The Center on Food Security and the Environment is a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
This book, based on fieldwork carried out by a team of American and Indonesian economists, investigates Indonesia's potential for maize production. It integrates 3 economic approaches: (1) the commodity systems approach, which traces the technical and market links from input supplier to producer, processor and consumer; (2) the macro-trade approach, which analyses the role of the commodity in generating domestic value-added and foreign exchange; and (3) the food policy approach, which analyses the efficiency of commodity systems and the distribution of their benefits in order to evaluate potential public investments and policy interventions. The conclusion reached is that Indonesia has the potential to expand its maize production by: (1) efficiency in the marketing system and (2) policies encouraging investment in storage and drying facilities.