the importance of nutritious products would enable consumers to pay for biofortified seeds and food. The third paper provides evidence on factors determining the distribution and performance of aggregators, retailers, and processors in Nigerias vitamin A food value chain. We used data collected by HarvestPlus to assess the outcome indicators, including throughput, sales, prices, variable costs and contracts for vitamin A cassava and maize. We used the spatial distributed lag model to determine factors that affect the distribution of aggregators, retailers and processors and the correlated random effects model to assess the role of contracts on their performance. We find that infrastructural and supply variables do not influence the location of aggregators, retailers, and processors. Out of the demand variables (population density, ownership of livestock and literacy rates, price of Garri-cassava flour), only the price of Garri and livestock ownership influenced the location of aggregators, retailers, and processors. Contracts seem to reduce the cost per kilogram for aggregators while insufficiently affecting the costs of retailers and processors. Contracts are also associated with improving the profits of retailers and aggregators. The main policy recommendations emanating from the findings of this thesis are: 1) governments need to adopt policies that enhance nutrition-sensitive interventions such as supplementation, fortification, dietary diversity, and biofortification 2) employ subsidies to increase the production of biofortified crops while creating awareness on the importance of nutritious products in the scaling of biofortified crops and 3) create enabling environments so that aggregators, retailers and processors can engage in contracts with farmers.
Public attitudes towards genetically modified provitamin A Cassava in Brazil
(2010) Gonzalez Rojas, María Carolina; Qaim, Matin
Cassava is a basic staple food crop with worldwide distribution, mainly in developing countries. A fundamental source of energy for the poor, cassava grows well on marginal soils and resists pests and drought. In Latin America, Brazil is the largest cassava producer and consumer. The crop is especially important in the northeastern (NE) part of the country, where poverty and malnutrition rates are higher than in the rest of the country. However, despite the crop?s dietary importance, relatively little is known about consumer preferences, which holds true not only for Brazil but also for other developing countries. Understanding consumer preferences is crucial for technology and market development, especially in the context of provitamin A biofortification, as this entails a yellow-colored cassava root. The first article, titled ?Consumer Preferences for Cassava Characteristics in Pernambuco, Brazil?, addresses this research gap. Consumer preference for different cassava attributes are analyzed using household survey data and econometric techniques. A hedonic price model is specifically developed to estimate the values that consumers place on specific product attributes. Results show the most important characteristics for local consumers are ease of peeling, time of cooking, and texture; however, root color and size as well as market location are other relevant attributes in determining price. The second article, titled ?Consumer Acceptance of Second-Generation GM Foods: The Case of Biofortified Cassava in the Northeast of Brazil?, examines whether consumers would appreciate provitamin A biofortification and accept GM cassava. For this purpose, stated preference data, collected as part of the household survey, are used. Findings suggest that attitudes towards GM biofortified cassava are generally quite positive among local consumers. Three-quarters of all respondents in the survey said they would support the introduction of this new technology. Using contingent valuation techniques, consumers were shown to be willing to pay an average price premium of 64% for GM biofortified cassava. This is high but not unrealistic, given that vitamin A deficiency and related health problems are widespread in NE Brazil. In addition, a contingent ranking choice experiment was used to better understand the trade-offs between different cassava characteristics and estimate the partial willingness to pay (WTP) for each relevant attribute. For the provitamin A attribute alone, the average consumer is willing to pay a large premium of 160%. However, a discount is required for the color change of cassava from white to yellow (-29%), and an additional discount results from the fact that the cassava is genetically modified (-61%). These are important findings for biofortification research programs that have to make choices between conventional and GM breeding techniques. It is noted that a significantly positive WTP does not imply that GM provitamin A cassava will indeed be sold at a premium. The technology is being developed by the public sector with the aim to reduce malnutrition among the poor, so a low price should be sought to enable easy access. Hence, the WTP survey is a tool to better understand consumer attitudes rather than an approach to develop a pricing strategy for a new commercial product. The third article, titled ?Stakeholder Positions toward GM Food: The Case of Vitamin A Biofortified Cassava in Brazil?, gathers experiences from around the world and shows that stakeholder positions can crucially influence the efficiency of GM regulatory approaches and the success of new technologies. This research builds on a survey of a large range of local stakeholders. Overall, stakeholder perceptions about GM foods are relatively positive in Brazil. Statistical analysis shows that three groups of stakeholders can be distinguished: those in favor of GM crops, those against, and those that have a more or less neutral position. Representatives of local and multinational industries and those of several governmental entities belong mostly to the first group; international and national NGOs form the second group, while scientists are mostly found in the third group. Information sources and institutional/personal relationships influence individual stakeholder positions, as do socio-demographic characteristics, such as the level of education and age. An important result is also the high level of trust that stakeholders in Brazil have, in general, in the country?s research and academic sectors. Therefore, taking into account the relevance of information and the role played by the research sector, an effective system of distributing GM crop information via government agencies and/or public media is necessary to complement the knowledge of consumers so that they can make their own informed decisions.