Food Demand in Developing Countries and the Transition of World Agriculture.

The food imbalances of developed and developing countries can provide mutially beneficial opportunities for each. The developing countries represent the only major growing market for agricultural exports from the developed countries. That potentially immense market can reduce the necessary pace of adjustment in the developed countries' agricultural sectors. Unfortunately, the failure of developed countries to recognize that their actions influence food demand in the developing countries results in grossly suboptimal policies. A more nearly optimal set of developed country policies would include price discrimination between elastic and inelastic food markets; technical assistance to developing countries in education and agricultural research; assistance in the development of infrastructure through increased support for food-for-work projects; stabilization of developing country access to food imports by expanding the IMF cereal financing facility; and improving developing countries' access to developed country markets for labor-intensive agricultural commodities. Copyright 1988 by Oxford University Press.