World Refugee Day

The United Nations designated June 20 World Refugee Day to honor refugees around the world and celebrate the strength and courage of those forced to flee their home countries to escape conflict or persecution. Migration is a recurrent and multidimensional phenomenon that is driven by diverse factors that either push people to move from their current location or attract them to a new one.

Manuel Hernandez explores the significance of World Refugee Day, the complex dynamics of global migration, and policy responses to improve outcomes for migrants. (Read Blog)

Research findings on resilience & social cohesion in Burkina Faso and Niger
July 11, 2023, Washington, DC, USA

Irregular migration and food security: A view from West Africa
July 20, 2023, Washington, DC, USA

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IFPRI’s 2022 Annual Report presents highlights from our research work in low- and middle-income countries and on global challenges. In 2022, IFPRI provided critical analysis on the food systems impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and related food, fertilizer, and fuel price crisis, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Work in our strategic research areas—climate resilience and sustainability, healthy diets and nutrition, inclusive and efficient food systems, institutions and governance, and rural transformation, as well as cross-cutting work on gender—continued to inform policies and programs to end hunger and malnutrition sustainably at both national and global levels. (Read Report)

Got milk?: Stunting, a form of chronic undernutrition, affects 150 million children worldwide. While nutrition interventions have been shown to reduce stunting, experts have long concluded that other sectors, like agriculture, need to lift more weight. A new research article by Beliyou Haile and Derek Headey provides compelling evidence that, within agriculture, the dairy sector has tremendous potential to improve nutrition in early childhood. (Read Press Release | Read Article)

Navigating landscapes: Integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) aim to reconcile multiple, often competing, interests across agriculture, nature conservation, and other land uses. Through a critical literature review and focus group discussions with practitioners, Thomas Falk, Wei Zhang, and colleagues identify considerable diversity in ILAs, which may hamper learning from and steering ILAs. The authors developed a tool—an ‘ILA mixing board’—to structure the complexity of ILAs into selectable and scalable attributes in a replicable way to allow planning, diagnosing, and comparing the approaches. (Read Article)

Double check: Dietary assessment tools leveraging mobile technologies can help to narrow gaps in the dietary intake of adolescents in low- and middle-income countries, but only a few of those tools have been validated. In a new study involving adolescent girls in urban Ghana, Bastien Kolt, Alejandra Arrieta, Phuong Hong Nguyen, Aulo Gelli, and colleagues validated Food Recognition Assistance and Nudging Insights (FRANI), a mobile artificial intelligence dietary assessment application. (Read Article)

Smarten up: Climate change and extreme weather events will continue to have significant impacts on agricultural production. In this context, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has emerged as an important entry point for addressing multiple goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building climate resilience, and supporting increases in agricultural productivity that are essential for food and nutrition security. Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong and colleagues examine the relationship between CSA, land productivity, and food security. (Read Article)

Communal rights: Freshwater resources are under enormous stress due to human activities and climate change, and local communities are central to the management of these natural resources. Wei Zhang, Hagar ElDidi, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Claudia Ringler, and colleagues critically review and synthesize existing research on freshwater community-based conservation and provide recommendations for strengthening facilitation and support of community empowerment. (Read Article)

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Science, technology, and innovation play a key role in addressing major challenges like persistent hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and equity, but even science has its limitations. Understanding how individuals and society respond to new technological opportunities is just as important as the science itself.

In this short video, David Spielman, Director of IFPRI’s Innovation Policy and Scaling unit, discusses how his team works to bridge the gap between research and execution in the policy space. (Watch the Video)

Food and climate crises continue to cause suffering around the world. Neglected crops could be a powerful tool to alleviate both crises in Africa, one of the worst affected regions in the world. In 2023, interest in bringing back neglected or indigenous crops has gathered new momentum. While these crops were once the basis for highly nutritious foods, they have been displaced by crops better suited to commercial farming. The increasingly specialized, intensified, and concentrated globalized agrifood sector has led to arguably too few food sources.

Lysiane Lefebvre, David Laborde, and Valeria Piñeiro make a case for reintroducing and scaling up cultivation and use of neglected crops as a way of addressing food and climate crises. (Read Blog)

(Artificially) intelligent design: Policymakers are under tremendous pressure to address challenges facing food systems amid widespread budgetary constraints. Having a good evidence base to inform policy and investment decisions is more important than ever. Focusing on Kenya, Jawoo Koo, Clemens Breisinger, Michael Keenan, and colleagues explore how artificial intelligence-powered chatbots can support policymaking. (Read Blog)

Can you hear me now?: Surveys are a key method for social scientists to gather data on living standards. While typically conducted in person, the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person surveys impracticable, and social scientists made the switch to phone surveys. But how effective and accurate are phone surveys? Alan de Brauw, Kalle Hirvonen, and Gashaw Abate share evidence from Ethiopia. (Read Blog)

Torrential tensions: The Black Sea Grain Initiative provides enormous benefits both to traditional importers of Ukrainian grain, including many developing countries, and to global consumers through lower prices. It is also critical for the long-term viability of Ukraine’s agriculture sector. Joseph Glauber, Brian McNamara, and Elsa Olivetti analyze the possible implications for the Initiative following the Nova Kakhovka dam collapse. (Read Blog)

ReDD flags: Poor diet quality is a major cause of malnutrition and many noncommunicable diseases. Recent methodological developments primarily focus on the cost and affordability of healthy diets but do not assess whether nutritionally desirable diets are actually achievable. Olivier Ecker, Karl Pauw, James Thurlow, and Andrew Comstock discuss how the new Reference Diet Deprivation (ReDD) Index can help develop more effective nutrition-sensitive policies. (Read Blog)

Then and now: The Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations (1986-1994) advanced trade liberalization and led to the formation of the World Trade Organization. The hallmark Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) brought agriculture into a rules-based framework. Charlotte Hebebrand and Joseph Glauber give an overview of a recent IFPRI policy seminar examining how domestic support has evolved since URAA was adopted. (Read Blog | Watch the Event)

It’s a miracle!: Over the next few decades, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa will need to produce more food on less land under increasingly difficult climatic conditions. Climate-smart technologies like higher-yielding and drought-tolerant crop varieties might be part of the solution. So, why aren’t farmers adopting new technologies? In a new blog, Bjorn Van Campenhout, David Spielman, and their colleagues explore the problem. (Read Blog)

Warning signs: Gabriela Fretes discusses how Chile’s Food Labeling and Advertising Law influenced children’s and adolescents’ dietary intake of key nutrients of concern (total sugars, saturated fats, and sodium). A recent study found that the policy had a significant impact in schools, but that consumption of those key nutrients increased in out-of-school settings. (Read Blog)

All about the little things: Agricultural value chains (AVCs) are an essential component of food systems. Firms in the AVC midstream are a key but understudied set of actors, particularly micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in low- and middle-income countries. Kate Ambler, Jeffrey Bloem, Alan de Brauw, and Sylvan Herskowitz assess this knowledge gap finding that while a growing number of studies focus on AVCs, the financial needs and strategies of MSMEs in the AVC have received little attention. (Read Blog)

Smoke signals: Hala Abushama, Zhe Guo, Khalid Siddig, Oliver Kirui, Kibrom Abay, and Liangzhi You outline the use of satellite data, specifically tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions, to monitor and analyze the impact of the armed conflict that erupted in Sudan in April of this year. While not without limitations, such data can provide valuable insights into the environmental and economic consequences of conflicts. (Read Blog)

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The Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Project, a three-year pilot project running from 2015–2018, was designed by IFPRI and implemented by the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Agricultural Extension with the intention of identifying interventions that effectively increase agricultural diversity, improve nutrition, and promote women’s empowerment. Overall, 3,125 farm households across 16 districts participated in trainings about growing more high-value, nutritious crops; earning higher farm income; and improving family nutrition.

Our new interactive photo story explores the successes and impacts of the ANGeL project in Bangladesh. (Read Story)

Wheat prices jump following collapse of major dam in southern Ukraine: The Associated Press (AP News) interviewed Joseph Glauber, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow, for an article about the Kakhovka dam destruction in southern Ukraine and the potential implications for the global food prices. (Article / Video)

World Food Programme (WFP) resilience programmes in Sahel act as buffer against instability, build peace and social cohesion – study finds: WFP press-release (republished by multiple sources) features the “Sahel Social Cohesion Research in Burkina Faso and Niger” report, conducted by WFP, IFPRI, and the Institute for Peace and Development (IPD), with quotes from Samuel Benin, Deputy Director, Africa Regional Office, IFPRI.

Food insecurity, undernourishment deepen in South Asia: Nepal News published an editorial featuring IFPRI’s 2023 Global Food Policy Report, following the recent launch of the report in South Asia. (The event in Kathmandu, Nepal, received wide coverage, including articles in Bangladesh’s media New Age Bangladesh, The Daily Observer, The Financial Express, and others).