Exploring the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on food and nutrition security indicators in developing countries in the past, present and near future

In this paper the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) indicators in Sub-Saharan (SSA) is explored, in which both the CAP in the past, the present and the future is taken into account. FNS is approached by indicators on agricultural production, food consumption, world market prices, agricultural exports, agricultural imports and calorie intake per capita. The analysis of the impact of the past and current CAP on FNS is based on literature review; for exploring impacts of the future CAP 2020-2030 on FNS three policy scenarios are developed – a baseline scenario, a CAP Eliminating scenario and a CAP Greening scenario - which are simulated with the MAGNET model. Our findings show that the impact of the CAP on FNS in Sub Sahara Africa (SSA) is mainly channelled via the impact of the CAP on the level of world market prices. Due to the exports of surplus production (at least partly facilitated by export subsidies) and a low import demand of the EU, CAP in the past exerted a downward pressure on world market prices, which tended to be beneficial for consumers in SSA (cheaper food) and detrimental for producers in SSA (lower prices for agricultural products). As a result of the successive CAP adjustments, under the current CAP EU agricultural commodity prices follow the fluctuations in world market prices and export subsidies have more or less dropped to zero. Hence consumers and producers in in SSA do no longer face a downwards pressure on world market prices due to CAP support. Model simulations of CAP Elimination and CAP Greening show that the future CAP might exert a slight upwards pressure on world market prices due to a small reduction in EU28 agricultural production. It also appears from the model simulations that this that this limited increase hardly provokes an increase in agricultural production in SSA and leaves consumption in SSA unaffected