Abstract
Unhealthy foods and tobacco remain the leading causes of non-communicable disease (NCDs). These are key agricultural commodities for many countries, and NCD prevention policy needs to consider how to influence production towards healthier options. There has been little scholarship to bridge the agriculture with the public health literature that seeks to address the supply of healthy commodities. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on government agricultural policy and production in order to 1) present a typology of policies used to influence agricultural production, 2) to provide a preliminary overview of the ways that impact is assessed in this literature, and 3) to bring this literature into conversation with the literature on food and tobacco supply.This review analyzes the literature on government agricultural policy and production. Articles written in English and published between January 1997 and April 2018 (20-year range) were included. Only quantitative evaluations were included. Studies that collected qualitative data to supplement the quantitative analysis were also included. One hundred and three articles were included for data extraction. The following information was extracted: article details (e.g., author, title, journal), policy details (e.g., policy tools, goals, context), methods used to evaluate the policy (e.g., outcomes evaluated, sample size, limitations), and study findings. Fifty four studies examined the impact of policy on agricultural production. The remaining articles assessed land allocation (n = 25) (e.g., crop diversification, acreage expansion), efficiency (n = 23), rates of employment including on- and off-farm employment (n = 18), and farm income (n = 17) among others. Input supports, output supports and technical support had an impact on production, income and other outcomes. Although there were important exceptions, largely attributed to farm level allocation of labour or resources. Financial supports were most commonly evaluated including cash subsidies, credit, and tax benefits. This type of support resulted in an equal number of studies reporting increased production as those with no effects.This review provides initial extrapolative insights from the general literature on the impact of government policies on agricultural production. This review can inform dialogue between the health and agricultural sector and evaluative research on policy for alternatives to tobacco production and unhealthy food supply.
Highlights
Agricultural production has been deeply transformed by the forces of globalization
As a first step in what is hoped will be greater attention to agriculture and un/ healthy commodities as they relate to disease burden and health more generally, this review focuses on the national level recognizing that government policy is one of the more direct and tangible factors shaping agricultural production
Type 1: Financial Support Financial aid provided to farmers in the form of credits, tax benefits, loan aid, insurance aid or financial incentives
Summary
Agricultural production has been deeply transformed by the forces of globalization. On the one hand, export driven agricultural production has significantly increased access to agricultural commodities in inhospitable environments (e.g. the 3 billion bananas consumed in Canada every year [1]). Theories of comparative advantage point to the benefits of this international supply chain, there are numerous associated problems These include but are not limited to the negative impact of monocropping [2], including a rise in fertilizer and pesticide use in foreign investment dependant countries [3], dependence on health and environmentally harmful crops such as tobacco [4], enhanced vulnerability to environmental and economic shocks [5], the environmental consequences of extensive refrigeration and transportation emissions across large distances [6], and the pressures on agricultural producing governments to avoid enforcing strong labour and environmental controls for fear of losing revenue from foreign trade and investment ( there is a body of literature suggesting that these standards are strengthened through international trade regimes) [7, 8]. Both categories of agricultural production are vulnerable to the above-noted risks and are impacted, and the risks are compounded, by the duel process of efforts to control demand for these products and market instability
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