Food Markets and Global Trade
Exeter Food research in this area encompasses work along the food chain, from factors of production to consumer behaviour, while addressing the trade of food at a range of scales, from international trade to domestic and municipal regulations, to local markets.
Agricultural Economist Steve McCorriston studies food prices, international trade, and the functioning of food markets, with specific interests in policy reforms in food markets when competition matters, trade deals in food markets, price transmission in food markets, and determinants of retail food prices and competition.
Michael Winter—who is Professor of Land Economy and Society—is working with Tim Wilkinson and Steve Guilbert to research the food system impacts of Covid-19, focusing on continuity and dislocation in the supply chain across dairy, fish, flour, fresh fruit and vegetables, and meat; the regulations, incentives, investments or interventions which might be required to optimise supply chain adjustments and ensure fairness; and the long-term implications of the crisis for the food supply chain.
Health Economist Richard Smith studies the drivers of choice of healthy and unhealthy food and drinks, and the role of food prices and food system changes in improving population health, and he has focused research on things such as soft drinks taxes, the regulation of takeaway food outlets, and television food advertising.
Medical herbalist Anne Stobart is exploring factors affecting the sustainable cultivation of plants for medicinal purposes, particularly in relation to supply chains and the viable development of agroecology including forest gardening and permaculture approaches.
Historian John Lidwell-Durnin is studies how eighteenth-century efforts to develop statistical approaches land management and food production, and to understand the natural wealth of countries, informed present-day ideas about food security, environment, and global food markets, with a particular interest in the imperial and global reach of Britain's first Board of Agriculture (founded in 1793)
