Food insecurity, income inequality, and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture
Abstract
Abstract I would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land‐poor countries in Asia, agriculture faces three distinctly different problems: food insecurity, sectoral income inequality, and the declining food self‐sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high‐income stage. Massive imports of food grains to Asia, if they occur, will aggravate the world food shortage, which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world. I argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy, Asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large‐scale mechanization, sub‐Saharan Africa should realize a green revolution in grain production, and Latin America should further expand its grain production capacity.
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Increases in prices have led to an over-supply, and unequal distribution of production and incomes has exacerbated problems of access to food.
“On one hand, the increase in prices has led to an over-supply, on the other hand the unequal distribution of production and incomes has exacerbated the problems of access to food (Barrett, 2002;Caracciolo & Santeramo, 2013;Otsuka, 2013).”
From Emerging trends in European food, diets and food industry (2018) · cites this paper as Otsuka, 2013
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- Authors
- Otsuka, K.
- Affiliations
- National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Otsuka, Keijiro
- ORCID
- Otsuka, Keijiro
- Venue
- Agricultural Economics
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-07
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- s1
- Pages
- 7-18
- ISSN
- 0169-5150 (ISSN-L)
- 1574-0862
- OpenAlex
- W2049629265
- Cited by
- 175
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 4
- FWCI
- 29.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Agricultural Economics (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (25101002)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Agricultural economics and policies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economics of Agriculture and Food Markets
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agricultural Economics and Practices
- Keywords
- food insecurity, income inequality, comparative advantage, world agriculture, food self-sufficiency, poverty, farm size expansion, agricultural mechanization, Green Revolution, grain production capacity, Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America
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