57 technology. In agricultural economics, there is a demonstrated positive relationship between production efficiency and food security (Feeney & MacClay, 2016). In particular, favorable economic conditions allow for an increase in agricultural productivity, which subsequently increases food availability and lowers the cost to produce, thus decreasing costs for consumers and increasing farming and food production wages. Why is it that given this growth and the capability of Argentina of producing sufficient food to feed eight times its population of more than 40 million, it has not yet been able to solve the issues surrounding food insecurity? In a 2016 study for the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, Feeney and MacClay investigated whether or not Argentina has the capacity to guarantee substantive food access to its population, while being a food exporter for the rest of the world. They used a food balance sheet composed of a comprehensive overview of the sources of supply and utilization of food in the country. In addition, they added healthy food criteria to ensure that the results would be representative of a quality diet containing adequate nutrition. Their findings demonstrated that Argentina has no problem in terms of food production providing for its own population along with maintaining their role as a major exporter. However, the root of the problem is that there is a large population without sufficient income to buy nutritious food, which is exacerbated by inefficient export restrictions and trade subsidies. Between 2016 and 2017, the basic food basket, consisting of enough calories to prevent an individual from becoming destitute, increased in price by 27.9%, due to inflation, while the minimum wage remained fixed (Ardornetto, 2017). Alianza Biodiversidad and Feeney and MacClay’s results attributed the underlying cause of food waste and production discrepancies to poor management policies. Since 2006, public policies in Argentina have been created with the intent to decrease domestic food prices and increase food availability for the internal population. The first initiative was an export tax that was expected to help Argentine food processing facilities obtain domestically produced raw inputs at a price substantially lower than the international market. There would be a transfer from farmers to local consumers through decreased local prices, along with a direct transfer to the government from the export tax. As a result of this export tariff, the estimated total economic transfer to consumers from lower prices was only $11M from 2006 to 2012, even though the Argentine government had expected to receive $7.5B a year in tariffs (Feeney & MacClay, 2016). Thus, the impact of the export tax was not sufficient to divert food products from leaving the country. The Argentine government also implemented an export quota, called the Export Operations Registry. The thought was to limit exporters’ demand for food products and restrict competing demand from international customers, with the subsequent effect of exporters selling their excess product to local markets at a lower price. Unfortunately, these interventions backfired. The limitations on international trade caused exporters to exit the market, and, without the demand from these middlemen, farmers were subject to selling their product at a lower price to domestic markets. Thus, they destroyed value for farmers and at the same time not having a measurable impact on food insecurity. The third major policy was a price subsidy program to those who sell their primary product in local markets, equivalent to the difference between international market prices and a domestic reference price. In the short term, these policies resulted in an increase in food consumption, but as producers considered the ultimate profit losses from the reduction of the export market, long-term supply and investment in agriculture decreased. The estimated loss of exports was $15B. Agricultural production also missed out on an estimated growth of $25B a year. Not only were there large macroeconomic effects as a result of these policies but also, locally, food prices in Buenos Aires increased by 35.6%, with wages only increasing by 2.5% (Perkins, 2019). Food waste, production, and export policies all are interdependent factors contributing to food insecurity in Argentina. Their core issues lie in the history of Argentina favoring short-term trade-offs over long-term sustainability. This short-sighted approach has been detrimental to Argentina’s economic growth and has been an expressed issue in the past. In 2009, the
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