Impact of domestic support and border measures for developing countries’ food security
Résumé
Food security is a major concern, especially for developing countries where a large percentage of
population lives in rural areas and where agricultural sector represents an important weight in their
economy. Agricultural and food imports play a particular key role in terms of food security in low
income countries. Indeed, dependency on imports for food may raise a problem for food security in
particular in the case of sudden price increase which put up national food bill. The national state of
food availability combining food imports and domestic food production thus constitutes some crucial
information. Following Diaz-Bonilla et al. (2000), this contribution aims to shed light on the
determinants of food security at national level. We first build a theoretical framework linking
explicitly food security measured by the Bonilla index (BI) and national intervention policy
intervention in agriculture. Second, the empirical methodology aims at assessing the impact of
national policy responses to 2008 price surge in terms of food security using the national rate
assistance (NRA) index on importable food products for 42 countries over the period 1995-2010. Our
results suggest that most developing countries have largely used their possibility to play with the NRA
level in order to moderate BI during the 2008 food price surge.