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On December 12th, IFPRI’s 32nd Annual Martin J. Forman Memorial Lecture was delivered by Her Excellency Minata Samaté Cessouma, the African Union Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs, and Social Development. As the Year of African Nutrition comes to a close, Commissioner Cessouma reflected on the key outcomes and recommendations, as well as on the strategy for implementing these at the pan-African and national level.
To conclude the lecture, Her Excellency quoted a Zimbabwean proverb: You cannot tell a hungry child that you gave him food yesterday. “Yesterday was yesterday, we need action now,” she emphasized. (See Event)
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What’s for Dinner? It’s usually the mothers who decide what and how to feed their children—but what drives those choices? A new study co-authored by CGIAR scientists from IFPRI and ILRI explores maternal experiences, perspectives, and beliefs when making food choice decisions for preschool children in urban, peri-urban, and rural areas in northern Vietnam. ( Read Article)
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Boosting Resilience: In an evaluation of the impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP) on households’ resilience, Kibrom Abay and colleagues find that continuous participation in the PSNP is associated with higher resilience, especially when combined with income-generating or asset-building initiatives. (Read Article)
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Diversity and the Commons: Francisco Barba and Dany Jaimovich investigate whether forest degradation differs within and between ethnically diverse communities in rural Gambia. The paper introduces a novel approach to test for forest degradation in shared areas between communities using dyadic polygons and dyadic regression analysis. ( Read Article)
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Accelerating Tech: Gashaw Abate and colleagues find that a video-mediated extension approach increases technology uptake by improving extension access and farmer knowledge in Ethiopia. The approach becomes less costly as the scale of operation increases. (Read Article)
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The Pollinator Problem: A new modeling study, led by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, illuminates the global human health impacts of pollinator deficits. The results show that inadequate pollination has led to a 3–5% loss of fruit, vegetable, and nut production and an estimated 427,000 excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases. While lost food production was concentrated in lower-income countries, the health burden was greater in middle- and higher-income countries, where rates of noncommunicable diseases are higher. In the study’s three case-study countries (Honduras, Nepal, Nigeria), researchers calculated the economic value of crop production to be 12–31% lower than if pollinators were abundant.
“ The results might seem surprising, but they reflect the complex dynamics of factors behind food systems and human populations around the world. Only with this type of interdisciplinary modeling can we get a better fix on the magnitude and impact of the problem,” said IFPRI’s Timothy Sulser, a co-author of the paper.
( Read Article) ( Read Press Release)
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Inflation Impacts: A new analysis of 1.27 million children in 44 low- and middle-income countries shows that exposure to food price inflation in utero and the first years of life is associated with greater risks of child wasting in the short run and stunting in the long run. Food inflation also poses larger wasting risks for children of poor and landless rural households, exacerbating existing inequalities. (Read Blog)
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Food Crisis in Yemen: Amid ongoing local conflict and global market disruptions from the Russia-Ukraine war, private sector actors have become central to preventing further food insecurity in Yemen. IFPRI researchers discuss the challenges facing the country’s private sector and potential solutions. (Read Blog)
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Gaining Trust: After several years of evaluation, research in Tanzania suggests that cash transfers provided by the state did not erode informal safety nets. Instead, cash transfers increased households’ trust in community members and led them to be more embedded in social networks. (Read Blog)
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The Power of Young Agripreneurs: Encouraging agripreneurship is crucial to addressing unemployment and underemployment among young people in developing and emerging economies around the world. Drawing from a new brief by FAO Investment Center and IFPRI, this blog post presents key ways policymakers and investors can foster youth entrepreneurs and tap into their vast potential. (Read Blog)
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Tech as an Equalizer: Tanzania presents a compelling case for how mobile technology can improve women’s financial and decision-making power—expanding their roles in agrifood systems—provided policymakers and tech advocates deliver the necessary infrastructure and design inclusive products. (Read Blog)
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A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words: IFPRI researchers have been studying agricultural cooperatives in Malawi to understand how to help them perform better and be more inclusive of all social groups. As part of the research, they conducted focus group interviews with members and leaders of cooperatives. Using photos from the field, an interactive blog post tells the story and shares initial findings.
( Read Photo Essay)
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Food Early Warning Systems Can Stave off Famines: SciDev spoke with Rob Vos, Director of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division at IFPRI, about global efforts to address food security challenges. “While we have much greater recognition of the urgency to address global food security challenges and the need to do so in a concerted manner, a more concrete and actionable agenda is yet to emerge,” Vos said.
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Egypt’s Nile Delta Farmland Salts Up as Temperatures, and Seas, Rise: Reuters, reporting from COP27, wrote that according to IFPRI, yields for food crops in Egypt are expected to drop by more than 10 percent by 2050 due to higher temperatures, water stress, and increased salinity of irrigation water. “You have to do a much better job in a place like the Nile Delta because the water just evaporates quickly,” said Claudia Ringler, Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI.
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“Immediate Interventions Needed to Lower Food Prices”: The Dhaka Tribune quoted IFPRI-Bangladesh Country Head Akhter Ahmed who, in a recent roundtable in Bangladesh titled “Food Security for Sustainable Development,” urged the government to reduce diesel prices in preparation for the upcoming Boro rice season when “farmers invest more than a fifth of their production cost in irrigating the cropland.” Ahmed also recommended reducing the rice import tariff to zero and building a good food reserve.
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How the U.S. Became a Global Corn Superpower: A new CNBC video examined what U.S. leadership means for crop production, agricultural subsidies, and corn’s uses including food, fuel, medications, and textiles. “Overall, corn production has increased. The U.S. was the major exporter of wheat for many, many years. Wheat production has fallen off, largely because corn and soybeans are far more profitable for farmers,” said Joseph Glauber, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow.
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New Website: The Cash Transfer and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Research Collaborative has launched a website to host its work! The Collaborative (made up of IFPRI, the University of North Carolina, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Prevention Collaborative, and the University of Buffalo) aims to advance a global research agenda that informs how to leverage cash transfer programming for IPV prevention among poor and vulnerable women in low- and middle-income settings. (Visit Website)
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 The [Kenyan] government is cognizant of the need to transform the Kenyan food system in the wake of global and domestic challenges through research and innovation […] We appreciate the efforts made by key stakeholders such as KIPPRA and the CGIAR group in championing food system transformation and inclusive growth.” – Mithika Linturi, Cabinet Secretary, Kenya Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development.
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Since last May, the Enhancing Biodiversity and Resilience in Crop Production project has worked to help lay the groundwork for a science-based approach to rethinking agriculture and biodiversity and improving agricultural systems to the benefit of farmers, consumers, and the environment.” – Wei Zhang, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI.
(Event: Enhancing Biodiversity and Resilience in Intensive Farming Systems: Results from an ETH Zürich-IFPRI Collaborative Study)
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One year is not enough […] We need to continue to implement the theme of this year—the Year of African Nutrition.” – H.E. Minata Samaté Cessouma, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs, and Social Development, African Union (AU).
(Event: Forman Lecture: My Reflections on Africa’s Year of Nutrition)
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