Why food policy has evolved rapidly for the past three decades?

New research released by an AAEA Fellow in AEPP

The emergency of COVID-19 is calling for an urgency to transform our agri-food systems for both human and planetary health. Prior to 2019 a lot of food policy was based on the triple burden of malnutrition. 820 million people suffer hunger, and 2 billion suffer from hidden hunger/lack of micro-nutrients globally. Another 2 billion suffer from obesity.

In the new research “Reflections of Food Policy Evolution over the Last Three Decades”, released in the Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, AAEA Fellow Shenggen Fan digs deeper into the changes over time.

Fan says “ for the past 30 years, the objectives food policy have evolved from  increasing food availability to food accessibility, better managmnet of natural resource management and climate change, and tacking poverty and malnutrtion.  Only until very recenlty has a food system approach been used to tackle all these challenges together.  The COVID-19  Pandemic is a wake up call for  food policy analyst to rethink of food systems we would like to have in the future.  Among many features, resilience and inclusion must become more prominent.”

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ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes two journals, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit www.aaea.org.

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