An analytical framework for making long -term projections of undernourishment: A case study for agriculture in Mali

Abstract A framework is developed for projecting the effects of policy, technological and environmental change on the prevalence of undernourishment in a country. This is done by integrating the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) methodology for estimating the proportion of undernourished population in a country into a stochastic economic agricultural sector modeling framework. The resultant framework considers the implications of climatic fluctuations, resource limitations and degradation, demographic pressure, market dynamics, adoption of improved cultivars, and cropland expansion. Such a unified framework provides a rich accounting of the factors surrounding macro level food supply and undernourishment as well as results on the regional distribution of undernourishment in face of climatic risk and regional characteristics. The framework is applied to Mali evaluating a number of alternative options for reducing undernourishment. We find that the Malian agriculture does have a significant potential for reducing undernourishment by 2015.

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