@book{10234,
	author = {Timmer, C. Peter},
	title = {International best practice in food policy: },
	publisher = {Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture,},
	year = {2010.},
	address = {Los Baños, Laguna :},
	note = {It has been more than 25 years since food policy analysis (Timmer et al. 1983) was published, and more than 30 years since the initial outline for the book was circulated among the authors. It is fair to say that the volume has been very influential in the way food policy issues have been looked at, and it remains in use as a textbook for a number of university courses. Its academic success is a bit surprising because the target audience was not primarily university faculty (for whom the book seemed too simplistic in methodology and too anecdotal in presentation). Instead, it was mainly aimed at practitioners, an ill-defined group of analysts in need of an understanding of how a complicated and interconnected food system actually works. Training these practitioners was the main mission of the book. 
The early drafts of food policy analysis (henceforth FPA) were simulated by the attention to high food prices following the world food crisis in 1973-74, and the fears of a repeat in 1979-80. But by the fourth full draft, in 1982, it became apparent that surpluses were returning to world food markets. A volume predicated on a world running out of food would have been out of date before the ink was dry, and so a full-scale revamping of the analytical messages was needed. The new theme, which has stood the test of a quarter century of market fluctuations, was the need for flexibility to cope with market instability.
Such flexibility is not a natural feature of domestic policymaking in the food sector or elsewhere, and providing the analytical tools for understanding how to create flexible responses both to high-and low-price environments turned out to be a real challenge. But the approach remains relevant to this day, hence, the continued usefulness of an analytical guidebook that is a quarter century old. }
}