Agricultural trade is extremely important in
the modern world as it helps to provide greater quantity, wider variety and
better quality food to the fast increasing world demand at the lower prices. In
addition, agricultural trade generates an income for millions of people either
directly or indirectly employed by agricultural sector. At the global scale,
agricultural trade is believed to be one if not the only source of the foreign exchange
for some countries that is crucial for development.
In some places people still spend most of
their income in order to provide themselves with food. According to the United
States Department of Agriculture, The world’s poor faced the
greatest burden from higher food prices. In developing nations, like those in
the Middle East, more than 40 percent of average household budgets go toward
food purchases. Even in the emerging BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India
and China, between a quarter and a third of household income is spent on food.
In more affluent nations, like the United States, the average household spends
less than 10 percent of its household budget on food.
Development of agriculture is
also exceedingly important as it is a way to improve the quality of humans’
life. There are two ways to measure it which are Gross National Income (GNI)
and Human Development Index. GNI is a total of the money earned by people
within a certain region or country whereas HDI is a statistic that represents
the life expectancy, education, and income indices that are all used in order
to rank countries into tiers of human development. Norway, United States, and
Sweden are among the high human development countries. Globalization is one of
the factors that allowed these countries to have a higher life standards.
The
study of the economics of international trade in agricultural and food products
is relatively new. Therefore three main areas of agricultural economics
profession need to be developed which production economics, marketing, and
policy. Nowadays, there is a number of organizations worldwide that regulate
the international including agricultural commodities. The main organization in
the world is World Trade Organization. The WTO is a rules-based, member-driven
organization — all decisions are made by the member governments, and the rules
are the outcome of negotiations among members. Currently, there are 161 member
states. WTO makes sure that trade is done legally and gives advantage to
developing countries not to be discriminated.
Despite
the fact that there is enough food to feed everyone in the world, there are
millions of undernourished people. International trade is one of the solutions
that can help overcome this world problem and allow everyone to have access to
safe and nutritious food without lacking any vitamins and take adequate amount
of calories daily.
No comments:
Post a Comment