MARKETS AND DETERMINANTS OF FOOD PRICES - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 111

reduced household and individual consumption. As international cereal prices continue to
respond to increasing global demand and tight supply, improving the understanding of if and
how completely these prices are transmitted to food insecure regions is critical for safeguard-
ing the food security of the poor. When localized droughts reduce food supplies, chronic
reductions in food access occur due to elevated prices that can persist over a period of years.
Remote sensing information can contribute significant information about local food growing
conditions that help identify markets in which prices may greatly affect conditions of food
access for the poor.
Staple food price indices developed specifically for food security analysis that include low-
value, bulk, semi-processed commodities such as beans, cassava chips and sorghum can inform
decision makers in the humanitarian community of the potential for food price-related food
insecurity. This information is of increasing value as globalization of the food market begins
to increase the transmission of price signals from developed countries into less developed
countries, and periodic imbalances between global demand and supply of food is becoming
more frequent.
References
Abbott, P. C. and Battisti, A. B. (2011) Recent global food price shocks: Causes, consequences and
lessons for African government and donors. Journal of African Economies , 20, i12-i62.
Abbott, P. C., Hurt, C. and Tyner, W. E. (2011) What's driving farm prices in 2011? Oak Brook IL,
Farm Foundation.
Abdulai, A. and CroleRees, A. (2001) Determinants of income diversification amongst rural households
in southern Mali. Food Policy , 26, 437-452.
Badiane, O. and Shively, G. E. (1998) Spatial integration, transport costs, and the response of local
prices to policy changes in Ghana. Journal of Development Economics , 56, 411-431.
Baffes, J. and Dennis, A. (2013) Long-term drivers of food prices. Washington DC, World Bank.
Baltzer, K. (2013) International to domestic price transmission in fourteen developing countries during
the 2007-08 food crisis. Copenhagen, United Nations University.
Barrett, C. B. (1996) Urban bias in price risk: The geography of food price distributions in low-income
economies. Journal of Development Studies , 32, 830-849.
Barrett, C. B. and Bellemare, M. F. (2011, July 12) Why food price volatility doesn't matter: Policy
makers should focus on bringing costs down. Foreign Affairs .
Baulch, B. (1997) Testing for food market integration revisited. Journal of Development Studies , 33, 512-534.
Brown, M. E., Hintermann, B. and Higgins, N. (2009) Markets, climate change and food security in
West Africa. Environmental Science and Technology , 43, 8016-8020.
Brown, M. E., Tondel, F., Essam, T., Thorne, J. A., Mann, B. F., Leonard, K., Stabler, B. and Eilerts,
G. (2012) Country and regional staple food price indices for improved identification of food insec-
urity. Global Environmental Change , 22, 784-794.
Chiu, Y.-W., Weng, Y.-H., Su, Y.-Y., Huang, C.-Y., Chang, Y.-C. and Kuo, K. N. (2009) The
nature of international health security. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition , 18, 679-683.
Clark, G. (1994) Onions are my husband: Survival and accumulation by West African market women , Chicago
IL and London, Chicago University Press.
Compton, J., Wiggins, S. and Keats, S. (2011) Impact of the global food crisis on the poor: What is the
evidence? London, Overseas Development Institute.
Conforti, P. (2004) Price transmission in selected agricultural markets. FAO Commodity and Trade Policy
Research Working Paper No. 7 , Rome, Italy, Commodities and Trade Division, Food and Agriculture
Organization.
Deaton, A. and Laroque, G. (1992) On the behavior of commodity prices. Review of Economic Studies ,
59, 1-23.