DEMAND EQUATIONS FOR SELECTED SOUTH AFRICAN AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES
ABSTRACT A set of demand equations for 18 South African agricultural products, representing three demand systems (red meats, fruits and vegetables), were estimated from monthly data for the period December 1982 to February 1988. Data were deflated with a commodity price index and natural logarithmic partial adjustment equations were estimated with two-stage least squares to determine demand parameters for each product. Theoretically expected results were obtained and, owing to variability in seasonal data, results were generally highly significant. Beef is confirmed as the dominant commodity in the red meat market, having cross-price flexibilities with mutton and pork of 0,30 and 0,20, respectively. All goods other than pumpkins are shown to be normal and fruits and vegetables (having many substitutes) are shown to be demand elastic. All products are normal goods, with the exception of pumpkins (income flexibility of −0,74), which are inferior. Apples and pineapples were found to be the dominant fruits an...
Estimation of Food Demand Patterns in South Africa Based on a Survey of Households
South Africa is emerging as a major player in the world agricultural products market. This study investigates aggregate food demand patterns in South Africa using a linear approximate almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS) modeling framework. Data from a 1993 integrated national household survey are employed in the analysis. Empirical results show that demand for meat and fish, grains, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and other foods are generally price elastic. The expenditure elasticities imply that meat and fish and grains are luxury products, whereas dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and other foods are necessities in the household diet. The results also indicate that if income of households increases food expenditure on meat and fish and grains would increase, whereas that on dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and other foods would decrease. Race, age, and gender of household head, urbanization, and family size affect food demand in South Africa.
Malnutrition and national development.
New evidence suggesting a relationship between malnutri tion and mental retardation should be cause for major policy concern in a number of world capitals. The recog nition that malnourished children may emerge from childhood lacking the ability to reach their full genetic intellectual potential introduces a new and perhaps frightening note into theories of national development. The implications are ominous. For many years we have as sumed that, given educational opportunities and environmental advantages, each normally born infant has every prospect of growing up to be bright and productive. It is now suggested that malnourished children may be basically dull. The significance of this can be appreciated when we recognize that as many as two-thirds of the children of most developing countries are now suffering from some degree of malnutrition. The relationship of malnutrition to mental growth dramatizes the issue. However, the insidious drain of malnutrition on national development takes other significant forms. Half the deaths in the developing countries occur among children under six years of age. In certain African countries, Libya for example, a mother must have five children to assure that one reaches the age of fifteen. In Northeast Brazil, 48 percent do not survive the first year of life; by the age of four, 63 percent have succumbed. In parts of Southeast Asia, 40 percent of the children die of disease in their first four years. This is a proportion of deaths not reached in the United States until the age of sixty. The vast majority of these child deaths are attributed to in fectious diseases. Yet most of these diseases are relatively minor childhood ailments. The cause of the death, we now know, is not the infection itself, but usually the malnourished condition of the child when he contracted it. In other words, malnutrition debilitates the body to such a degree that it is incapable of re sisting what would otherwise be a passing infection. In a country like Ecuador, child death due to measles is more than 300 times greater (per thousand of population) than in North America. Whooping cough is still a major killer in much of the world.