Academic literature on the topic 'Food prices – Bangladesh'

Purpose International commodity prices have escalated to an unprecedented level since 2008. Although commodity prices have declined recently, prices are still high compared to the pre-2008 levels. Combining this market phenomenon with Bangladesh Government’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data sets HIES 2005 and HIES 2010, and applying the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimation process, the purpose of this paper is to examine paddy rice marketing, and the cereal and non-cereal food expenditure behavior of rural smallholders in Bangladesh under rising commodity prices. Design/methodology/approach This study uses information collected by the Government of Bangladesh and applies two-step Heckman-type selection model estimation procedure, first to estimate total rice production by the rice production self-sufficiency status of the household. Second, the study estimates the paddy marketing behavior by the households by their rice self-sufficiency status under rising commodity price regime applying SUR estimation process combing with Heckman’s selection model estimation procedure. Findings Empirical findings demonstrate that there was no positive assertion between higher paddy rice prices and paddy rice marketing by the rural smallholders. Rather, under the rising commodity price regime, smallholders significantly reduced consumption expenditure on high food value-enriched non-cereal food items to adjust to the market shocks. Research limitations/implications This is a Bangladesh-based case study. Individual country-level case studies should be conducted in order to generalize the findings of the present study. Originality/value The present study warns that the market volatility may discourage farm households to market their cereals more due to uncertain future. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore the cereal marketing behavior of the farm households in Bangladesh under commodity price hikes by the rice production self-sufficiency status of the farm households.

Abstract The specter of food crisis is haunting the world again in 2011. This comes after a short period of decline in food prices since they peaked in the summer of 2008. The addition of seven point five million people during the 2007-08 food crisis with the estimated food insecure population of sixty-five point three million in Bangladesh (FAO/WFP 2008) underlines the magnitude of food insecurity in the country. In this article I trace the volatility in Bangladesh’s rice market since the 2007-8 food crisis in terms of the country’s deregulation of agricultural sector and the gradual elimination of market regulatory mechanisms. I demonstrate that despite Bangladesh’s relatively minor dependence on the international rice market and a steady domestic supply, the lack of strong government regulation and monitoring of the market resulted in irrational rice-price increases. I argue that the alleged connections between the domestic and the international rice markets are largely hypothetical, and therefore the domestic price increases must be analyzed in terms of internal management of the market. The methodology of this article involves critical review of literature and data collected from secondary sources. Referring to Stiglitz I conclude that the Bangladesh rice market is far from developed and thus warrants a strong regulatory regime.

World price shocks and disruptions in international cereal trade in 2007 and 2008 caused considerable anxiety and hardship for food importing countries throughout the world. In many countries, high international food prices raised import costs, reduced total supplies for consumers and ultimately led to lower real incomes and food consumption for poor households. In South Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India were all affected by these movements in international prices, though the effects on domestic prices in each case was mitigated or exacerbated by each country’s own trade policies, as well as the trade policies of its neighbours. Prior to 2007, the general consensus among most economists and food policy analysts was that openness to international trade, particularly private sector trade, was the most efficient mechanism for stabilising domestic food prices and supplies. In light of the 2007-08 experience, however, many observers have concluded that international markets cannot be trusted and that countries should rely on their own domestic production to ensure national and household food security. This paper argues that liberalised international trade still provides the best mechanism for stabilising prices and food supplies in most years, but that appropriate contingency policies are needed for years in which international prices are extraordinarily high.1 More explicit commitments to cereal trade liberalisation within South Asia would also promote region-wide food security and help avoid a repetition of supply disruptions that raised food prices sharply in Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Section II of this paper briefly

This paper examines some of the contradictions and theoretical ambiguities of agricultural trade liberalizationon the welfare of smallholder farmers. Using production, consumption and price data for pre-and post-liberalization periods for two main agricultural crops from Bangladesh (rice) and Tanzania (maize) we critically analyse the correlation between domestic and international prices of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania to estimate impact of agricultural trade liberalization on price stability/volatility and food security to measure economic benefits of trade liberalization on smallholder farmers. Using coefficient of variation of the level of prices (CV) and corrected coefficient of variation (CCV) as measured by Huchet-Bourdon (2011) we found that the values of both CV and CCV for consumer price in the post-liberalisation were quite large suggesting greater volatility of consumer price of rice in Bangladesh and maize in Tanzania in the post-liberalization period. We conclude that price volatility diminishes the potential benefits of agricultural trade liberalization forsmallholder farmers who are net-deficit producers, net-deficit sellers and recommend supplementary policy interventions to achieve enhanced welfare from trade liberalization.

To maintain a sustainable market for major non-cereal crops in Bangladesh, the present study evaluated the asymmetric effect of the key macroeconomic variables on the imported and exported non-cereal crops. In this connection, this study evaluated the nonlinear interactions and co-movements between the international market indicators such as the world prices, total trade amount, and gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC) and the market prices of potato and rapeseed in Bangladesh. Using yearly data from 1988 to 2019, we used the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model to investigate both short- and long-term market dynamics concerning the positive and negative shocks in the macroeconomic variables on imported and exported non-cereal crops. First, the study identifies that during the period investigated, the world potato and rapeseed prices led to an increase in the Bangladesh potato and rapeseed prices when they are increasing. Second, we find that the changes in the trade volume only have an influence on the potato price, both in the long-run and short-run. Finally, our findings revealed that domestic rapeseed prices tend to decrease when the GDPPC increases. Our empirical findings imply that it is important for market participants of potato and rapeseed in Bangladesh to take into consideration the sensitivity of the above-mentioned variables when designing resource allocation decisions in the event of positive and negative effects.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the welfare cost resulted from an increase in food prices in the three most populous countries of south Asia (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh). Design/methodology/approach The effect of rising food prices on consumer welfare is analyzed by using the compensating variation technique. The measurement of the total consumer welfare effect requires the estimation of price elasticities which are calculated by using linear approximation version of the almost ideal demand system. Findings The results indicate that cereals (wheat, rice) are relatively price inelastic. However, protein-rich food items like chicken and mutton are relatively more income elastic where consumer welfare declines in all countries mainly for cereals and milk, as these food items are relatively less elastic to price fluctuations. Social implications Pakistan, India and Bangladesh represent together about 37 percent of the total world undernourished population. This study suggests that government should target the most vulnerable consumers (low-income group) to improve the income level in these countries. Originality/value It is the first effort to estimate and compare that how food inflation affects the consumer welfare in the most populated countries of South Asia. This type of study is also important for the policy planners to overcome the welfare cost under different setting of price and income so it is an effort toward this direction.

Since COVID-19 was confirmed in Bangladesh in March 2020, the government have enacted stringent measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has had a significant impact on people’s lives. Food consumption habits of consumers have shifted as a result of declining grocery shopping frequency, negative income shock, and food prices shooting up. This paper aims to explore Bangladeshi consumers’ buying behaviour in association with the stress generated from a food supply shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic and the post-outbreak perception of the food industry, using a dataset with 540 online samples collected between July and August 2021. A two-stage cluster sampling method and self-administrated questionnaire techniques were adopted for collecting the data during the third wave of COVID-19. Using partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM) and multivariate multiple ordered logit regression (MVORD) to reveal the pertinent structure between all the blocks, this study provides two key findings. First, a higher intensity of COVID-19 impact translates into higher food stress associated with income reduction and higher food prices. Second, food stress directly affects consumer buying and consumption behaviour. We strongly recommend connecting consumers with local producers and collective use of shared warehouses through institutions, policies, and reforms to prevent disruption in the food supply chain and to keep food prices stable. Additionally, food producers, distributors, stakeholders, and policy planners should strengthen the food supply chain to stabilize food security.

As a staple food, rice has an enormous market in Bangladesh in terms of market participants and the volume of the product. As the price of rice is always a sensitive factor for producers, poor consumers and policy makers, this paper investigates market integration and price transmission along the vertical supply chain of rice. Johansen’s test of co-integration confirmed that farm, wholesale and retail prices are co-integrated in the long-run. A causality test revealed that prices were found to be at wholesale levels for both the upstream and downstream markets. The asymmetry error correction model (ECM) has discovered short-run and long-run asymmetry in price transmission in the vertical supply chain where both producers and consumers were being affected due to positive and negative asymmetry. Threshold autoregressive (TAR) and momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) models have confirmed threshold co-integration as well as threshold effect on asymmetry in price transmission. The results highlight the inevitability of policy implementations and increased public interventions to reduce asymmetry for engendering greater pricing efficiency in Bangladesh rice markets.

This paper examines the impacts of agricultural trade liberalisation on the welfare of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh and Tanzania. Using secondary data for the pre and postliberalisation periods for two main agricultural crops from Bangladesh (rice) and Tanzania (maize) we analysed the correlation between domestic and international prices of rice and maize to investigate impacts of agricultural trade liberalisation on price stability/volatility and food security with a view to analysing the economic benefits of trade liberalisation for smallholder farmers. To understand price volatility, we used the Huchet-Bourdon (2011) method to estimate the coefficient of variation of the level of prices (CV) and the corrected coefficient of variation (CCV). We found that the values of both CV and CCV for consumer price in the postliberalisation period were quite large, suggesting greater volatility of consumer price of both crops. We further found that productivity growth did not necessarily lead to income gains for smallholder farmers in either country due to price volatility and the lack of market integration. This study illustrates the contradictory outcomes of agricultural trade liberalisation. We recommend complementary policy interventions to achieve enhanced welfare outcomes from agricultural trade liberalisation.

Rice market efficiency is important for food security in countries where rice is a staple. We assess the impact of rice quality on rice prices, food security, and environmental sustainability in Bangladesh. We find that while price varies as expected for most quality attributes, it is unaffected by a broken percentage below 24.9 percent. This reveals a potential inefficiency, considering the average 5 percent broken rate observed in the market. An increase in the broken rate of milled rice within the limits supported by our findings can, ceteris paribus, increase rice rations by 4.66 million a year, or conversely, yield the current number of rice rations using 170.79 thousand fewer hectares and cutting emissions by 1.48 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Thus, producing rice based on quality assessment can improve food security and its sustainability.

This thesis comprises three empirical chapters, which are self-contained but all related to household food consumption in Bangladesh. Chapter 2 examines the Engel curve for major expenditure categories and presents estimates of equivalence scales for Bangladesh. We compare Engel curves estimated by semi-parametric techniques to those arising from models based on consumer theory. Our analysis supports the argument for a quadratic food Engel curve for developing countries. Knowledge about the correct specification of Engel curves has important implications for modelling household responses to negative income shocks. Chapter 3 studies the effect of a sharp rice price increase on welfare and poverty in Bangladesh. We employ the household expenditure information to estimate the welfare loss induced by the price increase. Our findings suggest that we underestimate the proportionate welfare loss for rice producing households, and overestimate proportionate welfare loss of households who do not produce rice if we ignore indirect effects arising from a change in household consumption and production behaviour. Our estimates further support the hypothesis of a quadratic relationship between welfare loss and permanent household income. We also demonstrate that higher rice prices either increase or decrease the poverty head-count ratio, depending on the choice of the poverty line. However, if we consider the per capita income gap as a measure of poverty, we always observe that higher rice prices unambiguously increase poverty. In Chapter 4 we study the effect of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on household rice consumption in Bangladesh. Using a simple difference-in-difference estimator and household level data, we find a negative effect on the value of non-rice food consumption of net rice buyers compared to self-sufficient households. On the other hand, there is no effect on the value of rice or non-food consumption. In contrast, we find that the higher rice price does not effect the value of rice consumption of rice sellers, but increases the value of other food and non-food consumption.

Almost every country throughout the globe has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The virus's propagation has a disastrous effect on both human health and the economy as a whole. The COVID-19 global recession is the worst since World War II ended. According to the IMF's April 2021 World Economic Outlook Report, the global economy declined by 3.5 percent in 2020, 7 percent drop from the 3.4 percent growth predicted in October 2019. While almost every IMF-covered nation saw negative growth in 2020, the decline was more extreme in the world's poorest regions. The global supply system and international trade of all countries, including India, were affected by the nationwide lockdown in India and around the world to stop the pandemic from spreading. Since the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the global business climate. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant public health and economic problems in South Asian countries and the worst impacted being India, Bangladesh and Pakistan in recent years. The nationwide lockdown adopted by the countries was effective in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus in South Asia, but it came at a substantial financial and social cost to society. Manufacturing activities in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have shrunk sharply. Tourism, trade and remittances, and all major sources of foreign money for South Asian countries, have been substantially impacted. The COVID-19 spread has had a significant influence on global financial markets. The international financial and energy markets substantially dropped as the number of cases began to rise globally, primarily in the United States, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Iran, and South Korea along with South Asian countries. Reduced travel has had a substantial impact on service businesses such as tourism, hospitality, and transportation. According to IMF, (space required after,) 2020 South Asian economies are likely to shrink for the first time in 4 decades. The pandemic has pushed millions into poverty and widened income and wealth disparities because of premature deaths, workplace absenteeism and productivity losses. A negative supply shock has occurred with manufacturing and productive activity decreasing due to global supply chain disruptions and factory closures. This resulted in a severe short-term challenge for policymakers, especially when food and commodity prices rise, exacerbating economic insecurity. Failure to achieve equitable recovery might result in social and political unrest, as well as harsh responses from governments that have been less tolerant of dissident voices in recent years. Almost every area of the Indian economy is being ravaged by the pandemic. But the scope and degree of the damage vary from sector to sector within each area. One of the worst-affected areas in India is the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) sector. Apart from MSMEs, Agriculture and Agro-based industries, Banking companies and NBFCs and Social Sectors are also in jeopardy. The pandemic creates turmoil in the Capital Market and Mutual Funds industry. India's auto manufacturing and its ancillary sectors were badly hit during the initial stages of the pandemic when lockdown measures were adopted and the situation continued to remain subdued for many quarters. It is still uncertain whether this recession will have long-term structural ramifications for the global economy or will have only short-term financial and economic consequences. Additionally, the speed and the strength of the healing may be crucially dependent on the capability of the governments to accumulate and roll out the COVID-19 vaccines. In the context of the pandemic and its devastating impact on the Indian economy, an edited volume is proposed which intends to identify and analyse the footfalls of the pandemic on various sectors and industries in India. The proposed edited volume endeavours to understand the status, impact, problems, policies and prospects of the agricultural and agro-based industries, Banking and NBFCs, MSMEs, Social Sector, Capital Market and Mutual Funds during the pandemic and beyond. The proposed volume will contain research papers/articles covering the overall impact of the pandemic on various sectors, measures to be adopted to combat the situation and suggestions for overcoming the hurdles. For this, research papers and articles will be called from academicians, research scholars and industrialists having common research interests to share their insights relating to this area. It is anticipated that the volume will include twenty to twenty-five chapters. An editorial committee will be constituted with three chief editors and another external editor to review the articles following a double-blind review process to assure the quality of the papers according to the global standards and publisher's guidelines. The expected time to complete the entire review process is one month, and the publication process will start thereafter. The proposed volume is believed to be having significant socio-economic implications and is intended to cater to a large audience which includes academicians, researchers, students, corporates, policymakers, investors and general readers at large.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Maize (Bhutta) is one of the important growing cereal crops in Bangladesh. Toxigenic fungi such as Aspergillus and Fusarium infect stored maize grains. Enzyme-linked immusorbent assay (ELISA) was used to determine total aflatoxins and fumonisins contamination in stored maize grains collected from 15 Bangladeshi maize-producing areas. The highest total concentration of aflatoxins (103.07 µg/kg) and fumonisin (9.18 mg/kg) was found in Chuadanga and Gaibandha, whereas the lowest was detected for aflatoxins (1.07 µg/kg) and (0.11 mg/kg) in Dinajpur and Cumilla, respectively. The findings clearly demonstrated that aflatoxin concentrations in samples from six regions and fumonisin concentrations in samples from 10 regions were beyond the regulatory limit of aflatoxin (10 ppb) and fumonisin (1 ppm), respectively, as set by European Union (EU). However, a positive correlation between aflatoxins with toxigenic A. flavus, and fumonisins with toxigenic Fusarium spp. was observed. The fungi associated with maize grains were identified by sequencing of ITS regions. Moreover, toxigenic A. flavus was confirmed using primers specific to nor, apa2, omtA and primer FUM1 for F. proliferatum and F. oxysporum. Since the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority has not authorized any precise regulation limits for maize mycotoxin contamination, these results will serve as a benchmark for monitoring mycotoxin contamination in maize and also to develop globally practiced biocontrol approach for producing safe food and feed.