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This paper aims to examine the applicable legal framework, various concerns regarding the price support methodology and the merits and pitfalls of the Bali peace clause that currently shields India’s public stockholding (PSH) policy, to provide suggestions on moving forward in the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations.

At the WTO, PSH for food security is considered a trade-distorting price support measure when food stocks are purchased from farmers at administered prices instead of market prices. The price support is measured by a specific methodology stipulated under the Agreement on Agriculture. India is concerned that the price support methodology overestimates the actual support provided to the farmers and makes India susceptible to violating the WTO law.

The paper explains the domestic implications for India arising due to the applicable WTO law. Given the centrality of India’s PSH programmes in ensuring food security, India must seek more clarity on the interpretation of Article 18.4 of the AoA and the ambiguous provisions of the Bali peace clause.

The paper provides a timely and updated analysis of the contentious issue of PSH for food security, exclusively from the Indian perspective, highlighting the persisting challenges for India in WTO agriculture negotiations. This is timely as many WTO members have raised serious concerns about India’s market price support policies recently and this analysis informs the reader about the underlying issues.

China has shifted its agricultural policy from tax agriculture to support it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the agricultural policy changes of China in recent years, focussing on the support policy. China supports its agriculture sector through tax elimination, area payment and input subsidy. In this paper, the author intends to evaluate China’s agricultural support policy effect with a modified policy evaluation model (PEM).

The author modifies PEM used by OECD to estimate the effects of these support policies on production and farmer’s income.

The main findings are input subsidy policy has more effect than area payment policy in general; input subsidy policy has more effects on production while area payment has more effects on farmer’s income; and the sensitivity analysis further indicates that input subsidy policy has more influence than area payment as regarding production impact ratio, while area payment has more influence on income impact ratios.

Based on these findings, when it comes to the support policy in terms of area payment and input subsidies only, the author puts forward the following policy implications: to increase input subsidy in budgets and expand the covering scope, and to continue implementing area payment policy with more budgets. However, support policies playing an important role in improving production efficiency and marketing support should be given priority.

The main contributions of this paper are modifying the OECD PEM to China’s conditions; and quantifying China’s agricultural policy effects.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on labor movement in the agricultural sector of Taiwan to clarify the relationship between agricultural policy and the agricultural adjustment problem by estimating the labor movement function.

The relationship between agricultural policy and the adjustment process of agricultural labor in Taiwan was analyzed by modeling labor movement between the agricultural sector and other sectors. Through empirical analysis of labor migration function, it is clear that the following policy factors, affect the incentive for labor migration, and obstruct off‐farm labor migration: the price support policy; the incomplete farmland conversion regulations, which increase farmers' farmland possession motive; and government agricultural expenditure, which includes direct transfers to the agricultural sector.

The study confirms that after the late 1980s the factors that obstruct agricultural adjustment much more than the price support policy are the incomplete farmland conversion regulations and increasing government agricultural payments, from the result of the simulation with the influence of the policy eliminated.

The implication of this paper is that even though Taiwan has been participating in World Trade Organization from 2002 and consented to cut the tariff on agricultural products and reduce agriculture support policies not linked to production, a delay in labor adjustment between the agricultural sector and other sectors may not necessarily be eliminated if there are other policy factors that affect the incentive for off‐farm migration by farmers.

Many studies use the labor migration function for empirical analysis, but most of them estimated the function by a simple single regression which shows that the labor movement from the agricultural sector to the other sectors increases as a result of an expanding wage gap. However, off‐farm labor movement reduces the wage gap between sectors adversely. Therefore, a reverse causal relation exists between labor movement and the wage gap between sectors. The endogeneity problem was considered as analyzing the measurement of the labor migration function.

As China’s industrial structure continues to upgrade and optimize, the consumption capacity of rural residents gradually improves and the role of consumption in economic growth is increasingly prominent. Against the background of weak external demand, the untapped potential of rural consumption has become a key force in expanding domestic demand. As one of the important means that the government has long relied on, fiscal support for agriculture has played a crucial role in activating the rural consumer market. This manuscript aims to explore the impact of local fiscal support for agricultural expenditure (FSAE) on rural consumption in China, as well as to examine the mediating role of the level of rural financial development.

In this manuscript, the authors use the provincial panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2020. The data of all variables mainly come from China Statistical Yearbook and China Rural Statistical Yearbook. According to the variable selection above, 651 sample data of 31 provinces and cities across China from 2000 to 2020 are organized. In terms of methodology, multiple fixed-effects panel model is applied to regression.

Firstly, FSAE varies significantly, while rural consumption slowly but steadily rises, with a relatively stable consumption structure. Secondly, FSAE has a significant positive effect on rural consumption. Thirdly, mediation testing indicates that mechanisms such as income, uncertainty and financial development have significant positive mediating effects on rural consumption. Thirdly, there is evident regional heterogeneity in FSAE’s impact on rural consumption. The Western regions, under government fiscal support, show a more significant effect on the elevation of rural consumption levels, while the role of FSAE in optimizing the consumption structure of rural residents in eastern and central regions is more pronounced.

Firstly, a systematic examination of local FSAE and rural consumption has been conducted, enriching relevant theories. Secondly, utilizing econometric empirical methods to research the relationship between local FSAE and rural consumption provides an exploratory extension to empirical studies on rural consumption in China. This offers empirical evidence for local fiscal support in agricultural development and the promotion of rural consumption.

This paper aims to analyse the mainstream and emerging global challenges and trends in the global agriculture sector. The analysis leads to a discussion on the present state of the Russian agroindustry and possible future strategies for adaptation in the context of the rapidly changing global environment.

The design of this study is based on the application of the core methods of Foresight. First, a trend analysis is undertaken using reviews and expert methods. Trends identified are mapped using a social, technological, economic, environmental, political and value (STEEPV) framework to ensure that a broad range of trends are covered, which may be stemming from various factors affecting the agriculture sector. The analysis of the big picture of global trends and challenges, interacting with country-specific structural factors, translates are translated into the opportunities and threats, which will in turn help to develop possible strategies for adaptation.

This study develops two adaptive strategies for the development of the Russian agroindustry that are feasible in different short- and long–term time horizons. The first strategy is considered to be the most likely choice for the period before 2020. It includes radical imports’ substitution (of commodities as well as machinery and high-tech components) for ensuring national food security with inevitable temporary setbacks in efficiency and labour productivity. The second strategy, which becomes feasible after 2020, considers re-integrating Russia into global supply chains and expanding commodities exports (volumes and nomenclature) based on full-scale technological modernization with the use of international capital.

The study design is based on the assumption that Russia’s position as a country, which is highly self-sufficient on basic agricultural products and large exporter of crop commodities and fertilizers, will remain unchanged in the horizon of at least 20 years. However, long-term forecasts should also scrutinize the possibility of radical structural changes. Therefore, future research should concentrate on wild cards that can completely disrupt and transform the Russian agriculture industry and as well as the whole economy.

This paper suggests a number of recommendations on national science and technology policy for the three main industries of the Russian agricultural sector: crop husbandry, animal breeding and food processing (the fisheries sector is excluded from the scope of this paper). In addition, this paper proposes a number of measures towards alleviating the institutional barriers to raise the investment attractiveness of the sector.

The novelty of this paper lies in the originality of the research topic and methodology. The Russian agricultural sector has rarely been studied in the context of global agricultural challenges and threats taken on the highest level of aggregation beyond commodity market analysis or agro-climatic and logistics factors. There are few or no studies that lay out a map of possible long-term strategies of Russian agroindustry adaptive development. The Foresight methodology applied in this study is customized to better fit the practical purposes of the study.

Since the start of the twenty‐first century China has stepped into a new stage of harmonious urban‐rural development. Based on the brief review of policy changes since the new century, the purpose of this paper is to figure out the comprehensive policy framework, and analyze its background and reasons.

First, this paper offers a brief review of China's rural reform with focus on the policy framework and changes since the reform of rural tax and fee system in 2000. Next, the paper focuses on food security to discuss grain price increase and China's grain imports, then the current problems facing China's agricultural and rural development are discussed and countermeasures provided.

The paper finds that several policies have been implemented toward the coordination between urban and rural areas and toward the integration of urban and rural development. However, China's grain production is still facing big challenges, both from the increasing demand and the resource constraint. Therefore, food security should be given priority in future. China's current rural reform and development is also facing the problems such as slow growth of farmer's income, the impacts of migrant rural labourer on economy and society and the outflow of rural resources.

This paper reviews systematically major policies of China's agriculture and rural development, and analyzes the characteristics of and reasons for China's grain price increase. Meanwhile, the constraint of resources, especially land and water, is also studied in detail. The paper's analysis can provide important advice for future policy making.

China's economy has transformed from a high-speed growth phase to a high-quality development phase. The agriculture sector has grown substantially since the economic reform in 1978. Considering the five-year plan (FYP) as a collection of policies, this study explores the relationship between the FYP and agricultural total factor productivity (TFP).

This study uses 31 provincial-level panel data of the five FYPs from 1996 to 2020. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute Malmquist productivity indexes. The authors analyze the temporal and spatial changes and convergences of China's agricultural TFP, and investigate the impact of economic planning on China's agricultural TFP and its regional difference.

There is a slow but upward growth trend in China's agricultural TFP. The technical change has played a leading role in the growth of China's agricultural TFP. The agricultural TFP of all provinces has shown a “catch-up” effect and is developing toward their respective steady-state levels. The regional difference in productivity growth among the eastern, central and western regions exists. Test results show that the FYP has a positive effect on the agricultural TFP, and the effect has obvious regional heterogeneity. The FYP also plays a positive role in the gross value of agricultural output, and the impact effect is greater than that on the improvement of agricultural productivity.

There are many forms of industrial policy in China, among which the FYP is the guiding document of industrial policy, which makes a systematic plan for industrial development in the subsequent five years. The development objectives, guidelines and overall deployment for agriculture in the FYP not only describe the general context of China's agricultural development but also show the key ideas of agricultural development. Therefore, this study explores its impact on agricultural quality development from the perspective of FYP. The results provide evidence for examining the governance performance of the government and the objective evaluation and restraint of the FYP. As agriculture moves toward the stage of high-quality development, the Chinese government should strengthen the critical guiding role of the FYP and pay attention to quality indicators such as technical progress, efficiency improvement and regional coordination in the formulation of the FYP.

Agriculture is the major source of livelihood for the majority of population in Sub-Saharan Africa but its productivity is not only low it has started showing signs of decline since 2012. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether official development assistance for agriculture is effective.

The data for development assistance for agriculture are broken down into the major agricultural sectors in receiving countries. The empirical evidence is based on the two-step system, i.e. generalized method of moments, to assess the degree of responsiveness of agricultural productivity to development assistance.

There is a positive relationship between development assistance and agricultural productivity in general. However, when broken down into the major agricultural recipient sectors, there is a substitution effect between food crop production and industrial crop production. Better institutions and economic freedom are found to enable agricultural productivity growth, and to increase the effectiveness of development assistance. The structural economic transformation associated with agricultural development assistance is also found to be weak.

Allocation of development assistance for agriculture is primarily determined by need, although expected effectiveness also increases the assistance receipts. Agricultural assistance policies could focus more on building productive capacity to reduce the need while boosting effectiveness.

Breaking down data into agricultural recipient sectors and controlling for the potential spurious correlation under the assumption that more development assistance could be allocated, where agricultural productivity is already increasing due to some other factors.

The aim of this paper is to deal with the linkage between agricultural trade liberalization and food security in Sub‐Saharan Africa.

The analysis uses the GTAP model which is a global dynamic applied general equilibrium model to assess how the multifarious trade and support policies in agriculture affect the poor in the Sub‐Saharan African group based on food security concerns. The policy strategies analyzed are two liberalization scenarios based on the proposals made in the present round of agricultural negotiations in terms of market access and export competition, plus a free agricultural trade benchmark scenario.

The results of alternative trade liberalization strategies on key food security indicators in the SSA region are ambiguous. The impact varies depending on the extent of liberalization and also the comparative advantage of the SSA group at the sectoral level.

Despite several studies on food security, especially after the food crisis in 2008, very little research has focussed on the agricultural trade liberalization impact with a CGE approach.

This paper sets out to examine innovation and technology transfers in the Chinese agricultural sector, with a particular focus on the government‐sponsored Science and Technology Transformation Fund.

This paper uses a case study of the Science and Technology Transformation Fund to illustrate how innovation and technology transfers in the agricultural sector are facilitated.

The paper argues that technology transfers in agriculture play an essential role in increasing agricultural productivity as well as farmers' income, fostering agricultural re‐structuring, and speeding up the construction of comparatively well‐off villages. In view of difficulties in agricultural technology transfer in China, it is of great practical importance for the government, following the “Green box policy”, to put the issue on the top agenda and attract more capital from every walk of society to support the ongoing transformation.

The paper illustrates the approaches that the Chinese government has taken to accelerate the improvement of science and technology in agriculture, and outlines the mechanism of science and technology innovation and transformation in China.