Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
weekly) food price information systems remain in their infancy. The data collected by existing
systems are very sparse and the time series begins less than a decade ago. Few food information
systems have adequate observations outside capital and regional cities. Small cities and towns
are vulnerable to interannual variability of prices and the impact of changes in food production,
but these communities have the least amount of data for analysis (Brown et al., 2009).
The international community has a good grasp on internationally traded agricultural
commodities. They monitor various attributes of traded commodities (area harvested, production,
consumption, export/import volumes, traded prices, etc.). However, these systems provide
little or no information on locally grown crops and regional price dynamics. The FAO's Global
Information and Early Warning Systems (GIEWS) worked together with USAID and other
international organizations to create a database of basic food prices. The GIEWS Food Price
Data and Analysis Tool was released in March 2009 and was supported by the FAO Initiative
on Soaring Food Prices (ISFP). The food price tool consolidates consistently updated food price
information and allows open access to the information. Another organization working on food
prices and trade is the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), a Group of Twenty
Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (also known as the G-20, which are the 20
major economies (19 countries plus the European Union)). The focus of AMIS is to enhance
food market transparency and encourage coordination of policy action in response to market
uncertainty. Although AMIS only focuses on wheat, maize, rice and soybeans, it captures a large
share of global production, consumption and trade volumes of the targeted crops, typically in
the range of 80-90 percent. Although this system gives a good idea of the internationally traded
commodities, it does little for the unprocessed coarse grains typically consumed by the food
insecure, poor populations of the developing world. In the 15 countries in Africa that are
landlocked, the need for locally collected price information is even more pressing. Without
information on price dynamics of these untraded goods, food security and market functioning
in rural areas of the continent cannot be appropriately assessed.
Currently utilized data collection tasks/methods are extremely expensive and, therefore,
rarely cover rural areas. Market information systems need to be extended to the locally grown
and consumed commodities and obtain observations across many communities. Nearly 75
percent of the world's population now either has a mobile device or has a family member
who does. With that in mind, institutions need to create a fundamental shift in how price
information is collected. Local participation will be critical for the overall success of this
method and, at same time, beneficial to all parties involved. If market conditions can be
created using cell phones that provide employment opportunities to young people, women
and other disadvantaged groups, then far more price data can be gathered on a wide variety
of markets on locally consumed crops. If institutions can provide financial assistance through
the use of different options (monthly phone charge coverage, airtime cards, etc.), we can
gather data much more cost effectively than paying individuals directly. With more observations
in each country, these institutions can determine the local price dynamics that control access
to food for millions of rural residents.
This approach is currently utilized in Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia under the EU
Commission project. Gathering data since the spring of 2013, the project has the potential to
expand greatly its impact by moving to gathering data via cell phones. Further analysis of
these collected price indicators could be extremely valuable to areas outside agriculture and
food security. With a number of ongoing conflicts in Africa, it is very important to understand
the dynamics of food prices prior, during and post conflict conditions. An effort to collect
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