International farm prices and the social cost of cheap food policies

The evidence suggests that real prices received by farmers in the LDCs have been substantially lower than farm prices in the developed nations. Estimates of a long-run aggregate agricultural supply elasticity from cross-section data reveal that it is relatively elastic, in the range of 1.25 to 1.66. It is estimated also that with more favorable farm prices agricultural output in a group of twenty-seven LDCs could have been 40% to 60% greater than it was and the national income of the group increased by more than 3% annually.