Food security and public agricultural spending in Bolivia: Putting money where your mouth is? Jose Cuesta a,⇑ , Svetlana Edmeades b , Lucia Madrigal c a World Bank, Poverty Reduction and Equity Unit, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20477, USA b World Bank, Latin America and Caribbean Agriculture and Rural Development, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20477, USA c International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20006, USA article info Article history: Received 15 December 2011 Received in revised form 2 December 2012 Accepted 23 January 2013 Available online 1 March 2013 Keywords: Food security Vulnerability Agricultural spending Municipalities Latin America Bolivia abstract This paper explores the reduction of food insecurity in Bolivia, adopting a supply-side approach that ana- lyzes the role of agricultural spending on vulnerability to food insecurity. Vulnerability to food insecurity is captured by a municipal-level composite indicator for all 327 municipalities in 2003, 2006, and 2007. Econometric analysis indicates that levels of public agricultural spending are positively associated with high or very high vulnerability—especially investments in infrastructure and research and extension. The authors interpret this to indicate that agricultural spending allocation is driven by high or very high vulnerability levels, but has small effects on reducing high vulnerability. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Recent food price increases and volatility have created a sense of urgency to better understand and address food security across developed and developing countries. Food security is a complex phenomenon that was originally measured by the ability of a coun- try to access enough food to meet the dietary energy requirements of its population (Pinstrup-Andersen, 2009, 5). However, since that original definition, the term ‘‘food security’’ has been used in differ- ent ways, until a definition was widely accepted at the 1996 World Food Summit (FAO, 1996): ‘‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life’’. This consensus definition brings indi- viduals and households into the limelight, but, more importantly, it also acknowledges that there are multiple factors affecting an indi- vidual’s ability to easily access food that adequately satisfies his or her needs. Also, because of this multiplicity, a single, ‘‘silver bullet’’ policy for addressing food insecurity is likely to have a limited im- pact. As a result, food security interventions in practice span several sectors, including agriculture, rural development and infrastructure, health, education, and social protection. They also represent a con- tinuum of short-term mitigation actions and longer-term strategic investments. Because of this complexity, a rigorous attempt to as- sess the impact of the different food security-related interventions is challenging in terms of both data availability and addressing coun- terfactual and endogeneity issues. This paper takes a supply-side approach by examining the asso- ciation of agricultural spending (broadly defined to include rural development) and food security. The study delimits the analysis of food security in the following dimensions: first, it focuses on specific supply-side sectoral policies, that is, agricultural interven- tions, programs, and policies. Although it is widely acknowledged that other sectoral interventions on health, education, and safety nets are needed to effectively reduce malnutrition (Bryce et al., 2008; Black et al., 2008), there is growing attention to the specific role that agriculture plays in improving food security and nutrition. A recent review by Masset et al. (2012) shows that agriculture interventions typically improve the production of agriculture goods promoted, but they fail to increase households’ total in- comes, improve their dietary diversity, increase absorption of macronutrients, or reduce malnutrition prevalence. Horton et al. (2008) report that biofortification—plant breeding for high micro- nutrient content—remains promising in terms of reducing child mortality, but with large differences in cost-effectiveness. In any case, this growing evidence suggests that agricultural decisions on spending, composition, and regional allocation may all influ- ence critical policy choices potentially affecting food security. Sec- ond, the analysis does not focus on observed indicators of food security, such as calorie intake, dietary diversity, or malnutrition 0306-9192/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2013.01.004 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 202 4737781; fax: +1 202 5223283. E-mail addresses: jcuesta@worldbank.org (J. Cuesta), sedmeades@worldbank.org (S. Edmeades), lmadrigal@cgiar.com (L. Madrigal). Food Policy 40 (2013) 1–13 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Food Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol