Global Forum on Food Security and NutritionA global knowledge sharing network facilitated by
the Agricultural Development Economics Division of FAO

Christian Romer Løvendal, Kristian Thor Jakobsen and Andrew Jacque, FAO/ESA, 2007 The economy of Trinidad and Tobago is booming, in particular as a consequence of increased energy production and the historical high oil prices. Whilst general inflation has remained relatively low for much of the present economic boom, substantial increases in retail food prices have been observed, in particular since 2005. This paper looks at the development of retail food prices, its causes, the potential impact thereof in terms of food security and possible policy options for addressing this. It concludes that whilst households with low income are the groups most affected by the food price increases and will continue to be so in the wake of increasing international prices, it is unlikely that the price increases in isolation will throw off Trinidad and Tobago’s path towards meeting the MDG 1 hunger target and bringing the share of undernourished people down to 6.5% by 2015. However, food security problems will remain, in particular related to overweight and obesity caused by unbalanced diets.

Many governments intervene directly in agricultural product, in particular food, markets. A quantitative assessment of the impact of the policy changes on the desired objectives is important as it helps inform and shape the policy debate on the reform alternatives and increases transparency of government policy. This paper reviews the literature on multi-market models which offer more accurate ex ante impact analysis than single-market models by including potentially important indirect effects. While fairly complex and requiring large amounts of data multi-market models are however much simpler than computable general equilibrium models. They are typically applied at the sector level and have proven quite popular in particular in agricultural policy reform impact analysis. While more recent work has emphasized the poverty reduction and income distribution objective the models can generate a range of information relevant to policy makers. Key Words: Multi-market models, agricultural policy impact analysis.

Biological approaches such as crop residues and biomass as surface mulch; growing Gliricidia sepium on field bunds as source of nitrogen for crops; compost, vermicompost and microbial biofertilizers as soil-building elements; and sources of crop nutrients, and microbial and herbal biopesticides to protect crops have been widely reported as valuable for crop production. Scope of these approaches to meet crop nutrients and crop-protection needs in place of chemical fertilizers and pesticides was examined. Published literature and websites were scanned to look for logically sound comparisons, particularly at on-farm scale. Because farmers using organic farming practices were the major users of some (not all) of the biological approaches, we ended up comparing organic and conventional farms. Experiments with treatments of biological versus conventional inputs (e.g. chemical fertilizers) within a given experiment were the other source of relevant data for comparative performance. Discussion in this paper is restricted to marginal and small farmers in rain fed areas. From the limited evidence, it was apparent that yields comparable to conventional agriculture were harvested by using biological approaches. In addition, a substantial improvement in soil quality due to the biological approach was reported suggesting that these yields would also be sustainable.

The purpose of these Voluntary Guidelines is to serve as a reference and to provide
guidance to improve the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests with the
overarching goal of achieving food security for all and to support the progressive
realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security.