FOOD PRICES AND SEASONALITY - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 125

Pingali and Heisey, 1999; Rojas, 2007; Wu and Guclu, 2013), and thus local market time
series information is available for maize. The plate shows low, medium and high levels of
seasonality for maize across all the developing countries in the world. India and China are
excluded, since both these countries have effective price control programs instituted for com-
modity prices. Nearly all markets in Africa show medium or high seasonality for maize prices.
More developed regions with better transportation networks and links to the international
markets such as Mexico and countries in South America display low seasonality.
When these seasonal metrics are compared to the difference between the local and global
maize prices for the period 2003-11, it is clear there is a relationship between the seasonality
that a price time series exhibits and its isolation from the international market. Seasonal effects
are more pronounced where markets are isolated. Plate 17 shows a correspondence between
seasonal price effects and a country's isolation. Further, this correspondence continues to hold
for locations within countries or sub-regions, such as West Africa or East Africa, and across
commodities.
Impact of food price dynamics on household food consumption
Changes in food prices during times of scarcity of food result in a broad change in behavior
by affected households (Devereux and Longhurst, 2009). These changes include:
• eatinginferiorfoods;
• takingonextrawagelabor;
• sellingorbarteringassets;
• rationingofconsumption;
• postponingceremoniesoroptionalexpenses;
• migratingtoindwork;
• borrowingcashorfood;and
• cuttingnon-foodspending.
During the hungry period, energy demands for farmers is high, since fields need to be cleared,
planted and weeded, but little grain is left over from the previous year (Cekan, 1992; Glantz,
1990; Toulmin, 1986). The weather is hot and wet and roads are often even more difficult to
navigate than usual due to mud and washouts. Women in particular have far less time and
ability to travel to the market to seek the least expensive commodity, with the additional
duties of helping in the fields added to their child care and food preparation duties. These
changes confound the impact of increasing food prices and reduced supply, but are neverthe-
less important for understanding the impact of price seasonality on social welfare.
To understand how changes in food prices affect individuals and households, researchers
set up studies that use interviews to elicit patterns of expenditure on food. Several studies in
the nutrition literature focus on the impact on nutrition outcomes and food security due to
changing food prices (Lavy et al ., 1996; Thomas et al ., 1992). Several studies are particularly
interesting for the purposes of understanding price seasonality because they focus on the sea-
sonal differences between consumption in the pre-harvest lean season when prices are high
and the post-harvest dry season when food prices tend to be much lower, providing a case
study of what happens when food prices rise without larger changes in the economic system
(Becquey et al ., 2012; Hillbruner and Egan, 2008). Although the impact of seasonal price