Food Price and Trade Policy Biases - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 364

(a) Developing countries

RRA
NRA non-ag tradables
NRA ag tradables

(a) High-income countries

RRA
NRA non-ag tradables
NRA ag tradables

Figure 14.2 Nominal rates of assistance to agricultural and non-agricultural tradable sectors
and relative rate of assistance,a developing and high-income countries, 1955 to 2004
a The RRA is defined as 100*[(100+NRAagt)/(100+NRAnonagt)−1], where NRAagt and NRAnonagt are the
percentage NRAs for the tradables parts of the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, respectively.
Source: Anderson (2009, Ch. 1), based on estimates in Anderson and Valenzuela (2008).

exceptional in that they had an anti-agricultural policy bias for most of the twenti-
eth century, and their manufacturing tariff protection exceeded agricultural supports.
Both sectors' distortions were reduced in the final third of that century and are now
close to zero, however, not unlike the average developing country (Anderson, Lloyd,
and MacLaren 2007).
Those averages hide the fact that there is still much variation across developing coun-
tries in both the level and rate of change in distortion indicators. National RRA esti-
mates for 2000-2004 varied from around -50 percent for several African countries to
nearly 150 percent for a few high-income countries (Figure 14.4).
Within the agricultural sector of each country, whether developed or developing,
there is a wide range of product NRAs (Figure 14.5). Some product NRAs are positive