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Repurposing Agricultural Policies and Support: The massive support provided to agriculture by governments—$639 billion per year during 2016–18—has not incentivized sustainable patterns of food production and consumption. In fact, continuing current support would increase global emissions from agriculture 200% by 2040 if left in place. It’s clear that something needs to change, but many options for repurposing support are either ineffective or involve harsh trade-offs.
A new report from IFPRI and the World Bank presents an alternative way forward: a more transformative change in incentives that advances both productivity enhancements and reductions to greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling projections show that repurposing just a fraction of annual government support for agriculture to instead invest in green innovations for crops and livestock could reduce overall agricultural emissions by more than 40%, while also generating significant income growth, reducing poverty, and lowering the cost of nutritious diets.
Authors of the report presented the findings and explored the implications with a panel of experts at our policy seminar last week, “Can agricultural policies deliver better value for money for people, the planet, and the economy?”
(Read the Report and Watch the Policy Seminar)
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Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Research in Kenya by Sarah Wairimu Kariuki and Vivian Hoffmann shows that informing consumers on which maize flour brands are safest does not significantly affect consumption, but combining that information with a test on the maize flour brand in a consumer’s household can influence their brand choice. These findings could have important implications for encouraging food safety in markets where regulatory enforcement is weak. (Read Article)
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Specificity Matters: Phuong Nguyen, Rasmi Avula, Shivani Kachwaha, Purnima Menon et al. find that the Alive & Thrive program’s efforts to strengthen the delivery of maternal nutrition interventions through government antenatal care services in Uttar Pradesh, India, did lead to improvements, but gaps remained. Researchers unpack the impact pathways of individual interventions within the program’s bundled efforts, revealing which barriers actually influenced overall impact. (Read Article)
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Can Social Assistance Improve Birth Outcomes?: After completing a systematic review and assessment of nutrition and health pathways of social assistance programs providing cash or in-kind transfers in LMICs, Jef Leroy and coauthors call for better-designed evaluations to establish whether such programs can help to tackle poor birth outcomes. They provide recommendations for future research on this topic. (Read Article)
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Pathways to Prevention: Melissa Hidrobo, Heleene Tambet, and colleagues examined how the Government of Ethiopia’s public works program and complementary activities affect intimate partner violence (IPV). They find evidence supporting four pathways of change: emotional well-being and economic security, intrahousehold conflict, women’s empowerment, and improvements in gender roles and attitudes. The results suggest that such programs do have the potential to be gender transformative and reduce the drivers of IPV. (Read Article)
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Muddy Waters: Lack of information about soil nutrient levels and limited access to appropriate fertilizers may lead to suboptimal fertilizer applications and reduced yields, according to research in Ethiopia by Kibrom Abay, Mulubrhan Amare, Guush Berhane, and colleagues. Such mismatches between soil needs and farmer responses might help to explain variation in marginal returns to chemical fertilizers and low adoption rates of chemical fertilizers in sub-Saharan Africa. ( Read Article)
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Students Suffering Pandemic Stress: School closures due to COVID-19 disrupted the education of students all around the world. On the IFPRI blog, Jessica Leight and Naureen Karachiwalla present research on the relationship between variation in pandemic-related shocks and educational policies and the mental health of seventh-grade students in Mozambique.
Unsurprisingly, the variables most predictive of mental health outcomes are self-reported experiences of negative shocks linked to the pandemic. Adolescents who report household hunger during school closures, or who report that a female member of their family married earlier because of pandemic-related causes, are much more likely to experience anxiety and low well-being. By contrast, students at schools with remote learning measures show lower levels of anxiety and depression, and students with stronger support networks face less anxiety. ( Read Blog)
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Nutrition Impacts of Trade & Fiscal Policies: Global overweight and obesity rates have almost tripled since 1975, and this trend is alarmingly steeper in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Researchers from the IFPRI Egypt team explore the links between food subsidies and tariff rates and overweight and obesity rates in LMICs, and show how the effects vary by household wealth. (Read Blog)
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What Can We Really Learn From Sex-Disaggregated Data?: When husbands and wives provide contradictory answers to the same questions about their household responsibilities, who do we believe? What causes this discord? What research lessons can be learned? Bjorn Van Campenhout, Els Lecoutere, and David Spielman discuss a field experiment in Uganda, uncovering interesting intra-household dynamics and providing nuanced reflections on the utility of sex-disaggregated data. (Read Blog)
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The Race to Net Zero: In alignment with the UNFCCC “Race to Zero” campaign for decarbonizing economies, the CGIAR WLE program has contributed to improving access to clean energy sources for small farmers and rural entrepreneurs while growing agricultural productivity sustainably. Marilia Magalhaes and Claudia Ringler showcase program highlights and share the latest One CGIAR plans for advancing rural energy security. (Read Blog)
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Still a Man’s World: In Egypt, a cash transfer program targeted to women actually reduced some women’s decision-making power. Yet, women also report good experiences with the program, positive attitudes, and enhanced feelings of self-worth. On our blog, researchers discuss the complex findings and emphasize the need to consider context when designing cash transfer programs. (Read Blog)
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Dream Big: Ambitious women tend to be more empowered within their households, shows new research in Kyrgyzstan. Katrina Kosec and Lucia Carrillo share details of the study and note the potential policy implications of the results: if development interventions aimed at raising the aspirations of girls and women could lead to empowerment, it may help to change traditional gender norms and build gender equity. (Read Blog)
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 We must communicate literally every day throughout the [food] value chain about what we want to achieve. This thing is not a wagon of which we just release the break and it will run by itself, it’s a wheelbarrow—we need to pick it up and push it,” – Theo De Jager, President, World Farmers’ Organisation. (Event)
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In the abstract I don’t think anyone disagrees with the concept of a resilient agrifood system, but the pathways to achieve such systems do involve…making policy trade-offs,” – Danielle Resnick, David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings. (Event)
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I don’t think there’s any single sector that’s out there that touches more other sectors than agriculture and food security. […] We need to prepare [agriculture] for shocks. They are going to come, they are already upon us, they happen all the time,” – Jocelyn Brown Hall, Director, FAO North America. (Event)
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We know there are no long-term trade-offs between sustainable land use and ensuring global food security. Increasing food supply in the long-term requires that challenges related to climate change and biodiversity are addressed,” – Johan Swinnen, Global Director, CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group & Director General, IFPRI. (Event)
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Repurpose subsidies to address climate, boost production: Agri-Pulse published an article about the new IFPRI and World Bank report, which warns that simply using subsidies to increase the use of environmentally friendly practices could actually reduce food production. The key is to target subsidies toward innovations that can both increase production and reduce emissions, they report.
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