http://www.fao.org/economic/esa/esag/en/ Session 2A - Population growth, migration and limits to natural resources. © FAO: http://www.fao.org

1. Session 2A
Population growth, migration
and limits to natural resources

2. Examples of questions we would need to answer:
• To what extend demographic patterns affect agricultural
production, create labour constrains, change use of natural
resources worldwide and in individual countries?
• What are the effects of migration between and within countries
(e.g. urbanization) on food demand and supply, on income
distribution within countries and eventually on achieving the
Sustainability Development Goals 1 and 2 (end hunger and
poverty)?
• To what extent will natural resource constraints hamper
reaching global food security?
• What pace of introduction of sustainable intensification of
agricultural production is required to avoid natural resource
limits become binding constraints to global food security?

3. Intake from Session 2A:
• Population and age cohorts to be kept exogenous
• Migration is driven by economics but not only, difficult to
model, keep it exogenous
• Consider consistent storylines between demographic patters,
income and education
• What are the causality relationships for the long-term?
• How to quantify consistent storylines numerically (the narrative
is consistent but how to quantify the assumptions and shocks)?
• How to capture investment for education that will be consistent
with the rest of assumptions?

4. Session 2B
Income distribution

5. Examples of questions we would need to answer:
• What is the differential impact of agricultural (land and labour)
productivity growth on aggregate income growth within and
between countries?
• To what extend would growth of agricultural productivity
decrease inequality?
• Would the increase in food production and income growth
associated with a doubling of smallholder productivity suffice
to end hunger and poverty?
• Can different propensities to save and/or different propensities
to invest in different investment goods/services (assets) across
households lead to increased inequality/ reduced FNS
achievements?

6. Intake from Session 2B:
• Asset accumulation and ownership: how to model over-time
evolution?
• Redistribution policies: can they be endogenised or better keep
as scenario element?
• How to project inequality if the distribution is given (say for
example log-normal)?
• What are alternatives to log-normal that are less problematic
for the tails?
• Specific public investment incl. human capital formation: how
will it affect income distribution in the future?

7. Session 2C
Income distribution

8. Examples of questions we would need to answer:
• What are the investment needs (and costs) in rural
infrastructure, basic services, connectivity, research and
development, irrigation, storage to support adequate
agricultural productivity growth to end hunger and achieve
food security?
• To what extent will such (mostly public) investment “crowd in”
private investments in farm production and should one assume
the responsiveness to differ between smallholders and larger
commercial farmers?
• To what extent would a shift towards sustainable intensification
and widespread adoption of climate smart agriculture
technologies change these investment requirements?
• What trade-offs could emerge from alternative financing
strategies to meet those investment requirements?

9. Intake from Session 2C:
• Sectoral investment is relevant for us but how exactly to deal
with it?
• Sure demand is the driving force of production but doesn’t
technology matter? (elaborate in “believe in TFP”)
• How to deal with crowding out effects, public-private
investment?
• (Investment is an economy wide question as many other so
cannot be seen only in a partial (agriculture only) context)

10. Session 2D
Structural change and global
food value chains

11. Examples of questions we would need to answer:
• What agricultural labour constraints and surpluses would
emerge across countries and regions?
• What are the output and employment growth requirements of
non-agricultural sectors across countries and regions to absorb
excess agricultural labour under transformative processes of
agriculture (e.g. doubling of smallholder productivity and
widespread adoption of climate smart agriculture)?
• Is the organization of food production through GVCs an efficient
mechanism towards food and nutrition security?
• What would further expansion of GVCs mean for price setting,
intra and cross country value added distribution and stability?
• What consequences would further expansion of GVCs – under
existing patterns – have on competition in markets, income
distribution, natural resource use and degradation?

12. Intake from Session 2D:
• Food demand depends on food expenditure, which depends on
income, which depends on agriculture in many (espc. Non
OECD countries).
• Sources of income are important (agricultural and other
sectors)
• Agricultural investment drives our land productivity and
availability of natural resources (e.g. investment for irrigation
and for converting non suitable into suitable land)
• Structural change on the long-term and (endogenous)
technological transformation from smallholder to commercial
farmer?

13. Session 2E
Climate Change and the Energy
– Agriculture – Climate Change
Nexus

14. Examples of questions we would need to answer:
• What is the impact of climate change on crop and livestock
yields, food prices, food security, rural income and employment
worldwide and in individual countries?
• How would these effects be different under
mitigation/adaptation options?
• How would environmental policies (e.g. carbon taxes) affect
food supply and demand?
• To what extend payments related to GHG absorption can affect
income generation? And which sector would be affected the
most?
• What are the impacts on food security of reducing GHG
emissions by expanding biofuels for example?

15. Intake from Session 2E:
• What should we keep as post-sim to our PE model?
• Indeed we wouldn’t want to get into modelling biofuels per se
ourselves but WE DO HAVE TO model properly use of biomass
for biofuels: where should we do it? And how do we ensure
consistency with our economic growth assumptions?
• Cost assumptions for mitigation and investment: how to host it
say in ENVISAGE?
• Relationship between damage and assumptions on overall
economic growth: how do we ensure consistency?

16. How should we answer such questions?
• What features should a model have?
• Are there any existing models that have (most of) these
features?
• What should be endogenous, what exogenous and what post-
sim?
• What is best handled with a CGE and what with our PE model?
• Is a recursive CGE a good starting point? If not, what is the
alternative?