Extract: Since the 1930s Colombia's economic policy has been directed to reaching three goals; to maintain self-sufficiency in food, to substitute domestically produced manufactured goods for imports, and in the 1970s to correct an ailing balance of payments by promoting exports. This paper describes Colombia's chosen path of import substitution which reflects that of so many Third World countries. It traces the effect on agriculture of tariffs, severe import restrictions or prohibitions, an overvalued national currency (peso), and export subsidies. The time span of the report is divided into two periods, 1953-67, when import substitution was the primary aim of foreign trade policy, and 1967-78, when exports were encouraged to aid the trade balance.

Covers the period from the early 1960s until 1987.

Research report, trade policy, exchange rate, agricultural policy, agricultural production, agriculture, Zaire since 1960 - economic policy, economic analysis, economic development, food import volume, food security, inflation, balance of payments, cash crop export volume, statistical analysis. Bibliography, graphs, statistical tables.

Focuses on the effects of Nigeria's trade and exchange rate policies on agricultural incentives especially during the 1970s, the period of the oil boom. Attempts to determine the degree of protection granted to agriculture compared with other sectors, and assesses how these policies affected the allocation of resources both within agriculture and among the other sectors.

This book extends the discussion of world food problems by giving explicit recognition to the potential role of markets. The authors highlight the contribution of prices to the solution of food problems in low-income countries, for example, by providing adequate incentives to farmers to expand production, assuring that food supplies can be obtained through trade when needed and giving appropriate signals to consumers. They also document the negative effects on food supply and national welfare of the actual price policies of many Third World governments. While recognizing the problems involved in defining and measuring hunger, as well as in improving the food supply, the authors consider the outlook for future food availability as favorable in terms of continued modest improvement in per capita food supplies at prices, adjusted for inflation, that are likely to continue the slow decline of recent decades. One focus of their comments is the positive roles that governments can and should play in the world food economy, especially in support of research, creation of human capital, and provision of appropriate rural infrastructure.

The vast majority of the world's poorest households depend on farming for their livelihood. During the 1960s and 1970s, most developing countries imposed pro-urban and anti-agricultural policies, while many high-income countries restricted agricultural imports and subsidized their farmers. Both sets of policies inhibited economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Although progress has been made over the past two decades to reduce those policy biases, many trade- and welfare-reducing price distortions remain between agriculture and other sectors as well as within the agricultural sector of both rich and poor countries. Comprehensive empirical studies of the disarray in world agricultural markets first appeared approximately 20 years ago. Since then the OECD has provided estimates each year of market distortions in high-income countries, but there has been no comparable estimates for the world's developing countries. This volume is the second in a series (other volumes cover Africa, Asia, and Europe's transition economies) that not only fills that void for recent years but extends the estimates in a consistent and comparable way back in time and provides analytical narratives for scores of countries that shed light on the evolving nature and extent of policy interventions over the past half-century. 'Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Latin America' provides an overview of the evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the economies of South America, plus the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Together these countries constitute about 80 percent of the region's population, agricultural output, and overall GDP. Sectoral, trade, and exchange rate policies in the region have changed greatly since the 1950s, and there have been substantial reforms, especially in the 1980s. Nonetheless, numerous price distortions in this region remain, others have been added, and there have even been some policy reversals in recent years. The new empirical indicators in these country studies provide a strong evidence-based foundation for assessing the successes and failures of the past and for evaluating policy options for the years ahead.

This book is an outcome of the conference on the linkages between macroeconomics and agricultural trade in 1986. It establishes some of the fundamental influences on the exchange rate. The book develops linkages between the macroeconomy and agriculture using traditional models.