IFPRI Insights: October 2021

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

View this email in your browser

October 12, 2021

Forward

Spotlight on Climate Change: With COP26 coming up on October 31st, we’re highlighting some of IFPRI’s cutting-edge work on climate change.

In research, our two most recent Food Policy Reports take a detailed look at adapting food systems to climate change. In September, Nicostrato Perez and colleagues published a report that looks into the future of Egyptian agriculture amid a changing climate, finding accelerated investment in adaptation measures are necessary to avoid worst-case scenarios of falling food production. Our report from Timothy Sulser et al. takes a global approach, exploring the investments needed to protect 78 million people around the world from climate change induced chronic hunger. And a recent CoSAI report (with modeling by IFPRI) quantified the global “investment gap” in research and innovation for sustainable agricultural intensification. Closing the $15.2 billion annual gap could put global climate and hunger goals within reach.

Looking ahead, climate change will be the focus of an upcoming IFPRI policy seminar on Thursday, which will preview the content of next year’s Global Food Policy Report. Climate change is also a major focus for many One CGIAR research initiatives under the reformulation of CGIAR. The new initiatives include plans to build systemic resilience to climate shocks, flip food systems from carbon sources to carbon sinks, and more!

You can visit IFPRI’s topic page to browse more of our climate change research, though the ubiquitous nature of the climate crisis moves it far beyond a theme isolated in select works. To reflect this reality and support the far-reaching, climate-conscious policy measures necessary, IFPRI is mainstreaming the topic of climate change across all areas of our work.

Accelerating Aquaculture: Catherine Ragasa, Sena Amewu, and colleagues studied pond aquaculture in Ghana, shedding light on how fish farmers have been affected by COVID-19. They provide recommendations for accelerating pond aquaculture development, improving the sector’s competitiveness and resilience, and ensuring better food and jobs in Ghana. (Read Article)

Cash in a Crisis: Research in Yemen by Sikandra Kurdi shows the potential for long-term nutritional benefits of cash transfers in humanitarian crisis contexts. The “Cash for Nutrition” intervention, which targeted households with young children, has improved consumption patterns and dietary diversity across the board—especially for the poorest households. (Read Article)

Connecting the Dots: Research by Steven Block, Beliyou Haile, Liangzhi You, and Derek Headey demonstrates an empirical connection between heat shocks, lower maize yields, and reduced child growth in Tanzania. This is the first time such a link has been empirically established between climate shocks, agricultural productivity, and health! This evidence will have important implications for policymakers responding to growing climate threats. (Read Article or Blog)

Are We Done Yet?: Response fatigue is a concern for researchers, as it may negatively impact data quality. Research on livelihoods in rural Ghana by Kate Ambler, Sylvan Herskowitz, and Mywish Maredia found that moving a household member back by one position in a labor survey reduces their reported number of productive activities by 2.2%. Losses in activities reported for women and youth were higher. (Read Article)

To Be Continued: Jef Leroy and other IFPRI colleagues reviewed the evidence on whether social assistance programs can improve birth outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, finding some encouraging but low-certainty evidence. The potential pathways of impact identified include maternal diet, antenatal care utilization, and delivery in a health facility, but better evaluations are needed. (Read Article)

>> Read More Research

Introducing Global Food 50/50: The Global Food 50/50 initiative, co-led by Global Health 50/50 and IFPRI, has released its inaugural report! The 2021 Global Food 50/50 report increases transparency and promotes accountability by assessing 52 global food systems organizations’ efforts towards advancing gender equity both internally and across food systems. Findings show that:

Despite strong gender equality rhetoric, a third of organizations lack transparent gender equality policies and diversity and inclusion policies.
Gendered and geographic privilege in global food leadership is evident.
Gender-responsive measures are common in organizational strategies, but only half of organizations report sex-disaggregated data.

(Read the Report and Visit the GF5050 Website)

Five a Day: Worldwide, 3 billion people are unable to afford healthy, diverse diets. As part of our UNFSS-themed blog series, Inge Brouwer and Jody Harris discuss the challenges of fruit and vegetable availability, affordability, and desirability, and present policy options for encouraging sufficient consumption around the world. (Read Blog)

Building on Momentum: Since 2017, Transform Nutrition West Africa has worked to support effective policy and programs that improve maternal and child nutrition in the region. As this IFPRI-led project comes to a close, Roosmarijn Verstraeten reflects on the methods used, outlines the major findings, and shares her hopes for how the nutrition community can build on TNWA’s work going forward. (Read Blog and Explore the Interactive)

The True Cost of Labor: Ensuring fair and decent livelihoods for food workers is a key part of transforming food systems and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. But how do we figure out what “fair” would look like? Julie Kurtz argues that the true cost of food systems labor must be worker-defined and that stakeholders should look to existing Worker-Driven Social Responsibility (WSR) models for solutions. (Read Blog)

Leveraging Change: At a recent high-level event on the role of donors in food systems transformation, IFPRI’s Jemimah Njuki highlighted three elements of donor funding that need radical change: prioritization, targeting, and coordination and accountability. In our recent blog post, Swati Malhorta and Sara Gustafson discuss these elements and other key takeaways. (Read Blog)

Resilience Research: Does focusing on women farmers with climate resilience strategies pay off? IFPRI researchers and other panelists answered this question at the 31st Triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists in August. Claudia Ringler shares highlights from the discussion on the IFPRI blog. (Read Blog)

>> Read More Blogs

IFPRI at the Food Systems Summit: At the UN Food Systems Summit “People’s Plenary” on September 23rd, IFPRI’s Director for Africa and UNFSS Gender Lever leader, Jemimah Njuki, spoke about the bold actions needed to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems. Dr Njuki also introduced the inaugural Global Food 50/50 Report, a joint publication from Global Health 50/50 and IFPRI, that aims to accelerate progress toward gender equity in food systems. (Watch Here and Read the Report)

[Moving forward with focus on] digitalization, data, and the issue of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)…this will be the transition between the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor Report (AATM) of 2021 and the AATM of 2022,” – Chahir Zaki, Associate Professor of Economics, Cairo University. (Event)

Why we need to transform food systems is very clear; also what we need to transform them to is quite clear…to actually realize the impacts of the plans that countries have been putting in place we’re going to need the finance mechanisms,” – Namukolo Covic, Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI. (Event)

Agroecological and climate-smart systems [and] nature-based solutions exist already, and we must together join efforts to promote and innovate them so that we can reverse the negative trends and devise sustainable food systems [for West Africa],” – Moumini Savadogo, Executive Secretary, WASCAL. (Event)

Wherever we look we have seen that systems are never gender neutral…and that’s what we are trying to capture in these [Global Food 50/50] accountability mechanisms,” – Sarah Hawkes, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Global Health 50/50. (Event)

“Guaranteed investment” must follow UN Food Systems Summit: A recent SciDevNet article about accountability after the UNFSS quoted IFPRI’s Namukolo Covic: “…what might be those accountability mechanisms to ensure that [private companies] are contributing positively to the transformation process? There is definitely agreement that science should inform the process. But there’s also an agreement that we should be open to looking at, for example, what indigenous communities have been doing forever that might be helpful to the process.”

Smallholder farmers are pivotal to transforming global food systems, experts tell UN Summit: Alliance for Science published an article about the crucial role of smallholder farmers in achieving the aims of the UNFSS, quoting IFPRI’s Jemimah Njuki: “Our food systems are hinged on smallholder farmers…without them at the center, we really don’t have functional food systems.”

Experts predict serious food security crisis ahead if Malawi doesn’t check surging fertilizer prices: The Nyasa Times reported on a recent IFPRI Malawi and MwAPATA Institute roundtable discussion about the key drivers of the surge in Malawi’s fertilizer prices.