Marketing and Regional Integration for Food Security in the Arab World

Abstract

The Middle East / North Africa (MENA) region faces serious food insecurity, with an increasing gap between food production and consumption. Using resource advantage theory from macromarketing, we demonstrate that the agriculture / agribusiness industry would be highly competitive with economic integration of the Nile Valley (Egypt and Sudan) with the Arab Gulf countries. Individually, these sub-regions have critical disadvantages, but as a bloc, complementary strengths could make the industry quite competitive. Of course, integration within MENA has been discussed for decades, although usually as a political concept, which is unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future. From a macromarketing perspective, economic integration is quite viable, and very beneficial to food security in the region.

Exploration of Food Security Challenges towards More Sustainable Food Production: A Systematic Literature Review of the Major Drivers and Policies

“…Authors have highlighted various additional arguments or policies that are considered drivers for FS such as establishing public programs to influence diets in a healthy manner, reducing yield volatility [ 85 , 94 , 105 , 119 , 124 , 126 , 175 ], the country’s natural resources [ 85 , 105 , 119 , 124 , 137 , 145 , 162 , 163 , 176 ], geopolitical and political stability [ 69 , 98 , 104 , 117 , 123 , 124 , 142 ], agricultural infrastructure [ 64 , 114 , 116 , 118 , 142 , 146 , 175 ], food distribution infrastructure [ 71 , 75 , 76 , 112 , 177 , 178 ], economic integration [ 109 , 112 , 123 , 179 , 180 ], collaboration among all supply chain stakeholders [ 75 , 130 , 134 , 157 ], proper measurement of food security dimensions [ 123 , 181 , 182 , 183 ], urban agriculture policies […”