Recent Submissions

  • Extreme Weather Events and Crop Price Spikes in a Changing Climate: Illustrative global simulation scenarios

    Willenbockel, Dirk (Oxfam International, 05/09/2012)
    Agriculture is highly sensitive to climate variability and weather extremes. Various impact studies have considered the effects of projected long-run trends in temperature, precipitation and CO2 concentrations caused by climate change on global food production and prices. But an area that remains underexplored is the food price impacts that may result from an expected increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. This study uses a global dynamic multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to explore the potential food price impacts of a number of extreme weather event scenarios in 2030 for each of the main exporting regions for rice, maize and wheat.
  • Squeezed: Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility, Year 1 results

    Hossain, Naomi; King, Richard; Kelbert, Alexandra (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 23/05/2013)
    Half a decade after the price spike of 2007-2008, food price volatility has become the new norm: people have come to expect food prices to rapidly rise and fall, though nobody knows by how much or when. So what does the accumulation of food price rises mean for well-being and development in developing countries? And what can be done to improve life in a time of food price volatility? Squeezed provides some preliminary answers to these big development questions, based on the first year results of a four-year project conducted across 10 countries with different levels of exposure to price rises. While high and rising food prices no longer come as a surprise, rapid price changes and the cumulative effects of five years’ worth of price rises are still squeezing those on low incomes. In areas of life neglected by policy – especially domestic care work and informal social safety nets – Squeezed provides reasons to prepare for the next food price spike and provides recommendations for how best to do so, including: widening social assistance for the most vulnerable; being ready with temporary spike-proofing measures; monitoring the real impacts on people’s lives and wellbeing; rethinking social protection policy to ‘crowd-in’ care and informal social assistance; and enabling people to participate in policies to tackle food price volatility.
  • Walking the Breadline: The scandal of food poverty in 21st-century Britain

    Cooper, Niall; Dumpleton, Sarah (Church Action on Poverty, 30/05/2013)
    Although the UK is the seventh richest country in the world, many people struggle to afford even the most essential of goods: food. In this briefing, Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam highlight the rise in food poverty in the UK, where over 500,000 are now thought to be reliant on food parcels. Figures from the Trussell Trust, the biggest network of foodbanks in the UK, reveal that cuts and changes to the welfare system are the most common reason for people resorting to food banks. This growth in food aid demonstrates that the social safety net is failing. Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam believe that everyone should have enough income to feed themselves and their families with dignity, and that foodbanks should not replace the social safety net. This is why we are recommending, among other things, that the government conducts an urgent inquiry into the relationship between welfare changes and cuts, and the growth of food poverty.
  • Managing Price Risk in Local Food Reserves: Analysing the prospects for a stabilisation fund in Mali and Niger

    Alba, Martin; Serra, Teresa; Gil, José María (Oxfam International, 05/07/2013)
    Local food reserves can contribute to food security strategies and have the potential to empower communities. These collective initiatives are set up and owned by small-scale producers with the objective of increasing the availability and access to food, or of increasing income by managing the food-price cycle. But the rate of failure among local food reserves is high, largely as a result of climate and price risks, coupled with challenges linked to their design, planning and management This research report analyses the possibility of developing a stabilisation fund as an effective price risk management tool to help local food reserves overcome their vulnerability to price cycle inversions. Four scenarios were considered and modelled on the basis of price data in a series of 12 cereal markets in Mali and Niger over a 15-year time span. The report concludes that the type of stabilisation fund outlined could represent a viable way of managing price risk in countries where the option of using market-based tools to tackle price risk is not available.
  • Economic Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture in Russia

    Safonov, Georgiy; Safonova, Yulia (BioMed Central, 01/04/2013)
    Climate Change