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What we do

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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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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What we do

IFPRI is committed to providing policy-relevant research for better nutrition and livelihoods.

Where we work

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Where we work

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

Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

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What’s New


Journal Article

Ending groundwater overdraft without affecting food security

2024Perez, Nicostrato; Singh, Vartika; Ringler, Claudia; Xie, Hua; Zhu, Tingju; Sutanudjaja, Edwin H.; Villholth, Karen G.

Ending groundwater overdraft without affecting food security

Groundwater development is key to accelerating agricultural growth and to achieving food security in a climate crisis. However, the rapid increase in groundwater exploitation over the past four decades has resulted in depletion and degradation, particularly in regions already facing acute water scarcity, with potential irreversible impacts for food security and economic prosperity. Using a climate–water–food systems modelling framework, we develop exploratory scenarios and find that halting groundwater depletion without complementary policy actions would adversely affect food production and trade, increase food prices and grow the number of people at risk of hunger by 26 million by 2050. Supportive policy interventions in food and water systems such as increasing the effective use of precipitation and investments in agricultural research and development could mitigate most negative effects of sustainable groundwater use on food security. In addition, changing preferences of high-income countries towards less-meat-based diets would marginally alleviate pressures on food price. To safeguard the ability of groundwater systems to realize water and food security objectives amidst climate challenges, comprehensive measures encompassing improved water management practices, advancements in seed technologies and appropriate institutions will be needed.

Year published

2024

Authors

Perez, Nicostrato; Singh, Vartika; Ringler, Claudia; Xie, Hua; Zhu, Tingju; Sutanudjaja, Edwin H.; Villholth, Karen G.

Citation

Perez, Nicostrato; Singh, Vartika; Ringler, Claudia; Xie, Hua; Zhu, Tingju; Sutanudjaja, Edwin H.; and Villholth, Karen G. Ending groundwater overdraft without affecting food security. Nature Sustainability. Article in press. First published online June 14, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01376-w

Keywords

Agriculture; Food Security; Groundwater; Climate Change Adaptation

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

NEXUS Gains

Record type

Journal Article

Brief

Consumer preferences matter for transforming food systems for sustainable healthy diets: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

2024Ecker, Olivier; Comstock, Andrew R.; de Brauw, Alan; Diao, Xinshen; Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin

Consumer preferences matter for transforming food systems for sustainable healthy diets: Evidence from rural Bangladesh

Food system transformation strategies rely on consumer demand response for achieving sustainable healthy diets, but food consumption patterns and consumer preferences are often not well understood in many countries of the global South. This brief examines consumer demand in Bangladesh, a country in the take-off stage of agrifood system transformation, that has experienced improvements in diet quality but also an increasing incidence of overweight, with faster increases in rural than urban areas. The authors estimate responses in consumer demand to changes in incomes and changes in food prices, finding that rural consumer demand is driven by strong preferences for animal-source foods, while the demand for sugar and highly processed foods increases faster than total food demand when income rises. They conclude that agricultural value chain development can be an important policy instrument for improving household diet quality but can also lead to undesirable dietary change if food consumption incentives conflict with nutritional needs.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ecker, Olivier; Comstock, Andrew R.; de Brauw, Alan; Diao, Xinshen; Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin

Citation

Ecker, Olivier; Comstock, Andrew R.; de Brauw, Alan; Diao, Xinshen; and Talukder, Md. Ruhul Amin. 2024. Consumer preferences matter for transforming food systems for sustainable healthy diets: Evidence from rural Bangladesh. IFPRI Issue Brief June 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/144173

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Food Systems; Consumer Behaviour; Rural Areas; Healthy Diets; Demand; Overweight; Modelling; Animal Source Foods; Agricultural Value Chains; Nutrition

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Foresight

Record type

Brief

Journal Article

Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects

2024
Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Doss, Cheryl; Johnson, Nancy L.; Rubin, Deborah; Thai, Giang; Ramani, Gayathri V.
…more Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team

Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects

Development interventions increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but evaluating their impact has been stymied by the lack of measures that are comparable across interventions. This paper synthesizes the findings of 11 mixed-methods impact evaluations of agricultural development projects from South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa that were part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). As part of GAAP2, qualitative and quantitative data were used to develop and validate the multidimensional project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), which was used to assess the impact of GAAP2 projects on women’s empowerment. This paper assesses the extent to which: (1) a two- to three-year agricultural development project can contribute to women’s empowerment; and (2) a suite of methods comprising a standardized quantitative measure of women’s empowerment and a set of qualitative protocols, can evaluate such impacts. Our synthesis finds that the most common positive significant impacts were on the instrumental and collective agency indicators that comprise pro-WEAI, owing to the group-based approaches used. We found few projects significantly improved intrinsic agency, even among those with explicitly stated objectives to change gender norms. Unsurprisingly, we find mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate pro-WEAI, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. Our results highlight the need for projects to design their strategies specifically for empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of a suite of methods containing a common metric to compare empowerment impacts and qualitative protocols to understand and contextualize these impacts.

Year published

2024

Authors

Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Malapit, Hazel J.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Doss, Cheryl; Johnson, Nancy L.; Rubin, Deborah; Thai, Giang; Ramani, Gayathri V.; Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team

Citation

Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth S.; Seymour, Greg; Heckert, Jessica; Myers, Emily; GAAP2 for pro-WEAI Study Team; et al. 2024. Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2). Journal of Rural Studies 108(May 2024): 103295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2024.103295

Keywords

Southern Asia; Sub-saharan Africa; Agricultural Development; Gender Equality; Women’s Empowerment; Data

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Journal Article

The 2024 Global Food Policy Report

Food systems and diets underpin many critical challenges to public health and environmental sustainability, including malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and climate change, but healthy diets have the unique potential to reshape the future for both human and planetary well-being. Drawing on recent evidence and experience, the 2024 Global Food Policy Report highlights opportunities for transforming food systems to ensure sustainable healthy diets for all.

Experts in Our Field

IFPRI’s experts work around the world to provide the evidence that supports effective policies to reduce poverty and end malnutrition.

600+

staff across the world

80+

countries where we work

#1

in the field of Agricultural Economics

20,000+

research outputs

Meet a Researcher

Kamiljon Akramov is a Senior Research Fellow in IFPRI’s Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He conducts research on agriculture, food security, and development policy issues using applied econometric analysis. His primary areas of interest are institutional change, agricultural development, and food security in Central Asia. His research also focuses on governance, aid effectiveness, decentralization, and efficiency of service delivery in transitional and developing countries. Before joining IFPRI, Kamiljon was a doctoral fellow at the Pardee RAND Graduate School where he…

Kamiljon  Akramov

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Making a Difference Blog Series

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IFPRI’s research and policy recommendations led to the establishment of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) in 2010, which continues to play a critical role in guiding the country’s agricultural development and sustainability.

Tamsin Zandstra, Gashaw T. Abate, Shahidur Rashid, and Nicholas Minot outline how IFPRI’s long-term strategic research support to the ATA has led to several tangible government policy outcomes.