POLICY ANALYSIS FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT: BASIC DATA SERIES AND THEIR USES CONTENTS

Roger D. Norton

This paper was prepared under a contract with the Nutrition Economics Group (NEG) of the Office of International Cooperation and Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture. NEG works in collaboration with, and under the guidance and funding of, the Office of Nutrition of the U.S. Agency for International Development. NEG's mission is to help the Office of nutrition implement its program of incorporating food consumption concerns into the development policies and programs of developing countries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report was prepared for the Nutrition Economics Group, Office of International Cooperation and Development, United States Department of Agriculture, under contract no. 53-319R-7-102.

The author wishes to express his appreciation to Dr. Roberta van Haeften, who helped conceive and initiate this study, and Dr. John Hyslop, who provided a great deal of guidance in the writing of the report. The author also is indebted to some excellent anonymous referees of an earlier draft, who were selected, by Dr. Hyslop, and who offered a very large number of useful comments and suggestions, large and small. These individuals have left their imprint on the text of this report but are in no way responsible for any errors that may remain.

Thanks also are due the International Food Policy Research Institute for making their research facilities available.

May, 1988
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATION

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CONTENTS

1.   The Scope and Purpose of the Paper

1.1.   Introduction

1.2.   Some Characteristics of Agricultural Economic Data

1.3.   Policy Issues and Policy Parameters

1.3.1.   Constructing an Overview of Sector Performance 

1.3.2.   Reviewing Distributional and Efficiency Issues

2.   Time Series and Their Interpretations

2.1.   Production, Productivity and Sources of Growth

2.1.1.   Questions about Production Trends

2.1.2.   Production Indexes 

2.1.3.   Growth Rates

2.1.4.   Productivity

2.1.5.   Sources of Growth

2.2.   Prices, Terms of Trade and Purchasing Power

2.2.1.   Price Indexes and Deflators 

2.2.2.   Interpretations of Price Indexes

2.3.   Agricultural Trade Data and Their Applications

2.3.1.   Basic Compilations  

2.3.2.   Export and Import Prices

2.3.3.   Calculating Total Food Supplies over Time

3.   Cross-Sectional and Structural Data

3.1.   Agricultural Censuses and the Distributional Effects of Policies

3.1.1.   Measuring the Distributional Effects of Pricing Policies 

3.1.2.   The Efficiency of Land Use by Farm Size Class

3.2.   Household Surveys and Their Uses for Food and Agriculture

3.2.1.   Consumption Parameters   

3.2.2.   Nutrient Availability

3.2.3.   Sources of Farm Household Income

3.2.4.   Other Uses of Household Surveys

3.3.   The Sector's Fiscal System

3.3.1.   Functional Classifications of Fiscal Expenditures 

3.3.2.   Fiscal Revenue Accounts

3.4.   The Labor Force and Agricultural Inputs

3.4.1.   The Agricultural Labor Force s 

3.4.2.   Data on Agricultural Input

3.4.3.   Short-Term Agricultural Credit

3.5.   Farm Budgets

3.5.1.   Characteristics of Farm Budgets 

3.5.2.   Uses of Farm Budgets

4.   Combining Data from Different Sources

4.1.   Food Balance Sheets and Trends in Nutrition

4.2.   Prices and Costs: Measures of Economic Protection

4.2.1.   The Significance of Protection Measures    

4.2.2.   The Calculation of Protection Coefficients: the NPC

4.2.3.   The Effective Protection Coefficient

4.2.4.   The Domestic Resource Cost Coefficient

4.2.5.   The Rule of Economic Profit Margins

5.   Timely Data Series

5.1.   Surveys for Policy Monitoring

5.2.   Updated Calculations and Reporting Procedures

6.   Priorities for Data Collection and Management

6.1.   Data Management

6.1.1.   Introduction

6.1.2.   Management of Data Collection Processes

6.1.3.   Organization and Interpretation of Data

6.1.4.   The Publication of Agricultural Data

6.2.   Priorities for Data Collection

REFERENCES

Annex A:    Input-Output Tables in Agriculture

Anne B:x    Derivation of the Trend Growth Equation

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1.   AGRICULTURAL FOREIGN TRADE IN HONDURAS, 1975 AND 1984

Table 2.   AVERAGE CROPPING PATTERNS IN HONDURAS BY FARM SIZE, 1974

Table 3.   HONDURAS: SOURCES OF NET FARM HOUSEHOLD INCOME BY FARM SIZE GROUP, 1975

Table 4.   ESTIMATED DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS ON NET FARM HOUSEHOLD INCOME OF A TEN PERCENT DEVALUATION WITH MODERATE WAGE RESTRAINT

Table 5.   EXPENDITURES OF THE MEXICAN MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE BY PROGRAM, 1980–1984

Table 6.   THE AGRICULTURAL FISCAL SYSTEM IN HAITI

Table 7.   SUMMARY FOOD BALANCE SHEET FOR INDONESIA, 1976

Figure 1.   EL SALVADOR: THE SUPPLY OF AGRICULTURAL GOODS PER CAPITA