Chapter 3


Figure 3.2 Seasonal Rural-Urban Price Differentials


Source: C.P.Timmer et al., 1983.


2 The Open Economy and the Role of Food Imports and Exports

Much of the discussion above has been in the context primarily of the domestic economy.
Yet most countries are involved in the importation and export of food commodities. Indeed.
as can be seen from Table 3.1, over a third of Africa's cereal consumption is from imported
grain. This means that, in the same way that households and regions become interdependent
when they become integrated into the domestic food chain, so countries become more
interdependent with one another when they specialise in order to benefit from international
trade.

2.1 Historical trends

Historically, international food markets were quite slow to develop. The cost of
transportation and the difficulty of preserving many foods meant that there was little
international trade in foods prior to the middle of the nineteenth century. Before then, trade
was concentrated on high value cash crops which were difficult to grow in temperate
climates. Spices had been traded since the middle ages. By the early 1800s, sugar was being
grown in the West Indies for export and the slaves working in the sugar plantations were
being fed on imported foods such as wheatflour and salt fish.