Patterns and determinants of urban chicken consumption in Haiti and Cameroon: similar contexts, differentiated prospects

Since the beginning of 2000s, in order to let poor people accede to meat consumption, several African and Caribbean countries have opened their domestic chicken market to foreign imports, by reducing import tariffs. Thus imported frozen pieces of chicken from the European Union or America compete with local chicken meat, causing the collapse of many poultry husbandry and the loss of many jobs in the local chicken food chain. In order to highlight the determinants of urban consumer’s choice relative to chicken types, and assess the opportunity for local chicken to restore its market share, investigations have been done in 2005 in Yaoundé (Cameroon) and in 2006 in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) applied to 180 urban households in each country. While imported frozen pieces of chicken have almost entirely substituted for the local chicken which has already quite disappeared in Port-au-Prince, Yaoundé consumers still prefer the local flesh chicken to the imported ones, at least for particular uses.chicken, urban consumption, developing countries, globalization, Cameroon, Haiti

Food sovereignty and agricultural trade policy commitments: How much leeway do West African nations have?

The 2008 food crisis has challenged the political legitimacy and economic efficiency of the liberalization of international agricultural trade. An alternative vision defended by the food sovereignty movement is that long-term food security cannot rely on dependency on food imports, but must be built on the development of domestic production with enough barrier protection to shelter it from world price fluctuations and unfair trading. The purpose of this paper is to look into whether the West African nations can achieve food sovereignty given their various trade commitments and other external constraints. The particularity of our approach is to combine a historical economic analysis with a political approach to food sovereignty and trade commitments. Our results suggest that external brakes on the development of food sovereignty policies are marginal, as the countries still have unused room for manoeuvre to protect their smallholder agriculture under the terms of draft World Trade Organization agreements and Economic Partnership Agreements and under the international financial institutions’ recommendations. Rather, the international environment seems to be instrumented by West African states that do not manage to secure a national political consensus to drive structural reforms deemed vital and further the food security of the urban populations over the marginalized rural populations. Recently, the regional integration process has made headway with a common agricultural support and protection policy project that could herald an internal political balance more conducive to food-producing agriculture.food sovereignty, West Africa, protection, agricultural policy, WTO negotiations

Utilising agricultural tariff rate quotas as a development instrument

Tariff rate quotas (TRQs) were introduced as a new market access instrument in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to examine the case for using this instrument to target improved market access for developing country agricultural exports, using the EU as a case study. The paper first identifies how TRQs relate to the EU's hierarchy of agricultural trade preferences under various preferential access arrangements. It then examines the extent to which developing countries have been able to make use of existing TRQ access to the EU market. Developing countries wanting improved market access for their agricultural exports have the choice of negotiating lower MFN tariffs, entering free trade agreements or regional integration schemes, seeking improved preferential access under Generalised System of Preferences schemes, or pressing for the introduction of preferential TRQs under the GATT's special and differential treatment provisions. The final section of the paper discusses the merits and drawbacks of each of these strategies.

Food Sovereignty and Agricultural Trade Policy Commitments: What are the Margins of Manoeuvre for West African States?

International Relations/Trade,

Evolution of urban chicken consumption in Southern countries: a comparison between Haiti and Cameroon

Since the beginning of 2000s, in order to let poor people accede to meat consumption, several developing countries have opened their domestic chicken market to foreign imports, by reducing import tariffs. Thus local chicken meat competes with frozen pieces of chicken imported from the European Union or America, causing the loss of many jobs in the local chicken food chain. In order to highlight the determinants of urban consumer’s choice relative to chicken types, and assess the opportunity for local chicken to restore its market share, investigations have been done in 2005 and 2006, in Yaoundé (Cameroon) and at Port-au-Prince (Haiti) applied to 180 urban households in each country. While imported frozen pieces of chicken have almost entirely substituted for the local chicken which has already quite disappeared in Portau- Prince, Yaoundé consumers still prefer the local flesh chicken to the imported ones, at least for particular uses.Chicken, urban consumption, developing countries, globalisation, Cameroon, Haiti., Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Characterizing demand for domestic versus imported chicken in developing countries: the case of Haiti and Cameroon

[Paper in French] Since the beginning of 2000s, imports of frozen pieces of chicken from the European Union or Brazil have considerably increased in several African and Caribbean developing countries, competing with local chicken meat. Obviously, imported chicken has replaced domestic one in households’ consumption. The level of substitution between imported chicken and the several domestic chicken types is not specifically known. In order to focus on this point, investigations have been done in 2005 in Yaoundé (Cameroon) and in 2006 in Port-au-Prince (Haiti). Because of a lack of available statistical data, we surveyed 180 urban households in each country, showing that imported frozen pieces of chicken have widely substituted for the local chicken which has already quite disappeared in Port-au-Prince, but is still appreciated by Yaoundé consumers. This article aims to assess the impacts, on such an evolution of i) socio-economic features of consumers and ii) of chicken consumption habits of households. Without data on income, and to deal with a large number of qualitative variables, we implemented multiple correspondence analyses to build asset indexes usable in our econometric regressions.Chicken, urban consumption, developing countries, household’s characteristics, Cameroon, Haiti

A graphical analysis of the functioning of tariff rate quotas: market access and welfare effects for exporting countries

AgFoodTrade Working Paper ; 7210Evaluation SMART - Auteur hors unité au moment de la publicationThis paper analyses the economics of tariff rate quotas assuming a large importing country and several different suppliers with differing levels of competitiveness. Eleven theoretical situations are distinguished according to the way the quota is allocated to exporters, the level of constraint imposed by the quota and the relative competitiveness of export suppliers. A graphical analysis is developed and the effects of tariff rate quotas on market access and welfare gains for exporters are discussed in the eleven cases

Agricultural tariff rate quotas in the EU 1997-2002 : do developing countries enjoy quota rent ?

AgFoodTrade Working Paper ; 7213Evaluation SMART - Auteur hors unité au moment de la publicationTariff rate quotas (TRQs) were introduced and legitimised as a market access instrument in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). TRQs combine both restrictions on imports, as well as safeguarding current or preferential agricultural trade flows. When market access is restricted by a high tariff level beyond the quota, exporters that enjoy the low in-quota tariff may be able to gain a share of the quota rent. Do developing exporting countries benefit from EU TRQs ? Are quota rents or the guaranteed market access the more important gain from the operation of these TRQs ? What interests should developing countries defend in the debate on TRQs in the WTO Doha Round agricultural negotiations ?This paper analyses the implementation of 87 EU agricultural TRQs between 1997 and 2002 to examine their economic significance from the point of view of developing countries. Analysis of the database shows that TRQ trade can generate a high preference margin but that the potential rent is not so high. Moreover, this potential rent is concentrated on bananas and sugar, because TRQs are actually binding for those two commodities. More detailed analysis of those products indicates that only a few exporting countries are likely to enjoy this potential rent: Latin American countries for bananas and ACP countries for sugar. Whether developing country exporters benefit from this potential rent depends on their competitiveness relative to world market prices as well as on the market conditions which determine whether rent is collected by the exporting country or by the importer

Débat : L’Agenda de Doha et les enjeux pour les pays pauvres Hérité de l’Uruguay Round, le cadre des négociations agricoles est à revoir

Les négociations commerciales internationales à l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) ont été relancées en 2001 avec l’ambition régulièrement réaffirmée de constituer le cycle en faveur du développement. Le Doha Development Agenda (DDA) devait ainsi déboucher sur un accord favorable aux Pays en développement (PED) en particulier en ce qui concerne le volet agricole des négociations. Dix ans après le lancement du DDA, la perspective d’un accord semble s’éloigner, même si en juillet 2008 l..

The value of agricultural tariff rate quotas to developing countries

Diffusion du document : INRA Station d'Economie et Sociologie rurales 65 rue de Saint-Brieuc 35042 Rennes Cedex (FRA)The purpose of this paper is to estimate the value of current TRQ market access to developing countries as a contribution to this debate. The value consists in the new market access which TRQs created (and the export surplus gained on these additional exports) plus the size of quota rents generated which accrue to developingcountries. As there is widespread agreement that little new market access was created by TRQs, which were mainly used to maintain existing trade flows, often originating in preferential agreements, this paper concentrates on estimating the value of rents accruing to developing countries. The results are interesting for at least two reasons