Impact of domestic food prices on access to food in developing areas in the world

Abstract

Food security is a condition related to the supply of food and individuals’ access to it. Food access and availability highly depend on price of food products. Therefore, this research looks at the impact of food price and other impediments over past years on access to food. We use a panel data set from 71 countries covering the period from the year 2000-2011. We employ a Generalized Least Squares procedure to overcome problems of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation commonly observed in panel data. There is a clear case of the detrimental effect of domestic food prices and its volatility on access to food and thereby on food security. Findings also show that food loss at retail level critically determines depth of food deficit, more than that of the impact from national income.