As soon as an ear of corn is taken off its stalk, or a potato is pulled from the ground, it travels anywhere from a few miles to across continents, and sometimes undergoes a multitude of processes that transform it into the food we consume.
Less is understood about all of the other links in the FVC, in part due to a lack of standardized data and methods that can be applied universally. Many studies have been done on individual commodities, or in a single country, but coming up with an international method of analyzing FVCs has been elusive until now.
A team of researchers – led by Chris Barrett, has developed the “Global Food Dollar” method, which distributes the consumer’s net purchasing dollar across all farm and post-farmgate activities.
Their methodology expands on the ERS’s “food dollar series,” published annually since 1947 but updated by Canning in 2011 to include modern inputs.
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