What's New

While progress has stalled in the House of Representatives in recent weeks, the pending new five-year US Farm Bill will have important implications for agriculture. A new paper by Professor Carl Zulauf from the Ohio State University and IFPRI Senior Research Fellow David Orden , published by the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), looks at the competing bills coming out of the Senate and House of Representatives Agriculture Committee in light of their relationship to WTO limits on domestic support.

According to a new report released by FEWS, crisis-level food insecurity across West Africa has improved or stabilized in the past month, particularly from Mauritania to Chad and the eastern Sahel. Despite the improvement in food security, however, food aid will still be needed in the region through the fall to compensate for high prices and low household food stocks.

In economics and development work, experiments are becoming a widely used and accepted research tool. For such experiments to be a useful policymaking tool, however, it is necessary for both researchers and policymakers to have a clear understanding of how the experimental method works and how the results of experiments can be used to inform policy decisions.

The USDA today released its latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Report . The report continues to see reduced global production estimates for wheat, maize, and soybean. Global rice production, on the other hand, is expected to reach a near-record 464.2 million tons. The changes seen in this month's report are relatively small and were anticipated based on recent price trends.

FAO has released its Food Price Index for August, citing stabilizing world food prices. The Food Price Index has remained steady since July at 213 points. The report points out that while this level is high, it is still 25 points below the peak seen in February 2011.