On the Problems and Countermeasures of Agricultural Trade and Anti-poverty under the Pattern of High Quality Development

With the rapid economic development and strong policy support, the targets and tasks of poverty alleviation are completed on schedule, but the foundation of anti-poverty areas is not solid and the internal motivation is insufficient. At the same time, China's agricultural trade liberalization has also penetrated in all aspects of economy, employment and society. This paper explains the current situation in detail and analyzes the relationship between agricultural trade liberalization and the prevention of return to poverty, and what strategies should be made at this stage to prevent the return to poverty at this stage.

Food Import Dependency and National Food Security: A Price Transmission Analysis for the Wheat Sector

Agricultural trade liberalization and protecting domestic markets encompass conflicting policy goals. Even though after the food crisis in 2008, national governments of food-deficit nations aimed at reducing food supply dependency on external markets, no research has assessed the impacts of food import reliance on price or price volatility transmissions to local markets. We constructed a dynamic conditional correlation (DCC)–generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model to examine whether wheat import dependency could make a country vulnerable to overseas shocks by analyzing the inter-relationships between the international wheat price and retail wheat flour prices in 10 net importing countries over the sample period from January 2005 to December 2019. It was found that retail price volatility in each region was positively correlated with international price volatility for most of the period concerned. We also discovered that external dependency could significantly protect the domestic market from the global one, implying that lowering wheat dependency on foreign markets improves “stability” and “availability” of food security without sacrificing “utilization”, but it may aggravate “access”.

Agricultural trade liberalization, regional trade agreements and agricultural technical efficiency in Africa

Despite increased agricultural trade liberalization, high productive inefficiency in agriculture has kept Africa as a net importer of agriculture products. Empirical studies have focused on the trade liberalization–productivity growth nexus and overlooked the efficiency linkage. Also the role of regional trade agreements (RTAs) and institutions in reducing inefficiency in agriculture have been sidelined. We use a stochastic frontier approach and single-stage maximum likelihood estimation of a true fixed-effects panel data model for our analysis. Using maize and rice data, we provide evidence that through technology transfer, agricultural trade statistically improves technical efficiency. Moreover, results suggest that RTAs provide favourable technical efficiency effects, which varies across products and membership. Furthermore, we document that while regulatory quality reduces technical inefficiency, control of corruption increases it. Our findings call for increased role of RTAs in promoting agricultural trade liberalization. This should be complemented by further strengthening of institutions involved in the agriculture value chain.