Effective incentives for food system transformation

1. Effective incentives for
Food system transformation
Farewell address prof. dr. Ruerd Ruben

2. Solving puzzles & playing games to understand systems
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3. 0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
%
population
Poverty
(<USD 1.90 a day, 2011 PPP; % of
world population)
Undernourishment
(calories, % of population, world)
Stunting
(% of children under 5, world)
Overweight
(BMI>25, % of population
developing countries)
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Poverty & Food security – global trends
More food production does NOT automatically lead to less hunger
Poverty reduction does NOT directly lead to better nutrition

4. Growing concerns about food security
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5. Urgent action at the interface of policy & research
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6. Why do people stay hungry?
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Urban Bias Policy failures Collective Action Human behaviour

7. Perverse incentives & adverse outcomes (1)
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Higher farm-gate prices but lower food
supply
 missing markets (de Janvry)
 leisure preferences (Chayanov)
More food production but worse
nutrition
 gender roles (Boserup)
 negative price effects (Griffin)

8. Perverse incentives & adverse outcomes (2)
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Off-farm working improves farm-
household dietary diversity
 more efficient farm production
 alternative income streams
 enabling food purchase
Commodity certification may reduce
farmer incomes
 crop specialization (Rijsbergen et al)
 easy copying (Ruben & Fort)
 over-certification (Amsaya)

9. Principles for Impact Assessment
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Comparing:
• Before & after the intervention
• With & without intervention
• Matching & Diff-in-diff
Impact failures may occur due to:
• Focus on partial responses
• Overlooking institutional failures
• Overestimating behavioural response

10. Trade-offs in food systems
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Drivers of Change
Food Systems Components
Outcomes
 Nutrition & health
 Environment &
Resilience
 Employment &
Poverty reduction

11. Searching system solutions
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12. Multiple resources
 competition for scarce resources
 substitution & complementarities
 non-adoption due to labour constraints
Analytical biases (1)
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Multiple goals
 economic growth & equity
 wealth & asset distribution
 differences between male and female
preferences

13. Analytical biases (2)
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Multiple incentives
 complementary inputs
 need for policy mix (land & credit)
 credit supply & risk reduction
Multiple drivers
 technology change & behaviour
 triple burden of malnutrition
 need for policy coherence

14. Envisioning future food systems
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15. (A) Identifying opportunities (entry points)
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1. Focus on hidden middle
 Linking producers & consumers
 Midstream activities
2. Behavioural change
 Trust & risk attitudes
 RCT experiments

16. (B) Designing transformative activities
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3. Tailoring interventions to livelihoods
 Heterogenous responses
 Poverty ≠ malnutrition
 Targeting people or places?
4. Bundling activities
 Public, private & civic actors
 Hardware, orgware & software
 Sequence of intervention matters

17. 5. Anchoring in the policy process
 Showing synergy opportunities
 Identifying SMART incentives
 Focus on Alternative pay-offs
(C) Putting transformative change in practice
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6. Enforcement & feedbacks
 Broad alliances
 Creating spill-overs
 Supporting win-win options

18. Incentives for food system transformation
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Increasing responsiveness
● Resources
● Knowledge
● Trust
● Risk attitudes
● Diet choice
● Cooperation
Enabling food environment
• Ownership rights
• Infrastructure
• Information
• Transparency
• Participation
• Bargaining

19. Future challenges & outlook
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Food &
Nutrition
Governance
& Conflicts
Climate &
resilience
Mobility &
Stability

20.  Mixed strategies: combining market & institutional incentives
 Contracts: combining horizontal cooperation & vertical integration
 Scaling: from individual solutions to collective response
 Dual purpose interventions: food & climate ; poverty & nutrition
 Multi-level approach: individual – family – community/city - country
A food system transformation research agenda
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21. A few words of thanks
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