E15 AG_Background Paper

The

E15

Initiative

Strengthening the multilateral trading system

Has the treadmill changed direction?

WTO Negotiations in the light of a new global agricultural market environment

E15 Expert Group on Agriculture and Food Security

Has the treadmill changed direction?

WTO Negotiations in the light of a new global agricultural market environment This paper draws heavily on the results and dynamics presented in Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012, but explores the reports limitations with respect to bioenergy and other uncertainties and how they may influence trade policy and negotiations.

For decades agricultural commodity markets in developed countries were characterized by Cochrane’s treadmill where with each advancement in technology, supplies shifted out pressing against an inelastic demand (Cochrane 1958). Direct and derived food demand for crops, shifted outward with growth in population and income around the world, but failed to keep up with productivity growth for several commodities setting crop prices on a decades long path of decline. Under such circumstances, the benefits of technological progress were passed to consumers with abundant supplies at low prices. Since the 1970s, per-capita calorie consumption in the developing world improved, but with varied results across regions (Figure 1) and persistent numbers of malnourished.

Figure 1: Kcal/person/day, by region and country groups, 1990-2007 (Source: Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)

Agricultural policy formation during this period reflected this pressure on producers, leading to the development of an array of price supports, buffer stock programs and export subsidies by a handful of developed countries to draw off excess supplies and maintain farm income.

Fear of a competing process of supporting, stocking and subsidized exporting motivated the DDA negotiations for a small number of developed countries to reduce import restrictions around the world. Little attention was paid to ensuring export flows given abundant supplies The demand constrained market under which past trade negotiations occurred is called into question with the experience of the third global price spike in the last five years. Higher prices, in part a result of biofuels production, have drawn attention to the potential emergence of a supply constrained market, where export restrictions play a prominent role in trade and food security.

From a Demand constrained market The primary drivers of food demand are income and population. Even during these periods of steadily declining prices there were numerous assertions of coming shortages and yet supply continued to outstrip demand growth even as population and income expanded. Population growth is expected to slow, but income and alternative uses of agricultural production will play a key role in demand in the coming decades.

Population and income World population expanded from 3.7 billion people in 1970 to 7.0 billion people, a near doubling in 40 years. Over the next 40 years, out to 2050, the population is expected to add about another 2.3 billion people (UN, 2011). While reaching 9.3 billion people, growth evolves at a much slower pace with a significantly smaller absolute growth. Such global aggregation, however, masks regional trends that will pose challenges for issues of food security. Much of the developed world will grow at slower than average rates, with some countries even entering into absolute population declines by 2050. Alternatively, in several parts of the developing world, population growth rates will be substantially above average.

The troubling aspect of this is that many of these countries with rapidly growing populations, concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, are also countries which currently have above average rates of malnutrition, productive resource constraints and a lack of food security. While GDP is expected to grow by a factor of 2.5, with per capita growth at the rate of 1.8, out to 2050 (World Bank 2010), these countries will face a growing reliance on external supplies. So, while the growth in income would result in a far richer world with increased trade dependence for the developing world (Figure 2), many of the countries of the highest concern have limited ability to purchase commodities on open market and must rely on food-aid, others will find an increasing reliance on trade, a larger import bill and increased vulnerability to the type of trade response seen in 2007/08 and in 2010.

Figure 2: Net agricultural trade of developing countries, data and projections, (Source: Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)

20

(billion 2004-06 ICP$

10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050

From Rural to Urban As population and incomes increase, the migration to urban households will continue. The population was 36.6% urban in 1970 and was 56.6% urban in 2010 and is projected to be

67.2% urban by 2050. 1 Some of these migrants will enter the formalized food chain having formerly been subsistence or self-sufficient producers. With this urbanization also comes lengthening food supply chains, which may result in increased transport losses after the farm gate as well as processing losses with a growth in consumption of prepared foods, diverting additional supply from the food sector. This shifting demographic also rebalances constituent power. With larger rural populations, policies reflected the desire to stabilize and maintain producer income to garner political support and promote a key sector of the economy. With increased urbanization comes a growing constituency dependent on purchased food2 and thus a shifting concern towards addressing food price levels and volatility and away from supporting producer income, effecting the balance in trade negotiations.

Changing Diets With growth in income comes increasing consumption of vegetable oils and livestock products (meat and dairy), but even after four decades, substantial gaps in consumption of meats are expected to remain (Alexandratos and Bruinsma op cit). While China and Brazil have seen rapid growth in meat consumption, consumption is likely to slow as the approach developed world consumption levels and the population growth slows (or declines) and ages.

Cultural and religious factors as well as persistent poverty in some countries are cited to support this persistent gap in meat consumption and slow its growth. With income growth we may also expect a desire for diversity in diets, impacting trade, and a decline in food demand elasticity, potentially effecting price volatility.

Figure 3: Cereals feed (million tons) and livestock production ($billion) (Source: Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)

Feed Developed Livestock Developed

1200

Feed Developing Livestock Developing

Million tons Cereals Feed & $ billion Livestock Prod.

1000 800 600 400 200 0

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

2050

Feed Use Feed consumption is also to undergo a geographic shift with nearly all growth in feed and livestock numbers expected to occur in the developing world and thus trade in feedgrains and oilseed meals is likely to grow, a substantial portion through south-south trade. (Figure 3).

1 2

http://esa.un.org/unup/ Some consumers may not have been a formalized

While these countries will also gain from increased feeding efficiency, modern, integrated and formalized livestock feeding operations rely on commercial feeds in volume as opposed to food and other residues commonly used in ‘backyard’ feeding. With feeduse stagnating in the developed world, feedgrain production will need to be exported for livestock feeding abroad or diverted to an alternative use such as biofuels or land retired from production.

Stocks, Abundance and New Demands In his introduction of the storage model for agricultural commodities, Gustafson (1958) laid out a framework to determine ‘rules’ for optimizing stock holding. Laying out optimization over benefits to the general public, he emphasized the model could just as well optimize over producer income or other constituents, and suggesting a role for government in determining stock levels (both fixed quantities of stocks for special circumstances as well as the general holding of stocks for the smoothing of consumption over time). In light of the discussion in this text, it is interesting to note that Gustafson simplified away from yield growth (shifts in supply) and shifts in demand (through growing population and income) in the thought that these two factors had appeared to be largely offsetting in the proceeding decades. The model is refined by Scheinkman and Schechtman (1983) to add a supply response to prices in addition to storage demand based on an expectation of prices in the subsequent period.

Newbery and Stiglitz (1982a) concluded that, in the context of storage, market equilibrium may not even be constrained Pareto efficient, motivating a structure for policy intervention (through a storage subsidy) to achieve price stabilization and in effect producer income stabilization.

These types of interventionist policies regarding stocks were common in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, with varying objectives. For the US and EU, such policies were a necessity to draw off excess supplies and prop-up producer prices but with growing supplies, were expensive to maintain, but lower consumer prices for agricultural commodities also encouraged new demands. The abundance of agricultural commodities during this period followed James Mill’s (1808) reassessment of Say’s law (Say 1803), with an expansion of new and novel uses of the sectors output. Some resulting products were outside of the agriculture sector, such as paint and industrial uses of vegetable oils, but many others simply displaced existing agricultural commodity uses, such as high fructose corn syrup from maize used to displace sugar in many products. Many of these product markets are small or niche markets relative to the size of the feedstock market. In the 1920-30s, agricultural output represented over 30% of industrial input, by the 1990s this had been cut in half, as petroleum based products expanded rapidly; agriculture was increasingly a significant use of energy as an input.

Traditionally, the largest direct energy effect in agriculture markets was through input costs, with the agricultural sector being a large energy user in both farm and supply chain operations as well through the use of nitrogen fertilizers derived from natural gas. The energy market, and the production of biofuels, presents a fundamentally different potential market for agricultural commodities as it represents additional demand and doesn’t directly displace other commodity uses. Of course, the use of agricultural commodities in the production of energy is not new. In various from crops and production residues have contributed to the

energy sector from simple direct burn of commodities and crop residues to their conversion to liquid fuels for use in in the transport sector.

Modern biofuel policies have their origins in the oil shocks of the 1970 and subsequent low commodity prices. Brail embarked on a domestic policy to convert sugarcane to ethanol while the US used its most readily convertible feedstock, maize, to do the same. Policy support has been substantial, with liberalization in Brazil occurring toward the end of the 1990s although some tax preferences remain along with a minimum blending requirement, currently 20% in all gasoline. The US instituted direct subsidies to blenders in the 1980s which only expired at the end of 2011, leaving a system of mandates as the most visible and ‘important’ means of support (Thompson et al).

Clearly the use of agricultural commodities in the production of biofuels, among other factors, has increased commodity prices in recent years (Abbott et al., 2008, 2009; Dewbre et al., 2008; EC, 2008; ERS, 2008; IFPRI, 2007; Meyers and Meyer, 2008; OECD-FAO, 2008, 2010; World Bank, 2008; Westhoff, 2010), but the relative size of the two markets and the extent to which current policy actually supports prices is key to understanding future demand.

If demand were driven purely by policy, such policies could be managed similar to historic buffer stock programs to maintain commodity price stability to stabilize and support farm income, but at the expense of higher commodity prices. The elasticity of demand would be reduced and managed. Indeed biofuels envisioned to play just such a role early in the early evolution of policy.

The current situation, however, suggests a different picture of demand. With the expiration of blenders subsidies in US and in the midst of the of one of the worst droughts in half a century there are assertions that a waiver of the mandate would have little immediate effect on reducing demand for ethanol and therefore ethanol prices.3 To a point, biofuel production has grown and given the size of the energy market, a long run link has been established between the two markets which potentially provides significant long run demand elasticity to commodity markets (De Gorter and Just 2008; Balcombe and Prasomanikis).

In such a scenario, petroleum prices set a long run floor under feedstock prices and bioenergy competes with stockholding as the regulating mechanism for prices, with notable differences.

Biofuels, depending on the underlying price of energy, can replace stockholding as the mechanism which establishes a commodity floor price and depending on the long run price of oil, could serve to keep agricultural commodity prices high and the market in a perpetual ‘stock-out’ and exposed to short run supply crunches.

Towards a Supply Constrained World With growth in population and income and the possibility of increased demand, and demand elasticity, from bioenergy production, the existing and potential resource base will be called on to meet the growing demand. Output grew impressively over the last 40 years, but expectations are that future gains will be more difficult to achieve and other factors such as climate change will produce additional challenges.

3

Does the RFS matter? http://www.farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2012/08/ethanoldoes_the_rfs_matter.html

Sources of Productivity Growth Growth in agricultural output comes from an expansion of area under cultivation, increased yields per planted area and increased cropping intensity (such as multiple plantings of rice crops in a given year or double cropping of soybeans and wheat over a season). In their outlook work, Alexandratos and Bruinsma (2012) asses effective demand in 2050 and proceed to outline how the anticipated 60% growth in production can be met by available productive resources (Table 1).4 While the assumed demand growth is far slower than the 170% growth between 1961 and the 2005/07 base year, this is not to imply that such growth will be easier to achieve. 5 Land and water resource use are likely to face greater constraints at the margins of growth than have been seen in the past. Both quantity and quality of land and water availability will be more limited and will come into production at a greater cost. In the case of water, resource depletion, salinization and competition not agricultural uses will hamper the expansion of irrigated area. To increase production, the world will continue to rely on yields, in fact this dependence will even grow (Table 1).

Table 1: Sources of growth in crop production (percent) (Source: Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)

Arable land expansion 19612007 All developing countries

2005/072050

Increases in cropping intensity 19612007

2005/072050

Yield increases 19612007

2005/072050

23

21

8

6

70

73

sub-Saharan Africa

31

20

31

6

38

74

Near East/North Africa

17

0

22

20

62

80

Latin America and Caribbean

40

40

7

7

53

53

South Asia

6

6

12

2

82

92

East Asia

28

0

-6

15

77

85

14

10

9

10

77

80

World

Land Constraints At the global level there is a significant amount of land with rainfed crop production potential, 7.2 billion hectares, of various degrees of suitability of which 1.6 billion hectares are currently in use for crop production, including irrigated area (GAEZ and Fischer, G. et al, 2002, 2011). A significant portion of the land with potential for expansion is currently under forest and other uses or of only marginal suitability. The balance is approximately 1.4 billion hectares of prime and good land that could enter production.6 Any transition to crop 4

The authors’ numbers represent effective demand, that is, not the volume necessary to adequately feed the world, but the volume obtained from economic and productive resources available to consumers.

5 It bears repeating that this effective demand assumes limited growth in demand from bioenergy production and thus represents a low end demand estimate from this particular factor, but significant uncertainty remains in other demand factors as well.

6 For more details on land availability see chapter 4 of Alexandratos and Bruinsma. Agriculture Toward 2050: The 2012 Revision.

production however, would require considerable investment, is concentrated in a small number of countries requiring infrastructure development and increased trade and would draw from existing pasture area.

Yield Potential Crop yield growth rates have slowed considerably over the last several decades raising concerns that this negative trend will continue in the future, even as productivity growth increasing relies on gains in this area (Figure 4). In their analysis, Alexandratos and Bruinsma (2012) determine that 80% of future productivity growth will come from growth in yields (Table 1). Developing countries will have more land expansion but developed countries will actually lose area in cultivation to an extent that an cropping intensity growth will not offset area losses so yields will be responsible for the entirety of productivity growth. Recalling that Alexandratos and Bruinsma (2012) construct their estimates in a demand side analysis (they establish what demand is anticipated to be and then determine the resources employed to meet that demand) land exits production both because it goes to competing uses and because growth in yields are sufficient to allow some land to exit production.7 Figure 4: Annual growth rates of world cereal production and yields (over preceding 25-year period; historical 1961 2007) (Source: Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)

3.00

growth rate

2.50

production

2.00

yield

1.50 1.00 0.50

harvested land

0.00 -0.50 1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

Shortfalls in yield growth or greater growth in demand, including bioenergy, will necessarily lead to greater pressure to maintain and expand land in cultivation. While the authors acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty surrounding the yield and production estimates as a result of climate change, water availability and sustainable practices, the system also does not assess the impact of commodity prices in yield response and thus offers some potential for growth under higher prices from demand growth.

A Rebalancing of Supply and Demand With infrastructure in place, improvements in processing technology and high oil prices, biofuels now appear to be far more competitive even in the absence of subsidies. Should current petroleum, or more broadly energy prices, be a harbinger for the future, the downward pressure on agricultural commodity prices could be a matter of the past. While 7

The loss of land in the developing world while simultaneously there are gains in land area in the developed world remains a controversial conclusion of the report.

such linkages would see increased elasticity of demand which, over a range, would show increased sensitivity to prices, the agriculture sector would also inherit the volatility in energy and petroleum markets as the this range varies depending on the prevailing prices in the energy sector. In essence, the linkage may establish a price floor for agricultural commodities, but a floor which may show considerable variation with energy prices.

The question is then how elastic is agricultural supply is in the long run relative to this demand for renewable energy production and what are the prospects for agriculture to deliver additional output to return prices to a downward path? It appears the supply curve may become steeper or more constrained in the future while the size of the energy market and a potentially highly elastic long run demand to produce energy would significantly change the supply and demand paradigm, away from Cochran (1958) and towards Jevons (1865).

Linking the new market environment to changes in the trade negotiations This short paper aimed to portray some of the principal shifts in the conditions of world food markets over the past 50 years in general and the last decade in particular. This section will try to link the more recent shifts to changes in the focus and the evolution of the WTO negotiations in agriculture. Given the space available, the analysis will remain limited to some general observations. And, given nature of the problem, the presentation will be more descriptive than analytical.

The “old normal”: policies in a demand constrained market environment The policy environment during the negotiations and the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) was generally characterized by one of (i) high and production-coupled domestic support, (ii) high and often prohibitively high border protection, and (iii) export subsidies necessary to dispose of subsidized domestic surpluses onto international markets. Import protection and export subsidies exerted downward pressure on international prices and made them more volatile. Low and volatile prices in turn provided disincentives to farmers in developing countries, resulting in lower domestic food availability; they provided incentives for consumers to shift consumption patterns towards the cheap and subsidized imported foods.

These policies generally helped net-food importing countries with limited domestic supply capacity and large urban populations (amongst them most countries in the Near East North African region), but they undermined the capacity of many countries with untapped food production potentials, notably in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa to feed their own populations.

The URAA responded to this market environment with its 3-pillar architecture focusing mainly on disciplines that circumscribed domestic support, import protection and export competition. It also addressed, albeit much less prominently and much less effectively, possible negative impacts of rising prices for food consumers. The URAA also provided options to support farmers in developing countries whose livelihoods were undermined for decades by developed countries’ trade policy measures. Under the so-called Marrakesh Decision of the URAA, considerable policy space was accorded to (“low-income/resource

poor”) farmers in developing countries, particularly in the area of compensatory finance, food aid, stockholding, or support to investments in agricultural productivity (Art 6.2, AoA). In sum, almost all disciplines of the URAA aimed at limiting, mitigating or coping with the impacts of depressed international prices. With exception of the weak disciplines of Art 12 AoA (and GATT 11.1), virtually no URAA measure tried to discipline trade measures that can induce price increases on international markets such as export restrictions, export taxes or import subsidies.

The negotiations of the Doha Development Agreement (DDA) started in the same market environment that conditioned the architecture and the negotiating strategies of the URAA. In broad terms, the DDA negotiations sought to continue, deepen and broaden the URAA efforts to circumscribe domestic support, export competition and import protection. More specifically, the negotiations aimed at strengthening the sometimes unbinding nature of URAA disciplines (“squeeze remaining water out of the tariffs”, further reduce/eliminate export subsidies, and reduce farm support). The negotiating groups that represented a large number of the developing countries focused their interests on extending some of the privileges that were accorded to developed countries in the URAA, thus reducing the real or perceived asymmetries in the existing URAA disciplines. The draft modalities reflect these efforts in various areas, notably in an evolution of an increasingly complicated set of proposals to reduce of import protection, known as the “Banded approach8” or the “Blended approach9” or the “Tiered Approach10” with additional exceptions for “Special Products11”. It also resulted in proposals to afford them access to special protection options such as the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM), a flexible tariff scheme that allows developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to deal with import surges or price falls. Measures to ensure food security were also strengthened through less distortive food aid provisions (Art 10.4) with proposals that made sure that food aid remains needs-driven, is fully in grant form, not tied to commercial exports, and linked to development objectives. And finally the DDA modalities included the introduction of tighter export credit provisions with strengthened disciplines on repayment periods, commodity space (basic foodstuffs) and interest rates (selffinancing).

While these proposals added considerable complexity to the existing trade policy framework of the URAA, they did not change the fundamental policy orientation to address problems of low international prices and structural surpluses. Essentially all URAA and DDA trade disciples aimed to protect producers. This market environment started to change in the mid2000s for the reasons outlined in the above sections. The market environment changed rather abruptly in 2007 from one of low international prices, high food reserves and large structural surpluses to one of high and volatile prices, dwindling food reserves and structural deficits.

8

Products categorized by height of starting tariff. Higher bands: steeper cuts. In the March 2003 draft modalities, the formulas in each band use the Uruguay Round (UR) approach (average cuts subject to minimums).

9 Used in the Cancún draft frameworks, the approach “blends” three formulas. An Uruguay Round approach applies to one category, a Swiss formula to another, and a third is duty-free.

10 Products categorized by height of starting tariff. Higher tiers (or bands): steeper cuts. Type of formula and number of tiers? In the August 2004 agreed framework this is still to be negotiated.

11 Products for which developing countries have sought extra flexibility in market access for food and livelihood security and rural development.

Notwithstanding these changes in the market environment, the negotiations continued to focus on disciplines of import protection. They were put on halt only in 2008 in the absence of a consensus on trade disciplines which had already lost some of their importance with the shift in market environments. At the same times as the disciplines to protect producers became less acute and increasingly irrelevant, the negotiations failed to engender provisions to protect consumers. Figure 5 depicts the major steps in the negotiation process against the evolution of food prices.

International market at a crossroads: Towards a “New Normal�?

After more than five years of generally high and more volatile world prices, there is no conclusive and unequivocal evidence on why this shift in the international market environment has occurred. This paper has provided an overview of factors that have led to boosts in demand and those that have reduced the responsiveness of supply. In the analysis of the various contributing factors, this paper has underlined the importance of the demand that has emerged from the energy sector and has argued that the shift in the international market environment not only coincided with but was significantly influenced by the rise of biofuels.

Figure 5: WTO negotiation process and progress and the FAO Food Price Index (real 2002-2004=100) 180

"Old Normal"

"New Normal"?

12/2008: last version of teh draft modalities

2009: official negotiations stalled, "walk in the woods"

2/2008 -7/2008: revised draft modalities

2009-2012: negotiations in the cotton sub- committee continue

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

60

6/2006: draft modalities, Falconer text

80

8/2004: Agreed framework Continuation of the 3 pillar architecture, but new formulae for AMS, tariff reduction and export competition

100

URAA implementation

URAA negotiations 3-pillar architecture EU-US Blairhouse accord of 1992

120

DDA Phase 1 11/2001: Doha Ministerial Conference Agriculture included

140

2007-2008: Intensive negotiations with working docs

160

Up until recently, the profitability of using agricultural produce for the conversion into fuel energy heavily depended on subsidies. These subsidies however affect agricultural markets in a distinctly different manner than their predecessors did for food markets. Unlike subsidies for food production, biofuel subsidies do not result in structural surpluses that need to be disposed of on international markets with price depressing effects. Instead, excess production is siphoned off by the energy market and, rather than depressing international prices, these subsidies actually buttresses them. In the political economy environment of the WTO that could be characterized as mercantilist, little pressure occurred to discipline such interventions.

As petroleum prices continued to rise and governments continued to build and expand the infrastructure for biofuels, energy production from agricultural feedstocks became increasingly profitable even without subsidies or mandates. It has also argued in this paper

that – notwithstanding the initial incentives through subsidies and mandates – a significant part of biofuel production now takes place without such incentives and that its future profitability will largely depend on energy prices. At high petroleum prices, agricultural surpluses will be siphoned off by the energy market, lifting agricultural feedstock prices up their energy parity levels (break-even points). Given the size of the energy market, high energy prices create (perfectly) elastic demand for agricultural products and thus a (high) floor price for food. This means that food prices remain high as long as energy prices remain high, and the latter seems to be a not unlikely proposition for the foreseeable future.

The “New Normal”, trade negotiations and food security The shift from a demand constrained towards a supply constrained market environment has also shifted emphasis in the food security debate. While the low price environment focused on the need to ensure sustainable food production, the high price environment brought aspects of food access and affordability to the fore. As food expenditure accounts for high shares of total expenditures for the poor (sometimes in excess of 70%), there is now a concern that high food prices now become the driving force of undernourishment. The spikes in undernourishment reported in 2008 and 2010 corroborated this initial concern.

More recent analyses suggest that the impacts on mere calorie consumption can easily be overstated and that the impacts of high food prices on undernourishment were overstated. But more recent analysis of food security (SOFI 2012, forthcoming) also underline that high food prices often cause a deterioration in the quality of the diet and force poor consumers to forego other important necessities such as health care or the education of their children. This shift from a low price environment towards a high price environment has resulted in a change in food security policies towards measures that help protect consumers, notably food safety nets, cash transfer programmes and targeted assistance schemes.

In the area of trade negotiations, the same shift in policies has not yet taken place. The DDA still focuses on protecting producers. Measures to protect consumers have not received the attention that the shift to the new market environment may warrant. If such a shift in the policy debate evolves successfully, this could instil a new raison d’être into the negotiations process, help resume negotiations and help conclude the DDA. Preparing such discussions should be supported by a shift in the research agenda for trade. A twin track approach could be pursued to (i) ensure that trade policy measures help protect consumers from the negative impacts of higher and more volatile prices and (ii) at the same time enable small producers in developing countries to harness the benefits of higher prices. On the consumer protection side, the research agenda would try to identify practical proposals to limit the options for, and mitigate the impacts of supply controls, export restrictions and taxes. On the producer side, the new research agenda should explore practical proposals that ensure that small scale producers have access to better infrastructure, can improve access to inputs, protect the resource base and manage more effectively their production risks.

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