Lec 8, Pt3: Food Sec Policies Overview & Ethics Flashcards
Na Duminike
- A cultural value, ethic, philosophy, policy prescription
- A community that treats all as equals
- Responds to an environment of food security uncertainty, drought, famine
- something that doesn’t exist in most developed countries
Policy instruments for improving food security
- closing income gaps: give money/food
- Closing food access gaps: international/domestic food aid
- Price and access gap policies: change market prices for food
- Production gaps: Increasing agricultural production
- Closig dietary diversity gaps: fortification
- Closing dietary diversity gaps: production and information efforts
How is food security a moral dictate?
- Religious/personal moral obligation for all to have enough food
- Solving it would be a “charity” matter, if food security is a moral dictate
- As morals dictate (like religious prescriptions), it is likely an individual responsibility
How is food security a fundamental right?
- Food is necessary for survival -> all should have the right to a minimum diet
- If = fundamental right, solving it = “justice”
- As a right, likely a government responsibility
How is food security an optimal econ policy?
- Cost benefit analysis: do benefits outweigh to costs?
- If YES -> gov should engage in the policy
- NB: policies are complicated, have lots of moving parts -> which part is important?
- What if beenfits from food security are diffuse and take many years to be realized? (Ex: Providing school lunches increased eventuual income of students 1-2 decades later, but do we need an immediate return ut decide to provide school lunches?)
School food policy costs be tested against other potential uses of the money? (Ex: school lunches must be more cost effective than spending money on better roads).
- Inequality in outcomes: is it OK for some to have food security and others not?
Food security policies save lifes in short or long term?
Example?
Both
Ex: Ukrinians could be saves from Holodomor and those who could have avoided Type2 diabetes tho they survives
Why don’t we often see the costs of the loss of life?
There are ways to quantify that, but they’re inexact and often biased against poor people
We rarely see the costs of ___ due to food insecurity
disabilities
We rarely see the costs of the struggle for food security in ___________
lost opportunities
How can food polocy philosophy relate to micro-nutrients/food attributes, though food security is a macro-nutri thing?
Or are they just ______ issues?
- Is there a moral right to adequate VitA or VitD?
- What about moral right to certain food types? (Organic food? Halal food?)
- or are they just: cost-benefits issues?
Food sec is different than income security, how?
Difference in the two:
- Food and income are fungible, one can be traded off with other
- but usually selling food for income in limited by MARKETS
There are limits to how much food/cals/micro-nutri’s a body needs
Often strong diminishing returns to food/cals/micro-nutri’s, but not as strongly the case for income
Is food security just a distributional problem?
The role of econ in providing food security
- Acc to econ: people respond to incentives (price and income incentives)
- Uses marginal benefit versus marginal costs to calc how much of something to do
- Helps use understand how price policies and interventions in markets can help provide food security
- Help us figure out costs/benefits of different policies, esp where there is. a budget constraint
Econ incentives // policies
- Econ assets: ppl will respond to price and income incentives via their actions+buyings
- Many food sec policies use these econ incentives to induce behavior that gov/society wants
Examples of price and income incentives?
- Lowering price of nutritious goods so people will buy more of them
- Provide income incentives tied to food purchases
- Adding costs to nutritionally poor goods
- Lowering costs to getting to stores with nutritious goods
How do alternative non-econ policies usually ban things or provide them to everyone?
- Ban certain types of food/food additives
- Fortifying popular foods
Econ assets that ppk will respond to price and income incentives in what they _____________
in what they do and what they buy
Many food sec policies use these econ incentives to induce what?
Induce the behavior that the gov/society wants
