Agriculture production increased from Global South, but North extracts disproportionate income: Study

New Delhi, Sep 29 (PTI) A study has shown that even though the Global South has increased its share of production from agriculture between 1995 and 2020, it does not get a fair share of food system incomes while countries in the Global North extract a disproportionate share of income from non-agricultural sectors such as processing and logistics.

The study, led by researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, found that the non-agricultural sectors -- "food manufacturing, processing, transport, retail and wholesale trade" -- absorbed much of the value added in across the world's agri-food systems.

Strategies that capture value can reshape supply chains, said main author Meghna Goyal from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The study's results, published in the journal Global Food Security, "are damning. The people who do most of the agricultural production, which sustains global civilisation, do not get a fair share of food-system incomes," co-author Jason Hickel, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The study is the first to measure the global distribution of value in the agri-food system, Hickel added.

"Agricultural production for food and industrial inputs has increasingly shifted to the global South between 1995 and 2020," the authors wrote.

They added, "Global food-system incomes are increasingly captured by post-farm activities in the global North. The global North's share of non-farm incomes are disproportionately more than their share of agricultural production." The analysis also found a substantial portion of revenue obtained from low-tax jurisdictions with little agricultural production -- this suggested that value-addition is recorded according to profit-maximising strategies, rather than according to actual production or employment, the researchers said.

They added that value chains in agri-food systems reinforce structural inequalities through the international division of labour.

Countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong capture up to 60 and 27 times more from the global agri-food system than the value of their agricultural production, the team said.

"Our findings alert us to its potentially negative consequences for development and equity for farming, and the Global South economies," Goyal said. PTI KRS KRS DV DV