The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency
The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency
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DOI：
10.1017/sus.2019.3
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发表时间：
2019-01-01
影响因子：
5.5
通讯作者：
Bailey, Rob
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Benton, Tim G.;Bailey, Rob
粮食政策的主要重点是提高农业生产力和实现市场自由化，使贸易全球化。这一重点导致了农产品供应的巨大增长，更多的卡路里变得可用，价格下降。廉价卡路里的可获得性越来越多地支持通过肥胖造成营养不良的饮食，全球竞争激励生产者以最低的成本生产，通常会造成环境破坏。我们建议重新关注粮食系统的整体生产力和效率，即每单位投入可以健康和可持续地养活的人数。技术摘要自第二次世界大战以来，特别是近几十年来，农业和粮食贸易政策的过度理性一直是通过提高农业生产力和市场效率，贸易将压低粮食价格，增加选择和粮食供应：含蓄地将更多和更便宜的粮食定义为实现全球粮食安全这一国际公益的途径。在这里，我们假设，通过关注农业生产力和贸易来增加粮食供应并降低粮食价格确实会降低价格并增加供应，但也会鼓励健康和环境成本的外部化，而不是提供公共产品可以说是市场失灵。换句话说，注重提高农业产量和效率，通过鼓励成本外部化，降低了粮食系统的效率。重点应该是粮食系统的效率，以提供利润，健康的饮食和健康的地球。将生产力论点重新纳入粮食系统效率的框架，为减少市场失灵、改善公共卫生和可持续性提供了一条明确的途径。
Non-technical summaryThe principal policy focus for food has been to increase agricultural productivity and to liberalize markets allowing globalized trade. This focus has led to huge growth in the supply of agricultural produce, more calories becoming available, and price declining. The availability of cheaper calories increasingly underpins diets creating malnourishment through obesity, and global competition incentivizes producers who can produce the most, cheaply, typically with environmental damage. We propose re-focusing, away from yields per unit input, to the food system's overall productivity and efficiency - the number of people that can be fed healthily and sustainably per unit input.Technical summarySince the Second World War, and particularly in recent decades, the over-arching rationale of agricultural and food trade policy has been that by increasing the productivity of agriculture and efficiency of its markets, trade will drive down food prices, drive up choices and food availability: implicitly defining more available and cheaper food as the route to achieving the international public good of global food security. Here we hypothesize that a focus on increasing availability of food, and lowering food prices through focusing on agricultural productivity and trade does reduce prices and increases availability, but also encourages the externalization of costs on health and environment, and instead of providing public goods arguably represents market failure. In other words, a focus on increasing agricultural yields and efficiency decreases the efficiency of the food system through incentivizing externalization of costs. The focus should rather be on the efficiency of the food system to deliver profits, healthy diets and a healthy planet. Reframing the productivity argument towards the efficiency of the food system provides a clear route to reducing market failure, improving public health and sustainability.