The Impact Of Economic Cooperation On Achieving Food Security

Food security is a critical issue for all nations Due to its relatedness to people's health which is the most important wealth that nations possess.The world is looking forward to achieving food security by 2030,as the second prime goal of sustainable development Goals(SDGs),in addition,the UN encourages all forms of cooperation among countries to fight hunger.Although much effort has been spent to end hunger and enhance food security in the world,unfortunately,many countries still suffer from hunger and poverty.Belt and Road Initiative countries still have about 7 % of children under 5 years with overweight,11% with underweight,22% with stunting,10 % are suffering undernourishment,and 5% with wasting,all these indicators alarm food insecurity and indicate the importance of cooperation to fight these common challenges.This study analyzes the relationship between food security and three forms of economic cooperation including,1-agricultural foreign direct investment(FDI),2-scholarship inflows,and3-food trade,using panel data of 65 countries of Belt and Road Initiative countries.We chose the investment,education,and trade because they represent the engine for any economy to move toward sustainable development.We employed many methods including two-stage least squares(2SLS),and two-step system Generalized Method of Moments(GMM)estimator,which produces robust and correct inference,Bayesian Networks,Complex Networks,and Quadratic Assignment Procedure Regression(QAP).This study is the first to highlight the importance of these three forms of economic cooperation in achieving food security in BRI countries.Our results showed that the different forms of cooperation,in particular the cooperation in investment,education,and trade,have positive effects on food security.The econometrics models' results showed that the sampled countries have clear differences in the direction of the relationship between food security and agricultural FDI.However,in general,the agricultural FDI has a positive direct and indirect effect on food security;this effect is seen clearly when a country attracts agricultural FDIs steadily.Regarding the impact of cooperation in education sector,the regression model ndicated that scholarship in-flows have a significant positive effect on food security with a small coefficient value,in addition,Bayesian networks exhibited more details about this relationship,where the resulted network indicated that food security,conditionally,depends on scholarship inflows given the percentage of agricultural value add of GDP,which refers to that the level of dependency of food security on scholarship inflows differs given the different development levels.Finally,complex networks exhibited mutual positive effects between food trade and food security,moreover,The closeness centrality measure indicated that starting a new food trade relationship,between two countries,would enhance food trade and food security,between them and their neighboring countries.In addition,the results of QAP regression model supported the positive effects of food trade on food security,and the study concluded that the investment in the trade infrastructure would reduce the restrictions of geographical distances between countries,and support food trade and food security.Regarding the used methods,Bayesian networks had higher prediction accuracy than the regression model.Whereas the constraint-based approach of network structure learning showed the highest prediction power,the information theory measures of network quality,including Entropy and Mutual Information,revealed better performance than Bayesian measures.We concluded that using Bayesian networks beside linear models could enhance the results.In addition,this study found that using the QAP regression model besides complex networks can gave comprehensive information about the relationship between Food trade and food security.Where complex networks presented information about each couple of partners in the food trade,moreover,QAP regression model allowed to test the hypotheses and to include the effects of other variables in the model such as GDPPC,Agriculture Value Added,and the distance between countries.The study results are likely to have benefits to policymakers,researchers,and academics.In addition,it is expected that this study contributes by providing useful insights into the role of different forms of economic cooperation in promoting and enhancing the food security levels in Belt and Road economies,and in other economies in general.