Superfood fads for global farmers

In a Marketplace report last night, Dan Bobkoff describes the excitement of new crops for global farmers without overstating the power of any single new crop to transform the world. To communicate this balance of opportunity and realism, Bobkoff chatted with my fellow Tufts economist Will Masters.

Masters is chairman of the Food and Nutrition Policy Department in the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts. He says more often than not, so-called miracle crops like moringa or breadfruit are distractions. "Why [is] it that it didn't get identified as a huge success previously?"

In other words, it's not like farmers haven't tried many of these crops before. Farmers experiment. They'll plant something new, and see how it does. And, over the years, many of these so-called superfoods failed for the most mundane of reasons. They take too long to grow, require too much labor or are prone to pests. It's not as easy to spread breadfruit as wheat.

"That search across all the available biodiversity has been going on for thousands of years," Masters said, "and it's led to a system that has found a half dozen or dozen major species that feed the world. And that's because those major species have some pretty amazing characteristics."

The dilemma of fair trade bananas

At Civil Eats yesterday, Aliza Wasserman explains the dilemma for the public interest entrepreneurs who are developing a fair trade banana market. The article describes a recent conference at Tufts University.

The most difficult question is whether fair trade bananas should come only from smallholders and cooperatives (preserving fair trade principles but limiting scale), or instead whether fair trade sourcing should allow larger plantations so long as they follow the stipulated principles (sacrificing a small-is-best principle but achieving a larger share of the total market).

Wasserman writes:

Fair Trade banana plantations have also been crucial to building a robust supply of Fair Trade bananas. Plantations represent both a key challenge and opportunity, by providing the promise to impact the broader industry and bring Fair Trade bananas to a larger consumer base. Nearly everyone at the conference hoped to impact the broader industry, whether they are focused on the future of small-scale or “smallholder” farmers, or the overall future of Fair Trade bananas.

But many of the presenters felt that the current pricing system, in which the Fair Trade certifying bodies, like Fair Trade International or FLO, distribute the same premium to plantation owners and small landholders alike, represents a major flaw in the system. Many in the industry believe that cooperatives of small producers should receive a premium that is linked to their higher cost of production relative to plantations, which can take advantage of economies of scale. Yet, the first banana producer to receive Fair Trade certification was a plantation, and scaling up Fair Trade would not be possible without them.

While a student at the Friedman School, Wasserman was a regular contributor to the U.S. Food Policy blog.

WCRF policy strategies to reduce non-communicable disease around the world

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) this month published a new 2-page document (.pdf) summarizing the organization's recommendations on using food policy to address the problem of high rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

The recommendations encourage clear nutrition labeling, healthy school meals programs, well-targeted taxes and healthy food subsidies, and restrictions on advertising for breastmilk substitutes and for unhealthy foods (especially to children).

The WCRF is an international not-for-profit umbrella organization for a network of cancer prevention organizations. WCRF literature reviews on dietary patterns and cancer risk are used by the U.S. federal government as one of several evidence sources for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The WCRF policy recommendations are bolder and more activist than some policy-makers would be ready to consider in the United States, but the WCRF approach nonetheless offers a lot of insight.  For example, a background document on law and obesity prevention (.pdf) carefully considers both advantages and disadvantages of legal approaches to addressing public health nutrition challenges.  It acknowledges not just the political power of food and beverage manufacturers to thwart such policies but also the constitutional protections for commercial speech and the serious concerns consumers may have about policy interventions that limit their autonomy.

For perspective on U.S. food policy debates, it is illuminating to hear an international perspective that is (not surprisingly) comparatively interventionist, but which at the same time fully recognizes the challenges and tradeoffs involved in such policy proposals.

 

Balancing multiple concerns in Oxfam's Behind the Brands campaign

On September 17, Oxfam America released the most recent update to company scorecards from its Behind the Brands campaign.  For example, the update ...

• praised Nestle for improvements in recognizing land rights,
• noted that changes to Coca-Cola's guiding principles earned small increases in environmental sustainability scores,
• assigned an increased score to Unilever for improvements on gender issues, and
• reported that Associated British Foods, General Mills and Kellogg’s "remain at the bottom of the scorecard with few signs of progress."

The Behind the Brands campaign urges leading branded food and beverage manufacturers to improve the anti-poverty impact and environmental sustainability of their activities in developing countries.   The campaign reflects Oxfam's characteristically sensible approach toward the role of private sector initiative in economic development. While some non-governmental advocacy organizations might wish these multi-national corporations would leave developing countries alone, Oxfam instead wishes them to stick around ... and perform better for the interests of the world's poor.

In total, Oxfam's scorecards address seven issues: 

• land,
• women,
• farmers,
• workers,
• climate,
• transparency, and
• water.

This is a good list of issues.  Still, as an economist in a nutrition school, I couldn't resist asking Oxfam whether nutrition issues might ever be considered as well.

Laura Rusu, a media manager for the non-profit organization, acknowledged that "health advocates are rightly asking tough questions about the effects of high-sugar diets."  She described Oxfam as "an organization working to right the wrongs of poverty and injustice."  While the Behind the Brands efforts "do not focus on the nutrition profile of these companies," Rusu gave a respectful shout out to initiatives that do, including the Access to Nutrition Index. 

Even recognizing that developing countries have major challenges of hunger and under-nutrition, I rank broader nutrition concerns higher today than I did a few years ago.  Given the focus specifically on major branded food and beverage companies, such as Nestle and Coca-Cola, I personally might rank nutrition concerns about product offerings as one of the top seven issues.  New branded food products are replacing traditional foodways that have considerable appeal both in terms of nutrition quality and in terms of economic opportunities for smaller farmers and small-business distributors and retailers.

Ractopamine and the proposed Chinese purchase of Smithfield Foods

Helena Bottemiller reported at the end of May for NBC News that the proposed purchase of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company may be related to the fact that China has stricter standards than the United States does for a growth promoting drug:

The proposed $4.7 billion sale of Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, to China’s biggest meat processing company comes amid significant trade friction between the two countries over meat and livestock.

China bans ractopamine, a controversial growth-promoting drug that is widely used by U.S. livestock producers. Russia also bans the feed additive and both countries have recently stepped up residue testing in meat, worried about the health effects of the drug. The actions have constrained American meat exports.

Bottemiller's feature was supported by the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

AGree policy initiative encourages comprehensive immigration reform

The co-chairs of the AGree agricultural policy initiative today sent a letter to U.S. Senators encouraging comprehensive immigration reform.

Dan Glickman (former Secretary of Agriculture under the Clinton administration), Gary Hirshberg (Stonyfield Farm), Jim Moseley (former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture under the Bush administration), and Emmy Simmons (former senior U.S. international aid official) wrote:

We applaud the Senate Judiciary Committee’s leadership in moving forward on the bipartisan legislation. This presents a huge opportunity for foreign-born agricultural workers who want to build a better future for themselves and their families and for American farmers and ranchers struggling with serious labor shortages. AGree has initiated and supported efforts to overcome volatile and divisive differences that have doomed past reform efforts and we will continue to use our convening powers and work in tandem with other groups to help achieve a new national immigration policy.

AGree has four principles for immigration policy reform.  These principles seem politically astute, including key themes that one hears both from agricultural producer groups and from immigrant labor advocates:

• Build a legal, more stable workforce in agriculture;
• Develop a practical and economically viable guest worker program that allows employers to hire legal foreign workers and protects foreign and U.S. farm workers;
• Ensure quality of life, good working conditions, and opportunities for food and agriculture workers; and
• Provide more opportunities for farm workers to develop skills and advance their careers within the food and agriculture sector.

The Senate legislation that the AGree co-chairs support is the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744.  It is very much a compromise piece of legislation.  This week is critical in the Senate, and, even after passing the Senate, the House is even more challenging.

From the perspective of immigrant labor advocates, farm producers and managers are a complicated group of allies.  On the one hand, farmers are a terrific helpful voice, because they speak of immigrant farm workers with respect, articulate the great value that the workers bring to the American agricultural economy, and oppose a deportation-centered immigration policy.

On the other hand, the farm groups insist on an awful tough stipulation in their support for a path to legal status for illegal workers.  The farm groups insist that newly legalized workers be prohibited from moving quickly into non-farm jobs such as construction or food service.  For the farmers, the whole point is that these newly legal workers should stay on the farm, keeping wages in check.

By and large, the Senate bill represents the best possible compromise that immigrant labor advocates could strike with farm groups, so that they could speak with one voice in the political debate.  If immigrant labor advocates and farm groups split, they will be soundly beaten by the anti-immigrant and nativist folks in Congress.

I participate in AGree as part of its Research Committee, but had no role in the organization's immigration position.  For a scholarly but highly readable account of the current issues, see Philip Martin's article (may be gated) in the January edition of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

Agreement with Mexico about tomato imports

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Feb. 2 announced a new agreement with Mexico, under which Mexico's tomato exports must satisfy a minimum price.

In adopting a moderately protectionist policy by mutual agreement, the two countries avoid a trade conflict that could have harmed their commerce more seriously.

"I applaud the good work of Undersecretary Sánchez and the Commerce Department to forge this important agreement to allow our domestic tomato industry to compete on a level playing field. The draft agreement meets the requirements of U.S. antidumping law and provides an effective remedy for our domestic tomato producers, further bolstering agriculture as a bright spot in our nation's economy. Ultimately, the Obama Administration forged an agreement that will restore stability and confidence to the U.S. tomato market and ensure fair trade in fresh tomatoes through increased reference prices, coverage and strengthened enforcement. The United States is one of the world's leading producers of tasty, high-quality tomatoes. Our U.S. fresh and processed tomatoes account for more than $2 billion in cash receipts and support thousands of American jobs in our food industry, shipping, processing and more."

Undersecretary Francisco J. Sánchez

The U.S. Food Policy blog recently discussed how agricultural labor markets in Mexico and the United States are interconnected.  If it is true that agricultural wages in Mexico are rising, it becomes easier for Mexico to agree to a price floor for Mexican tomato exports, addressing multiple problems simultaneously.  In a 2010 article for the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (may be gated), Friedman School graduate student Wendy Johnecheck, Julie Caswell, and I studied the possible impact of hypothetical country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations on the U.S.-Mexican trade in tomatoes.

In my class on U.S. food policy, we explore (a) some occasions when import-competing businesses (such as U.S. tomato growers) have convinced the government to put up protective barriers and (b) other occasions when such barriers have been resisted by advocacy coalitions led by import buyers (such as major retail chains) and other U.S. agricultural industries that rely on exports (such as wheat producers).  These U.S. advocacy coalitions are politically important, because, of course, Mexican producer groups have no direct representation in the U.S. Congress.

A former student from this class today pointed out yesterday's New York Times coverage of the new tomato deal, which echoes these points.  In the article, Stephanie Strom explains the advocacy coalitions that make the new policy politically feasible:

The Mexicans enlisted roughly 370 American businesses, including Wal-Mart Stores and meat and vegetable producers, to argue their cause. Those businesses feared a bitter trade war like the one the Mexicans waged over trucking, which imposed stiff tariffs on American goods headed south. 

Mexican farm labor markets tighten up, with possible implications for U.S. farmers and farm workers

The agricultural labor supply in Mexico may be shrinking, a development that is likely to raise wages for farm laborers in both Mexico and the United States.

If this is truly a long-term trend, rather than a short-term response to economic recession or disruption because of recent violence, then it would have several implications.  It could cause some difficulties for U.S. farm owners, and it could somewhat hinder efforts to encourage increased consumption of fruits and vegetables at low prices.  On the positive side, it could help smooth U.S. immigration policy debates, and it would help alleviate hardship for the immigrant workers who play such a central role in the American food system.

An article in the most recent issue of Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy (may be gated), by J. Edward Taylor, Diane Charlton, and Antonio Yúnez-Naude, is titled "The End of Farm Labor Abundance."  Here is the abstract:

An analysis of nationally representative panel data from rural Mexico, with observations in years 2002, 2007, and 2010, suggests that the same shift out of farm work that characterized U.S. labor history is well underway in Mexico. Meanwhile, the demand for agricultural labor in Mexico is rising. In the future, U.S. agriculture will compete with Mexican farms for a dwindling supply of farm labor. Since U.S. domestic workers are unwilling to do farm work and the United States can feasibly import farm workers from only a few countries in close geographic proximity, the agricultural industry will eventually need to adjust production to use less labor. The decline in foreign labor supply to farms in the United States ultimately will need to be accompanied by farm labor conservation, switching to less labor intensive crops and technologies, and labor management practices that match fewer workers with more farm jobs. 

This article may be thought-provoking for readers who participate in U.S.-based sustainable food movements.

For one thing, these movements have been trying to come to grips with labor issues, recognizing that even locally oriented and organic food production in the United States makes heavy use of low-wage farm workers.  It is good that these movements have been giving greater attention to worker advocates, including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and others, but this attention has to be accompanied by a fearless and honest analysis of the basics of labor supply and labor demand, which are more fundamental determinants of both wages and working conditions.

For another thing -- and here I am generalizing a bit -- many of the thinkers and writers in this movement whose work I generally respect highly are nonetheless trade skeptics to a degree that makes me nervous.  It is sensible to expect high standards from trade policy without straying quite so close to a nativist pessimism in which low-income trading partners are seen as bottomless pits of economic distress.  The reason I am more optimistic than many of my friends about international trade is that I have not yet given up on the prospects for economic advancement that reaches even low-wage labor markets in the countries we trade with -- starting, for example, with Mexico.

Food value chains beyond the farm gate

USDA's Economic Research Service has long published a well-known graphic illustrating the food value chain as a dollar bill, with each segment showing a particular industry's contribution to the average consumer dollar spent on food.

A key insight from this graphic is that farmers on average receive only about 10 cents for every dollar of consumer food spending.

It may be more surprising to hear how rapidly value chains around the world are changing, even for staples such as rice and potatoes.  A December report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), by Thomas Reardon, Kevin Chen, Bart Minten, and Lourdes Adriano, describes this change as a Quiet Revolution. Although the supermarket-ization of the food system in developing countries introduces risks and challenges, the report seems to me fairly upbeat.  It emphasizes several ways that economic development of the value chain can offer benefits for poor farmers and consumers, leading to improved food security.  To supply the megacities of countries like China, India, and Bangladesh with sufficient food, we cannot think just about traditional farmers selling raw commodities to a local merchant trader.  Instead, it is necessary to come to grips with modernization even in the food system that serves the world's poor consumers.

Agricultural producer support declining over time

We hear all sorts of generalizations about U.S. farm policy.

Some say U.S. farm programs are too stingy and should provide more help to farmers, especially small farmers. Others say U.S. farm programs are a boondoggle that just makes rich farmers richer. Still others say farm programs make consumers fat by encouraging too much cheap food.

Instead of generalizing, it is important to think quantitatively.

One good data source is the Producer Support Estimates (PSE) from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (a club for the world's upper-income countries). I use this data source in several chapters of my forthcoming book from Routledge/Earthscan called Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction.

The PSE data measure diverse agricultural programs and policies in a consistent way across countries and over time.  One problem with the PSE is that it can seem a little complex.  To provide an orientation, Rebecca Nemec and I created the following data gadget.  Nemec is a graduate student at the Friedman School at Tufts and the teaching assistant for my class on U.S. Food Policy.  The top panel shows broad categories of support for agricultural producers.  The bottom panel shows more detail about each broad category in turn.   

Just click on each colored broad category in the top panel to see the corresponding detail in the bottom panel.

Working from top to bottom, we learn about trends in several major categories of producer support.

• Price supports and deficiency payments help farmers in years when prices are low.  OECD worries about these programs because they distort international trade and hurt farmers overseas.  Michael Pollan criticizes deficiency payments for making corn too cheap.  Notice that in recent years -- with greater scarcity and higher prices -- these distorting policies have fallen to almost nothing under current policy.
• Conservation programs have been growing in recent years, and also do not respond to price fluctuations as wildly as deficiency payments do.
• The other payments category includes direct payments, which pay farmers regardless of the current price.  These direct payments may end under some current farm bill proposals.  They do not distort agricultural markets very much, but it is unpopular to pay farmers when they are prospering during high-price years.
• Market Price Support represents the economic impact of the trade barriers that protect some producers, especially for milk and sugar, from imports.  Although they do not have a budget cost, these supports benefit farmers at the expense of consumers.  As with deficiency payments, the impact of these trade barriers has declined to almost nothing in recent high-price years.

An especially clever feature is that PSE data allow sensible comparisons across two seemingly different types of policies:

• payments to farmers at the taxpayers' expense (the first three broad categories), and
• trade policies that support farmers at the consumers' expense (the fourth broad category).

To speak coherently about U.S. agricultural policy, one must make important distinctions across several types of programs and be aware of rapid changes in program impacts from one year to the next.

There are a couple limitations that I should mention.  First, the OECD data may have some limitations of their own.  Second, while I did the best I could to classify programs from the OECD data into sensible categories, I did make some judgement calls about these program classifications.

In general, U.S. support for farmers has been declining in recent years, mainly because of high food prices that result from greater scarcity on world markets.  Though some people are more optimistic, I think population and environmental constraints may generally keep prices fairly high in the future.

This means that governmental support for U.S. farmers can be smaller over time, unless legislators replace existing programs with new and poorly designed alternatives.  For example, I worry about new and potentially expensive crop insurance programs that have been proposed in draft farm bills.

Powered by Tableau

A proposal for a global ban on trans fats

While labeling strategies provide a sound public policy response to some food ingredient dilemmas, in other cases it is simpler and more effective to make do without the ingredient altogether.  Some argue that trans fats fall into the category of ingredients that should just be eliminated (with the exception of the small amount of trans fat that occurs naturally in animal food products).  These fats replaced healthier traditional oils and fats just a few decades ago, and some countries have recently been rapidly shifting back away from their use without any major food system damage.

In a commentary this week for the World Public Health Nutrition Association, Vivica Kraak, Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, and Rafael Monge-Rojas recommend a near-complete global ban on trans fats.

This commentary presents a case for public health professionals, practitioners, academics, industry and government representatives, funders, public-interest non-governmental organisations and consumer advocates, to collaborate to support a global trans-fat ban. Coordinated actions to remove this harmful substance from our food and eating environments will be able to contribute to reducing chronic non-communicable disease mortality by 2025.

Feeding nine billion

From Evan Fraser at the University of Guelph, a nicely balanced 12-minute lecture on the global food prospect. I like the choice of 4 solution strategies, including both high-tech solutions and local food systems without exaggerating the strengths of either.

Food aid reforms would be like money back on your grocery bill

Oxfam America and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) explain here how much money could be saved -- and how many more hungry people could be fed -- if the United States reformed its food aid programs. Some of the key reforms include eliminating a rule that most food must be sourced from the United States and shipped in U.S. ships.

For more detail on such issues, the best book is Food Aid After Fifty Years, by Chris Barrett at Cornell and my colleague Dan Maxwell here at the Friedman School at Tufts. A good recent report comes from the GAO: Local and Regional Procurement Can Enhance the Efficiency of U.S. Food Aid, but Challenges May Constrain Its Implementation.

Feeding 9 billion

H. Charles J. Godfray and colleagues in the UK contributed a fine summary of the global food challenge to a special issue of Science last year. It strikes the right tone of concern falling short of panic.  It does well in selecting the most important literature to summarize.  It avoids partisanship in the well-drawn battle-lines over productivity-oriented solutions such as GMOs and conservation-oriented solutions such as low-meat diets.  The authors are happy to explain both approaches in a sensible way.  And yet the recommendations are substantial, not wishy-washy.  Here is the abstract.

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

Oxfam partners with Coca-Cola to study the company's poverty footprint in Zambia and El Salvador

Oxfam America in March released a report analyzing the poverty footprint of beverage giant Coca-Cola and multinational bottling company SABMiller in Zambia and El Salvador.  The report was jointly authored by the three organizations.

Marion Nestle gave Oxfam a hard time about this report: "I can only guess that Coca-Cola’s grant to Oxfam must have been substantial."  In a comment on Marion's blog, Chris Jochnick from Oxfam explained that Coca-Cola had contributed $400,000 to the research project, and -- separately from this research project -- had given Oxfam $2.5 million in 2008-2010 for humanitarian work.

Altogether, I feel the Oxfam project contributed to the companies' public relations messaging, overstated the companies' beneficial contribution to local economies, under-emphasized the health concerns about their impact, and did not adequately preserve Oxfam's own independence in the cooperative analysis.

Oxfam America is truly my favorite humanitarian assistance organization -- because of sensible economic and policy commentary combined with good works on the ground -- so I hope my blog post on this particular report gets a thoughtful reading from Oxfam staff. In particular, I have no complaint about Oxfam's vision for the private sector role in economic development. Yet, I did not like this report.

Poverty footprint

First, the report appeared to credit the companies with contributing more than $100 million in economic activity to the local economy, generating millions of dollars in tax revenue for local governments and creating many thousands of jobs.  However, after reading the report closely and asking Oxfam staff some questions about it, I think readers should be careful not to think of those dollars and jobs as a real impact of Coca-Cola's presence.

The report itself has a bold statement of its analytic goals: 

Oxfam is developing the Poverty Footprint Methodology as a means to understand the full range of impacts multinational corporations have on poor communities, and to provide a platform for engagement around those impacts.

The report's most important quantitative results imply the companies have a large and beneficial macroeconomic impact:

An examination of the Coca-Cola/SABMiller value chain’s macroeconomic impacts reveals that its Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2008 was approximately $21 million in Zambia and $83 million in El Salvador.  In addition, the Coca-Cola/SABMiller value chain supported an estimate of more than 3,741 formal and informal jobs in Zambia and 4,244 formal jobs in El Salvador.

However, these numbers are not a correct estimate of the companies' "footprint" or impact on local economic activity, tax collections, and jobs.  If Coca-Cola did not exist, or were not allowed into Zambia and El Salvador, two things would be different from the current situation: (a) other beverage companies, including local companies, would sell more product, and (b) other beverages, including traditional beverages and water, would provide a larger share of the consumer's hydration needs.

If other beverage companies took up the slack, much of the economic activity and tax payments and job creation would have happened anyway.  It would be interesting to know how much profit Coca-Cola takes out of the local economy and returns to international shareholders in the United States and Europe.  At times, the Oxfam report appeared to be addressing the issue, but it didn't really.  Buried deep in the report, footnote 22 on p. 84 acknowledged: "The Coca-Cola Company’s profit information was not shared with the research team." 

I asked Oxfam if the analysis compared the situation with Coca-Cola to a situation without Coca-Cola, which is the relevant comparison for assessing "impact."  Helen Dasilva of Oxfam replied, "The objective was not to compare an economy with the system to an economy without."  The result is to give the companies credit for big dollar impacts that overstate their real contribution to job creation and the economy.  This is an analytic approach that one commonly sees when a county or State or industry boasts about the importance of its local economic activity, but this is not an approach that an independent analysis should take in assessing a multinational company's impact in a developing country.

Sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity

Second, the report included no critical discussion of expanded consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, displacement of traditional foods and beverages in the diet, and rising rates of overweight and obesity in developing countries.

When I asked Oxfam about this, Dasilva responded:

The focus of this project was not to study or address the issues surrounding obesity, nor did we conduct an analysis of the impact of Coca-Cola products on overall nutrition or health. That was a result of our limited bandwidth.

Dasilva agreed to forward some of my questions to Coca-Cola, which would not answer specific questions about the growth of sales of sugar-sweetened beverages in Zambia and El Salvador.  In particular, because a large fraction of the population in developing countries is children, I asked about growth in sales to children.  Coca-Cola's answer was clever:

We have a global Responsible Marketing Policy that covers all our beverages, and we do not market any products directly to children under 12. This means we will not buy advertising directly targeted at audiences that are more than 35% children under 12. Our policy applies to television, radio, and print, and, where data is available, to the Internet and mobile phones. Because of this policy we do not track sales to children under age 12 as it is against our global policy to directly target this age group with any marketing for our beverages.

I think of the advertising policy as a secondary issue. The real question is how much full-sugar Coke is the company selling to children. I don't believe a policy about advertising is sufficient reason to dodge a question that was not about advertising, but rather was about sales.  This is a tough question that Oxfam should have asked Coke but didn't.

Oxfam's independence from Coca-Cola messaging

Third, because of the joint authorship, it is impossible to tell what parts of the report are Coca-Cola writing, and what parts are Oxfam writing.

I asked Oxfam if this joint authorship caused the organization to make compromises in the language it would have used in a report that it authored independently.  Dasilva responded:

Bringing two significant multinationals and a global development organization together to agree on language in any report will be challenging. This report was no different and the result isn’t perfect. While it is safe to assume our varied cultures, missions and ways of working led to differences of opinion, it would be tough to pinpoint specific language differences given how many comments from all sides went into the final document.

I appreciate Dasilva's frank answer.  An Oxfam-authored report would have been quite different from this jointly authored report.  I look forward to reading the Oxfam-authored version some day.

Problems with the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

Despite the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) a year ago, the Tico Times in Costa Rica reports that the United States is refusing to lower trade barriers to imported sugar, because Costa Rica has not yet changed its copyright laws to implement a controversial provision that protects U.S. intellectual proprty rights (see also boingboing).

In principle, export oriented economic development is one of the most promising strategies for a small country seeking to overcome long-term poverty. In practice, the United States and other rich countries have been making it difficult for pro-trade advocates to explain the merit of this strategy to their compatriots.

In return for offering to lower our own barriers to trade, it seems fair for the United States to ask small poor countries to lower their own barriers to trade in a comparable way. That is the quid pro quo that makes trade agreements work. However, I can see why people in Central America would object to onerous observance of U.S. copyright provisions. Free flowing information seems like one of the most sensible ways to give countries that are currently poor a chance to learn the technologies that made the developed countries rich. That type of learning makes the whole world better off, and increases the whole world's chances of a peaceful, sustainable, and prosperous future.

$1 billion lawsuit against U.S. insurance companies over Chinese food dumping

Five food producers bring a $1 billion lawsuit over "dumping" of food imports from China at below production costs. The defendants are... U.S. insurance companies and the federal government.

Okay, I think I have this straight.

Domestic producers complain for years about "dumping" of food imports from China, a major trade policy concern.

In what sounds on the face of it like a reasonable compromise, imports are permitted to continue, so long as the importers put up a bond for any penalty they may owe if the federal government concludes they were dumping.

Importers buy insurance policies to cover their losses if they do have to pay the bond. Risk markets to the rescue!

The federal government then assesses hundreds of millions of dollars in dumping penalties against the importers. The penalties are supposed to be distributed to domestic producers.

The insurance companies refuse to pay and the importers cannot afford to honor their bond.

The U.S. producers are trying to sue the insurance companies and the federal government.

Just another day in U.S. Food Policy.