High Food Price Impact Assessment and Analysis - WFP Remote ...

• Extreme variety in the availability of information from one context to another.
• The inevitable difficulty in reconciling the approaches of the different disciplines that need to
collaborate to fully understand the impact of the current economic situation: economics; nutrition;
sociology; anthropology, etc.
• The complexity and scope of the situation, and so of information required to fully understand the
current problem (and opportunities). In the current context, participants identified greatly enhanced
requirements for information on, inter alia: types of food consumed; non-food expenditures; regional /
cross border food flows and trade; Differences in urban/rural livelihoods and food prices and
relationships between urban and rural markets. While many of the analyses which were presented at
the workshop were addressing some of these areas, very few could look at them all.
Recommendations:
1) A tiered approach is necessary with: i) an early warning mechanism, based on a small number of indicators that
enable monitoring household food security, ii) rapid assessments, and more in-depth analyses when time and
resource permit.
2) Identify and agree on a small number of key indicators for use in an early warning system.
Key Issue #3: Analytical methods: how to establish the link between prices and households?
Situation: Different methods exist and have different implications. Hypothesis for the global analysis and
estimates conducted are often not clear and need to be tested. At country level, several methods are used
such as the FAO modelling and simulation, the food security monitoring tools and other methods such as
primary data analysis tools. Often the impact of higher food prices is not necessarily measurable.
Recommendations:
1) Global risk or vulnerability analysis needs to be validated and should be informed by country level
analysis.
2) Country level methods need validation to verify the modelled impacts;
3) Outcome indicators (such as nutrition and dietary diversity and frequency) should be looked at for
validation;
4) There is a need to better use qualitative information to understand the likely impacts of the food price
increases.
Questions raised and points made: The hypotheses are not yet validated. There is a need to further
elaborate and test them. It was noted that it is difficult to build up a conceptual framework to assess the
impact of high food prices, as this phenomena is difficult to isolate from other causes of food insecurity.
This is particularly difficult in urban areas.
Key issue #4: Compatibility and integration of secondary data
Situation: there is a proliferation of information available. However the challenge is the discrepancy of
data sets at national levels. Data is rarely compatible and comparable. It is often a challenge to establish
links between all surveys and analysis done. The willingness to share data is often missing. This is an
institutional problem.
Recommendations:
1) National sampling frameworks need to be developed.
2) Partners should coordinate the timing of assessments to facilitate comparisons.
3) Publications and reports should clearly document the process, the methology and constraints.
4) Previous surveys should be updated and modified when administrative boundaries change to facilitate
comparison over time.
5) Partners should seek to collect data together.
6) Data sharing between organisations should be encouraged.
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