The Concept of Caloric Unequal Exchange and Its Relevance for Food System Analysis: The Ecuador Case Study

Abstract

Abstract:The impact of food production patterns and food supply upon consumption patterns is usually explained by economies of scale and affordability. Less attention is given to food trade patterns and global insertion of economies affecting dietary changes. This paper contributes to the discussion using the concept of caloric unequal exchange that defines the deterioration of terms of trade in food in units of calories and complements studies on unequal exchange and ecologically unequal exchange. A new perspective to food systems' analysis is achieved by using this concept. This paper uses the case study of Ecuador to exemplify its potentiality. Exports and imports to and from Ecuador are analyzed for the period 1988 through 2013 in volume, value, and calories, for different groups of products. The conclusion is that Ecuador is increasingly helping to feed the world, at a caloric cost that is decreasing over time. There is a deterioration of the terms of trade of traded food in terms of calories for Ecuador of more than 250% between 1986 and 2013.

Toward food sovereignty and self-sufficiency in Latin America and the Caribbean: opportunities for agricultural complementarity

“…The idea of improving food sufficiency in a region that has huge potential if economic integration was promoted, makes even more sense in the current context of the high volatility of prices, and unequal exchange relations in all its dimensions. In this context, the region faces the great challenge imposed by deteriorating terms of trade (Prebish, 1950(Prebish, , 1959Singer, 1950), unequal ecological exchange (Samaniego et al, 2017;Vallejo, 2010), and caloric unequal exchange (Falconí et al, 2017;Ramos-Martín et al, 2017).…”

“…To obtain the trade flow from LCN countries with the rest of the world, we calculated, for each country member, the volume consumed by country (LCN) and the volume imported by country of origin (rest of the world). The following indicator shows self-sufficiency (SS) (Falconí et al, 2017;Ramos-Martín et al, 2017).…”