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The rising costs of nutritious foods: The case of Ethiopia

Author : Bachewe, Fantu Nisrane

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 27 pages

File Size : 28,62 MB

Release : 2019-08-27

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

Costs of healthy diets are worryingly rising in a number of developed and emerging economies. However, less is known on these costs for developing countries. Using price data from a large number of markets in Ethiopia, we find that real prices of all nutritionally-rich food groups increased significantly (between 19 and 62 percent) over the period 2007 to 2016. This contrasts with (1) staple crops (grains, roots, and tubers), which did not show any price increase, and (2) oils, fats, and sugar, the prices of which decreased substantially. Using detailed nationwide datasets and relying on time series methods, we link these price increases to changes in local markets, demand and supply factors, transaction costs, and international trade. We find that prices of nutritionally-rich food groups – compared to cereals – are relatively less affected by international trade and exchange rate changes but more so by rapidly increasing local and city demand. This rising demand is likely due to recent income growth and rapid urbanization and the high-income elasticities for nutritious foods in Ethiopia. Moreover, we find that local production changes affected prices of nutritious items little, but national price rises were found to have been significantly linked with food price rises in commercial clusters in the country. Changes in transaction costs – fuel and transport costs – explained relatively little of the observed food price changes.



The rising costs of nutritious foods in Ethiopia

Author : Yimer, Feiruz

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 4 pages

File Size : 34,10 MB

Release : 2017-06-09

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

Given the high prevalence of undernutrition among children in low income countries and the associated high human and eco-nomic costs (Hoddinott et al. 2013), improving nutritional out-comes must be an urgent priority. Improving nutrition is high on the policy agenda of the government of Ethiopia, as stated in the Growth and Transformation Plan II, which aims to reduce young child stunting levels from 40 percent in 2014/15 to 26 percent in 2019/2020. Lack of access to diverse diets is one of the underlying factors contributing to chronic undernutrition (Arimond and Ruel 2004, UNICEF 1998). Despite recent improvements, child stunting in Ethiopia remains widespread (CSA and ICF International 2017). Moreover, Ethiopian children consume one of the least diverse diets in sub-Saharan Africa (Hirvonen 2016). At the household level, food consumption baskets are dominated by cereals and pulses, while the consumption of animal-source foods and fruits and Vitamin A-rich vegetables is rare, especially in rural areas.1 Such monotonous diets are regarded as a major contributor to non-communicable diseases in Ethiopia (Melaku et al. 2016). Recent research suggests that the poor dietary diversity in ru-ral areas can be explained, at least partly, both by limited knowledge about the health benefits of diverse diets and by poor access to food markets. Households in areas in which food crop production is not very diverse but which have good access to mar-kets are found to have more diverse diets than do households in such areas but which have poor access to markets and, so, de-pend primarily on own-production for the food they consume.2 Yet, even with sufficient access to markets and knowledge on the benefits of diverse diets, poor households may simply be un-able to afford nutritionally rich foods (Warren and Frongillo 2017). Indeed, prices and affordability of nutritious foods remains a neglected area of research in efforts to understand poor dietary diversity in Ethiopia and elsewhere.3 In the analysis described here, we explore how prices and, consequently, the affordability of nutritious food have changed over the last decade in Ethiopia.



IFPRI publications related to nutrition in Ethiopia

Author : Capstone 2025

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 16 pages

File Size : 25,44 MB

Release : 2019-10-30

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) began research activities in Ethiopia in the 1980s to assess the root causes of drought-related food-production shortages and support adoption of appropriate policy responses. IFPRI’s rigorous empirical research contributed to a broader understanding of economic development processes in Ethiopia and built capacity to conduct such research on a national scale. Working with many long-standing partners, IFPRI evaluated strategies for achieving sustainable agricultural growth, investment in agricultural research, the provision of safety nets to strengthen resilience, prioritization of nutrition interventions for women and children, property rights, and management of natural resources, among other goals. Evidence from this and other work informed programs and initiatives to improve food and nutrition security for vulnerable people.



Prices of vegetables and fruits in Ethiopia: Trends and implications for consumption and nutrition

Author : Bachewe, Fantu Nisrane

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 42 pages

File Size : 33,50 MB

Release : 2021-06-29

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

We study price behavior of vegetables and fruits in Ethiopia over the 15 year period from 2005 to 2019 based on large-scale retail and producer price datasets. This is an important topic given the importance of prices for consumption decisions for these nutritious crops. A number of notable findings come from the analysis. First, prices are rapidly increasing both in real terms and when compared to cereals. At the end of the study period in 2019, vegetables and fruits in real terms were significantly more expensive than 15 years earlier. Especially green leafy vegetables show a significant price rise, likely because few high-yielding varieties of these vegetables have been made available and adopted by producers. Second, part of the rise in prices is explained by increased marketing margins. To understand what accounts for these increases in the marketing margins for fruits and vegetables requires more research, as they contrast with stable or declining margins seen for other food crops over the study period. Third, we see significant seasonality in vegetable prices that is mostly driven by supply factors, but also by demand shifts due to increased demand in fasting periods. Fruit prices do not show such high seasonal variation, however. Fourth, there is significant spatial price variation in the country – vegetable prices are 60 percent more expensive in lowland regions than in the Amhara region, where vegetables are cheapest. Fruit prices in the lowlands are double the prices in the major producing area, the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' (SNNP) region.



The rising costs of animal-source foods in Ethiopia: Evidence and implications

Author : Bachewe, Fantu Nisrane

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 30 pages

File Size : 17,80 MB

Release : 2017-08-11

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

In many developing countries in which staple foods dominate the composition of diets, higher consumption of animal-source foods (ASF) is associated with significant nutritional benefits. Given the importance of prices for consumption decisions in these settings, we analyze ASF price patterns in the last decade (2007-2016), relying on a large-scale price dataset collected in 116 urban retail markets in Ethiopia. We document important seasonal and spatial patterns and we find, worryingly, that real prices of ASF have been increasing in the last decade by between 32 to 36 percent for three major ASF – milk, eggs, and meat. Similar price increases are noted in rural and urban areas and for tradable and non-tradable ASFs. This price trend is in contrast with staple cereals for which real prices stayed at similar levels over the last decade. As we estimate that a price increase of this magnitude would reduce consumption of ASF by approximately 25 percent, holding other things constant, it seems that more investments and attention to the production of ASF and the livestock sector are needed to reduce ASF prices and increase their consumption in Ethiopia.



COVID-19 and food security in Ethiopia: Do social protection programs protect?

Author : Abay, Kibrom A.

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 46 pages

File Size : 25,56 MB

Release : 2020-11-11

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

We assess the impact of Ethiopia’s flagship social protection program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food and nutrition security of households, mothers, and children. We use both pre-pandemic in-person household survey data and a post-pandemic phone survey. Two thirds of our respondents reported that their incomes had fallen after the pandemic began and almost half reported that their ability to satisfy their food needs had worsened. Employing a household fixed effects difference-in-difference approach, we find that the household food insecurity increased by 11.7 percentage points and the size of the food gap by 0.47 months in the aftermath of the onset of the pandemic. Participation in the PSNP offsets virtually all of this adverse change; the likelihood of becoming food insecure increased by only 2.4 percentage points for PSNP households and the duration of the food gap increased by only 0.13 months. The protective role of PSNP is greater for poorer households and those living in remote areas. Results are robust to definitions of PSNP participation, different estimators and how we account for the non-randomness of mobile phone ownership. PSNP households were less likely to reduce expenditures on health and education by 7.7 percentage points and were less likely to reduce expenditures on agricultural inputs by 13 percentage points. By contrast, mothers’ and children’s diets changed little, despite some changes in the composition of diets with consumption of animal source foods declining significantly.



Household food consumption patterns in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Author : Wolle, Abdulazize

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 14 pages

File Size : 29,79 MB

Release : 2020-03-16

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

Overweight and obesity are rising rapidly in Ethiopia's urban areas, constituting a major public health concern. Dietary choices can be one of the key drivers of adult body-weight. Using data collected from a large household survey in Addis Ababa, we provide a snapshot of dietary patterns in Ethiopia's largest urban area. We find that starchy staples (cereals, roots, and tubers) are prominent in household food baskets, taking up 25 percent of the food budget and providing more than 50 percent of consumed calories, on average. In contrast, the consumption of all kinds of fruits and vitamin A-rich vegetables is very low. For the average household, meat products account for nearly 18 percent of the food budget but provide only 2 percent of total calories. Richer households consume relatively less starchy staples than poorer households, but more animal-source foods and vegetables. However, the importance of fruits in household diets rises very slowly with household incomes. Together, these findings suggest that further income growth will result in drastic changes in the composition of food demand in Addis Ababa. Considering projections for increasing incomes, especially in urban areas, this will have major implications for agricultural production in rural areas connected to Ethiopia’s cities. There is also an urgent need to design cost-effective public health campaigns to reduce the emerging overweight and obesity crisis in urban Ethiopia.



Fasting, food, and farming: Evidence from Ethiopian producers on the link of food taboos with dairy development

Author : D’Haene, Eline

Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Page : 27 pages

File Size : 31,36 MB

Release : 2020-05-01

Category : Political Science

ISBN :

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Book Description

The impact of food taboos – often because of religion – is understudied. In Ethiopia, religious fasting by Orthodox Christians is assumed to be an important impediment for the sustainable development of a competitive dairy sector and desired higher milk consumption, especially by children. However, evidence is limited. Relying on unique data, we shed light on three major issues. First, we observe that the average annual number of fasting days that Orthodox adults are effectively adhering to is 140, less than commonly cited averages. Using this as an estimate for extrapolation, fasting is estimated to reduce annual dairy consumption by approximately 12 percent nationally. Second, farms adapt to declining milk demand during fasting by increased processing of milk into storable products – fasting contributes to larger price swings for these products. We further note continued sales of milk by non-remote farmers and reduced production – by adjusting lactation times for dairy animals – for remote farmers. Third, fasting is mostly associated with increased milk consumption by the children of dairy farmers, seemingly because of excess milk availability during fasting periods. Our results suggest that fasting habits are not a major explanation for the observed poor performance of Ethiopia’s dairy sector nor low milk consumption by children. To reduce the impact of fasting on the dairy sector in Ethiopia further, investment is called for in improved milk processing, storage, and infrastructure facilities.



AgrInvest-Food Systems Project – Political economy analysis of the Ethiopian food system

Author : Woolfrey, S.; Bizzotto Molina, P.; Ronceray, M.

Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.

Page : 65 pages

File Size : 13,82 MB

Release : 2021-02-17

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9251339430

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Book Description

This study aims to inform the implementation in Ethiopia of the AgrInvest-Food Systems Project, a collaboration between the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) to promote private investment in African food systems that contributes to sustainable development objectives. The study analyses the Ethiopian food system, identifying and explaining notable trends, important socio-economic, food security and nutrition and environmental outcomes generated by the food system, as well as the structural factors, institutions, and actors that shape food system outcomes in Ethiopia.



The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020

Author : Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.

Page : 320 pages

File Size : 18,56 MB

Release : 2020-07-01

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 925132901X

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Book Description

Updates for many countries have made it possible to estimate hunger in the world with greater accuracy this year. In particular, newly accessible data enabled the revision of the entire series of undernourishment estimates for China back to 2000, resulting in a substantial downward shift of the series of the number of undernourished in the world. Nevertheless, the revision confirms the trend reported in past editions: the number of people affected by hunger globally has been slowly on the rise since 2014. The report also shows that the burden of malnutrition in all its forms continues to be a challenge. There has been some progress for child stunting, low birthweight and exclusive breastfeeding, but at a pace that is still too slow. Childhood overweight is not improving and adult obesity is on the rise in all regions. The report complements the usual assessment of food security and nutrition with projections of what the world may look like in 2030, if trends of the last decade continue. Projections show that the world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 and, despite some progress, most indicators are also not on track to meet global nutrition targets. The food security and nutritional status of the most vulnerable population groups is likely to deteriorate further due to the health and socio economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report puts a spotlight on diet quality as a critical link between food security and nutrition. Meeting SDG 2 targets will only be possible if people have enough food to eat and if what they are eating is nutritious and affordable. The report also introduces new analysis of the cost and affordability of healthy diets around the world, by region and in different development contexts. It presents valuations of the health and climate-change costs associated with current food consumption patterns, as well as the potential cost savings if food consumption patterns were to shift towards healthy diets that include sustainability considerations. The report then concludes with a discussion of the policies and strategies to transform food systems to ensure affordable healthy diets, as part of the required efforts to end both hunger and all forms of malnutrition.