Impact de la volatilité des prix des principales céréales sur la sécurité alimentaire dans la CEA : cas du riz et du maïs

Abstract

Since the food crisis of 2007/2008, food price volatility has been one of the priority problems to which agricultural policies are trying to provide lasting solutions because of their impact on food security and also on budgetary imbalances. Indeed, due to the high price of balanced food, 3 billion of the (poor) world population in 2017 could not obtain a healthy and balanced diet, which meant that many people, and more particularly the pregnant and lactating women and children suffer from non-communicable diseases resulting from multiple burdens of malnutrition. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly concerned by this burden of malnutrition because it is the region which, in addition to the galloping demography, is home to a good number of people suffering from hunger with a rate of 22%. The analysis was on the effects of the impact of agricultural price volatility on the availability and accessibility of rice and maize in EAC countries. Using a GARCH model to capture the producer price volatility variable, we found that agricultural price volatility has no significant effect on agricultural production except in Rwanda where an increase of $1 on the price of a ton of rice will cause a decrease after 9 months in production of 0.052 tons of rice. The effects of volatility on the accessibility of food products differ in time and space depending on the product. The results found in Kenya show that if the producer price of 1 kg of maize managed to increase by 1%, there would be after 9 to 12 months a considerable reduction in the prevalence of anemia among women of childbearing age, then that the increase of 1 on the production price of rice leads during the same quarter to an increase of 8.102% in the prevalence of anemia among women of childbearing age, while after one year this variation in volatility goes decrease the prevalence of anemia in childbearing age by 17.303%. The factors responsible for climate change constitute an obstacle for agricultural development in the area because agriculture remains rainfed. Population growth, with its effect of strong pressure on agricultural land, is a detrimental issue for food security in the area because the increase in agricultural production is based on extensification.