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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

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researcher spotlight

Samuel Benin

Samuel Benin is the Acting Director for Africa in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on national strategies and public investment for accelerating food systems transformation in Africa and provides analytical support to the African Union’s CAADP Biennial Review.

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IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Nicholas Minot

Deputy Division Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division

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Bio

Nicholas W. Minot is the Deputy Division Director in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit. Since joining IFPRI in 1997, he has carried out research on the impact of trade policy on poverty, agricultural market reform in Africa, fertilizer policy, value chains, income diversification, spatial patterns in poverty, high-value agriculture, market information systems, and food price transmission. He is currently working on studies of rice price stabilization in Bangladesh, pastoral resilience in Burkina Faso, food and nutrition security in eastern Indonesia, agricultural transformation in Ethiopia, and methods of prioritizing agricultural investments. He was the co-leader of a research program on Efficient and Inclusive Value Chains within the CGIAR Research Program on  Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM).

Before joining IFPRI, Nick taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked as a policy adviser in Zimbabwe, and served as a survey analyst in Rwanda. He also carried out research on agricultural marketing in Bolivia, Cameroon, and Peru; on small enterprises in Laos; and on household budgets in Paraguay. He received his PhD and MSc in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University and his BA in International Development from Brown University. View his CV here.

Language Skills: French, Spanish

Publications

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Publications

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Working Paper

Food trade policy and food price volatility

2024Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; Minot, Nicholas
Details

Food trade policy and food price volatility

Food trade barriers in many countries are systematically adjusted to insulate domestic markets from world price changes—a response not predicted by traditional political economy models. In this study, policymakers are assumed to minimize the political costs associated with changing domestic prices and deviating from longer-run political-economy equilibria. Error correction techniques applied to domestic and world price data for rice and wheat collected to measure trade policy distortions allow estimation of policy response parameters. The results suggest that systematic short-run price insulation reduces shocks to domestic prices but sharply increases world price volatility and the costs of trade distortions. However, idiosyncratic domestic price shocks resulting from inefficient policy instruments such as quantitative restrictions increase domestic price volatility relative to the magnified volatility of world prices—frequently outweighing the stabilizing impacts of price insulation. This fundamentally changes our understanding of the impacts of price-insulation—from a zero-sum game where some countries reduce the volatility of their prices using beggar-thy-neighbor policies that raise price volatility elsewhere, into one where price volatility rises in most countries. National policy reforms to move away from discretionary, destabilizing policies could lower costs, reduce volatility in domestic and world prices, and facilitate reform of international trade rules.

Year published

2024

Authors

Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; Minot, Nicholas

Citation

Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; and Minot, Nicholas. 2024. Food trade policy and food price volatility. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2253. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141800

Keywords

Food Prices; Volatility; Consumer Economics; Trade Policies; Behaviour; Econometric Models

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Assessing the impact of rice price stabilization policies in Bangladesh: Results from a stochastic spatial equilibrium model

2024Minot, Nicholas; Hossain, Shahadat; Kabir, Razin; Dorosh, Paul A.; Rashid, Shahidur
Details

Assessing the impact of rice price stabilization policies in Bangladesh: Results from a stochastic spatial equilibrium model

Rice plays a central role in the diet in Bangladesh and as a source of income for farmers. Although Bangladesh has largely liberalized international trade in rice, it maintains a public food distribution system to stablize prices, distributing an average of 2 million tons of rice per year at a cost of almost US$ 800 million per year. This study explores whether alternative policies could achieve similar stabilization at a lower cost. It uses a stochastic spatial-equilibrium model of rice markets to simulate monthly prices in eight regions of the country. Stochastic shocks are used to simulate fluctuations in regional production, replicating historical patterns at the region-season level, as well as inter-regional correlation in production shocks. It also simulates fluctuation in world rice prices, mimicking the mean, variance, and serial correlation of historical wholesale prices of rice in Delhi. Public procurement and distribution follow historic averages by month and region. Private storage is represented by a simplified version of rational expectations models, in which net storage is a non-linear function of availability in the previous month. One set of simulations tests alternative levels of distribution, finding that cutting distribution to 1 million tons would have minimal effects on the level of rice price stability. Another set of simulations tested different import tariff levels, including the baseline rate of 25%1. We find that lower tariffs result in both lower rice prices and less price instability, as world rice prices tend to be more stable than local prices. Simulating a buffer stock with different price bands shows that a narrow band can achieve high price stability but at a high fiscal cost. A 20 T/kg (USD 0.26/kg) price band generates similar price stabilization at a lower cost compared to current policy. However, it is difficult to set the “right” purchase and sale price, and many simulations result in exhausting reserves or reaching warehouse capacity. An adaptive buffer stock, in which the price is adjusted as the stock runs too low or too high, solves some of these problems. In general, the study finds that current procurement and distribution patterns do not match well with the regional and monthly patterns of surplus and deficit, possibly reflecting multiple and conflicting goals of the public food distribution system.

Year published

2024

Authors

Minot, Nicholas; Hossain, Shahadat; Kabir, Razin; Dorosh, Paul A.; Rashid, Shahidur

Citation

Minot, Nicholas; Hossain, Shahadat; Kabir, Razin; Dorosh, Paul A.; and Rashid, Shahidur. 2024. Assessing the impact of rice price stabilization policies in Bangladesh: Results from a stochastic spatial equilibrium model. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2252. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141799

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Equilibrium; Price Stabilization; Stochastic Models; Rice; Tariffs

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Report

2024 Global report on food crises: Joint analysis for better decisions

2024Food Security Information Network; Minot, Nicholas; Rice, Brendan; Vos, Rob
Details

2024 Global report on food crises: Joint analysis for better decisions

The Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) 2024 confirms the enormity of the challenge of achieving the goal of ending hunger by 2030. In 2023, nearly 282 million people or 21.5 percent of the analysed population in 59 countries/territories faced high levels of acute food insecurity requiring urgent food and livelihood assistance. This additional 24 million people since 2022 is explained by expanded analysis coverage as well as deteriorating acute food insecurity in some countries outweighing improvements in others. Palestine (Gaza Strip) and the Sudan were the most devastatingly deteriorating food crises. The number of people experiencing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity rose to over 0.7 million – almost double the number of 2022 – with nearly 0.6 million of them in the Gaza Strip. Published by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) in support of the Global Network against Food Crises (GNAFC), the GRFC 2024 is the reference document for global, regional and country-level acute food insecurity in 2023. The report is the result of a collaborative effort among 16 partners to achieve a consensus-based assessment of acute food insecurity and malnutrition in countries with food crises and aims to inform humanitarian and development action.

Year published

2024

Authors

Food Security Information Network; Minot, Nicholas; Rice, Brendan; Vos, Rob

Citation

FSIN and Global Network Against Food Crises. 2024. GRFC 2024. Rome. https://www.fsinplatform.org/grfc2024

Keywords

Food Security; Nutrition; Conflicts; Displacement

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Report

Events

ICTforAg 2024: Localizing impact
IFPRI at External Event

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May 28, 2024, 9:00 – 5:00 pm

ICTforAg 2024: Localizing impact

Event: May 28, 2024 – 9:00am to 5:00pm EDT. This event explores the localization of ICT, responsible AI in agriculture, the potential for AI to increase farm profitability, empowering citizen science, and harnessing digital solutions for sustainable and regenerative farming practices.

Tropentag 2023
IFPRI at External Event

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September 20 to 22, 2023

Tropentag 2023

Event: September 20, 2023 – 8:30 AM to September 22, 2023 – 6:10 PM CEST. IFPRI is participating and will be featured in this years’ annual interdisciplinary conference on research in tropical and subtropical agriculture, natural resource management and rural development (TROPENTAG).

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)
IFPRI at External Event

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August 17 to 31, 2021

31st International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE)

Virtual Event: AUG 17, 2021 – 08:00 AM to AUG 31, 2021 08:00 PM EDT. IFPRI is participating in the 31st Conference of Agriculture Economists organized by the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). 

News

November 20, 2019 | In the News

Food loss and waste and key to achieving SDG 2

Financial Nigeria published an article on how Nigeria is dealing with food loss and waste. An IFPRI report was quoted about food loss in developing countries. “Food loss during production, trade, and processing tends to outweigh food waste occurring at the retail and consumer stages of the supply chain.”

October 09, 2018 | In the News

Great Expectations from Ethiopia’s Wheat Initiative (Thomson Reuters Foundation News)

Thomson Reuters Foundation News published an op-ed by several IFPRI researchers including Gashaw Tadesse Abate, Tanguy Bernard, Alan de Brauw, and Nicholas Minot, who examined the impact of Ethiopia’s Wheat Initiative on farmers’ yields to understand how programs can boost wheat yields in underperforming areas. 

July 05, 2018 | Press Release

Modern Technologies Increase Ethiopian Small Farmers’ Wheat Yields by 14 percent

Washington, D.C: Usage of certified seeds, improved farming techniques and a guaranteed market for the wheat crop led to an increase in smallholder Ethiopian farmers’ wheat yields by an average 14 percent, according to a new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).     “Overall, the 14 percent increase in yields is relatively substantial, since farmers were encouraged to simply use existing […]