Upward spikes in international food prices lead some food-surplus countries to raise export barriers and some food-deficit countries to lower their import restrictions on staple foods – and conversely when prices slump. When many countries so respond, their actions in aggregate exacerbate...

For decades, earnings from farming in many low-income countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduce national and global economic...