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Who we are

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.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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.

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Unit

Foresight and Policy Modeling

Klaten Indonesia. October 26th 2020 . Rice researchers in field. Students of agriculture faculty.

Agrifood systems today are increasingly interconnected, but their future is less certain than ever before. Decision-makers — both public and private — need advance information to understand the growing complexity of these systems, navigate climate uncertainty and frequent crises, and manage trade-offs between competing interests and development goals.

RESEARCH Units

Overview

The Foresight and Policy Modeling (FPM) Unit’s research situates agrifood systems within global and local economies, environments, and development processes. It uses innovative analytical tools to anticipate trends at global, national, and local scales, and develops metrics to track socioeconomic and environmental outcomes at system and household levels.

The Unit’s partnerships with national research institutes around the world ensure that local knowledge, modeling capabilities, and research are collectively shared, and that decision-makers have access to improved data and analytics to help them identify technologies, policies, and investments that can drive inclusive and sustainable food systems transformation.

Areas of Focus

Future food systems

Climate change and environmental constraints make anticipating the future of food, land, and water systems complex. Global foresight analysis, conducted by FPM biophysical and economic modelers and climate change experts, looks at agriculture under different scenarios for climate change, economic growth, and technologies and practices to inform policy and investment decisions.

Inclusive transformation

Forward planning and policy prioritization are essential for national governments, especially because competing goals and limited budgets make trade-offs across goals unavoidable. FPM development economists conduct country economywide modeling of agrifood system transformation and development pathways that can support prioritization of cost-effective policies amid climate change and other risks.  

Local development needs

Policies and technologies for sustainable development must be suitably targeted and tailored to local contexts. To identify local market opportunities and priorities for particular populations and regions, FPM geographers and data scientists use spatial analysis and modeling of agroclimatic conditions and risks, based on remote sensing and high-resolution datasets.

Tools and methods

FPM maintains and employs a suite of models for policy analysis and forecasting, including the IMPACT model of global agriculture and trade; the RIAPA model and surveys used to track national and household poverty, employment, diets, and inequality; and the SPAM database and economic models that track local development.

Explore our research

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Working Paper

Adapting to climate change: The case of saline tolerant seed varieties in coastal Bangladesh

2024Pal, Barun Deb; Kapoor, Shreya; Rashid, Shahidur
Details

Adapting to climate change: The case of saline tolerant seed varieties in coastal Bangladesh

Salt water intrusion and rising soil salnity are threatening food and livelihood security of paddy farmers in coastal Bangladesh. Visible manifestations of these challenges are degraded soils and chronic decline in tradtional farming, as it is becoming an increasingly infeasible means of livelihood. Promoting saline-tolerant paddy varieties (STRV) has been one of the major focuses of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) and the attention to the problem has been intensified in recent years through a partnerhsip with a consortium of CGIAR centers. Howewer, robust empirical analysis has hitherto been limited. Using farm level data, this paper analyzes the determinants and impacts of the adopting these new varieties. We use a multi-variate logit model to identify the constraints to adoption, and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Endogeneous Switching Regression methods to assess the impacts on yeilds, and net income of the paddy farmers. Results show that adopting saline-tolerant rice varieties raises crop yield by an average of 1 to 2 tons per hectare, equivalent to a net income increase of about US$100 per hectare of cultivated land. Yet, adoption rates remain low due to several institutional constraints and perhaps a lack of nudging farmers in the scaling up strategies. Robustness of the results are tested, and the implications are discussed.

Year published

2024

Authors

Pal, Barun Deb; Kapoor, Shreya; Rashid, Shahidur

Citation

Pal, Barun Deb; Kapoor, Shreya; and Rashid, Shahidur. 2024. Adapting to climate change: The case of saline tolerant seed varieties in coastal Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2291. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Climate Change Adaptation; Impact; Livelihoods; Saltwater Intrusion; Rice; Seeds; Soil; Technology Adoption

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi

2024Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; Thomas, Timothy S.
Details

Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi

This paper uses machine learning, simulation, and data mining methods to develop Systematic Risk Profiles of three developing economies: Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi. We focus on three exogenous shocks with implications for economic performance: world market prices, capital flows, and climate-driven sectoral productivity. In these and other developing countries, recent decades have been characterized by increased risks associated with all these factors, and there is a demand for instruments that can help to disentangle them. For each country, we utilize historical data to develop multi-variate distributions of shocks. We then sample from these distributions to obtain a series of shock vectors, which we label economic uncertainty scenarios. These scenarios are then entered into economywide computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation models for the three countries, which allow us to quantify the impact of increased uncertainty on major economic indicators. Finally, we utilize importance metrics from the random forest machine learning algorithm and relative importance metrics from multiple linear regression models to quantify the importance of country-specific risk factors for country performance. We find that Malawi and Rwanda are more vulnerable to sectoral productivity shocks, and Kenya is more exposed to external risks. These findings suggest that a country’s level of development and integration into the global economy are key driving forces defining their risk profiles. The methodology of Systematic Risk Profiling can be applied to many other countries, delineating country-specific risks and vulnerabilities.

Year published

2024

Authors

Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; Thomas, Timothy S.

Citation

Mukashov, Askar; Robinson, Sherman; Thurlow, James; Arndt, Channing; and Thomas, Timothy S. 2024. Systematic risk profiling: A novel approach with applications to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2286. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Kenya; Rwanda; Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Climate; Computable General Equilibrium Models; Machine Learning; Risk; Uncertainty

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Working Paper

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Data Paper

2022 Social Accounting Matrix for Colombia: A Nexus Project SAM

2024International Food Policy Research Institute; International Center for Tropical Agriculture
Details

2022 Social Accounting Matrix for Colombia: A Nexus Project SAM

The 2022 Colombia Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) follows IFPRI’s Standard Nexus SAM approach, by focusing on consistency, comparability, and transparency of data. The Nexus SAMs available on IFPRI’s website separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital, with labor further disaggregated across three education-based categories. The household account is divided into 10 representative household groups: Rural and urban households across per capita consumption quintiles. Nexus SAMs support the improvement of model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries and allow for more robust cross-country comparisons of national economic structures, especially agriculture-food systems.

Year published

2024

Authors

International Food Policy Research Institute; International Center for Tropical Agriculture

Citation

International Food Policy Research Institute; and International Center for Tropical Agriculture. 2024. 2022 Social Accounting Matrix for Colombia: A Nexus Project SAM. Data Paper. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/155500.

Country/Region

Colombia

Keywords

Americas; Latin America; South America; Computable General Equilibrium Models; Household Consumption; Household Expenditure; Economic Indicators; Agrifood Systems; Taxes; Labour; Social Accounting Matrix; Macroeconomics

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Data Paper

Datasets

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Dataset

2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana

2023Ghana Statistical Services; International Food Policy Research Institute; Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research
Details

2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana

The Nexus Project is a collaboration between IFPRI and its partners, including national statistical agencies and research institutions. Our aim is to improve the quality of social accounting matrices (SAMs) used for computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The Nexus Project develops toolkits and establishes common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs. The 2019 Ghana SAM follows the Standard Nexus Structure. The open access version of the Ghana SAM separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital. Labor is further disaggregated across three education categories. Representative households are disaggregated by rural and urban areas and by per capita expenditure quintile. The remaining accounts include enterprises, government, taxes, savings-and-investment, and the rest of the word.

Year published

2023

Authors

Ghana Statistical Services; International Food Policy Research Institute; Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research

Citation

Ghana Statistical Services (GSS); Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER); International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). 2023. 2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana. Washington, DC: IFPRI [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AC7CKV. Harvard Dataverse. Version 1.

Country/Region

Ghana

Keywords

Western Africa; Social Accounting Matrix; Household Consumption; Household Expenditure; Taxes; Economic Indicators; Labor; Sex-disaggregated Data

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/ac7ckv Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Dataset

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Dataset

2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana

2023Ghana Statistical Services; Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research; International Food Policy Research Institute
Details

2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana

The Nexus Project is a collaboration between IFPRI and its partners, including national statistical agencies and research institutions. Our aim is to improve the quality of social accounting matrices (SAMs) used for computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The Nexus Project develops toolkits and establishes common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs. The 2019 Ghana SAM follows the Standard Nexus Structure. The open access version of the Ghana SAM separates domestic production into 42 activities. Factors are disaggregated into labor, agricultural land, and capital. Labor is further disaggregated across three education categories. Representative households are disaggregated by rural and urban areas and by per capita expenditure quintile. The remaining accounts include enterprises, government, taxes, savings-and-investment, and the rest of the word.

Year published

2023

Authors

Ghana Statistical Services; Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research; International Food Policy Research Institute

Citation

Ghana Statistical Services (GSS); Institute for Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER); International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). 2023. 2019 Social Accounting Matrix for Ghana. Washington, DC: IFPRI [dataset]. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AC7CKV. Harvard Dataverse. Version 1.

Country/Region

Ghana

Keywords

Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Africa; National Accounting; Household Consumption; Household Expenditure; Taxes; Economic Indicators; Labour

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/ac7ckv Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Dataset

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Dataset

Food Security Simulator — Nigeria

2023Comstock, Andrew R.; Ecker, Olivier; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James
Details

Food Security Simulator — Nigeria

The Food Security Simulator is an innovative and easy-to-use, MS-Excel-based tool for assessing the potential short-term impacts of food price or household income shocks on food security and people’s diets. The Simulator is an ideal tool for first-cut forward-looking evaluations of direct, household-level outcomes of economic crises and policy responses in a timely manner. The tool allows users to enter positive and negative price or income changes in percentage terms and provides simulated changes for a diverse set of food-consumption- and diet-quality-related indicators. In addition to detailed tabular presentations of all simulation results by household income quintile and residential area, key indicator results are summarized in concise overview tables and visualized in graphs for easy export and use in reports. The underlying data include estimates from representative household survey data and rigorous, sophisticated food demand models to capture consumer behavior.

Year published

2023

Authors

Comstock, Andrew R.; Ecker, Olivier; Pauw, Karl; Thurlow, James

Citation

Ecker, Olivier; and Comstock, Andrew R. 2023. Food Security Simulator Nigeria. CGIAR Blog Post. First published online October 26, 2023. https://www.cgiar.org/research/tool/food-security-simulator-nigeria/

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Food Security; Data; Diet; Survey Methods; Income

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/wwmn6h Source record

Project

National Policies and Strategies

Record type

Dataset

Blogs

From risk to resilience: How strategic government partnerships can enhance access to insurance-linked credit for smallholders in Zambia
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 07, 2024

From risk to resilience: How strategic government partnerships can enhance access to insurance-linked credit for smallholders in Zambia

By Martina Mascarenhas, Anne G. Timu, and Liangzhi You

The power of bundled solutions

Limiting deforestation involves complex tradeoffs: Results from a global land-use model
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 13, 2024

Limiting deforestation involves complex tradeoffs: Results from a global land-use model

By Abhijeet Mishra and Eleanor Jones

Many dimensions of combating climate change.

Sudan’s catastrophe: Farmers could offer quick postwar recovery, if peace is found
IFPRI Blog
 | 
August 16, 2024

Sudan’s catastrophe: Farmers could offer quick postwar recovery, if peace is found

By Khalid Siddig, James Thurlow, Josee Randriamamonjy, Mariam Raouf, and Mosab O. M. Ahmed

Charting economic paths forward.

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News

November 26, 2023 | In the News

Scientists are racing to protect grass from climate change. Your cheap burger is at stake (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal (Australia) quotes Keith Wiebe, IFPRI senior research fellow, in an article analyzing how heat waves and drought are threatening pasture on farms worldwide.  “If pasture becomes less productive, prices would be expected to rise, not just for meat, wool and dairy products but also for cereals and other food commodities that would […]

Events

How can we improve global crop mapping? IFPRI’s Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM)
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

November 21, 2024, 11:00 – 12:00 pm

How can we improve global crop mapping? IFPRI’s Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM)

Accessibility to consistent, subnational, spatial information on crops globally will be hugely beneficial to  researchers and policy makers. Researchers need this data to evaluate the benefits and costs of adopting new crop and livestock technologies, estimate the impact of climate change on agriculture calculate yield gaps, and analyze the historical evolution of farming systems. Policymakers, […]

IFPRI @ 29th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP29)
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

November 11 to 22, 2024

IFPRI @ 29th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP29)

IFPRI is pleased to participate in the 29th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP29) being held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to November 22, 2024. COP29 is a pivotal opportunity to accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis. With global temperatures hitting record highs, and extreme weather events affecting people around the globe. […]

How should governments respond to crises? Rapid response using RIAPA modeling system
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

August 13, 2024, 9:30 – 10:30 am

How should governments respond to crises? Rapid response using RIAPA modeling system

IFPRI’s foresight modeling systems cover food, land, and water systems across the world’s poorest and most food insecure geographies. Thanks to longstanding investments in these systems, IFPRI is uniquely positioned to provide rapid analysis of the impacts of global or domestic crises on agrifood systems, poverty, and food security at global, regional, national, or subnational […]

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Recent Work

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Essential Reading
The Russia-Ukraine Conflict & Global Food Security
The Russia-Ukraine conflict and global food security

The Russia-Ukraine conflict and global food security

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking fears of a global food crisis, IFPRI responded rapidly to the need for information and policy advice to address the crisis. From the first moments of the conflict, a new IFPRI blog series provided critical information and insights into the impacts on food security, caused by rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices and trade disruptions, for vulnerable countries and regions. This book is a compilation of those blog posts, which include analysis of trade flows, tracking of food prices and policy responses, and results of impact modeling. Together, they provide an overview of how the crisis has progressed, how the international community and individual countries responded with efforts to ensure food security, and what we are learning about the best ways to ensure food security in the aftermath of a major shock to global food systems.

Year published

2023

Project

Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI); Food and Nutrition Policy

Engaging women's groups to improve nutrition
Engaging women’s groups to improve nutrition: Findings from an evaluation of the Jeevika multisectoral convergence pilot in Saharsa, Bihar

Engaging women’s groups to improve nutrition: Findings from an evaluation of the Jeevika multisectoral convergence pilot in Saharsa, Bihar

This report presents the endline findings of an impact evaluation of the JEEViKA Multisectoral Convergence pilot, designed as an effectiveness trial, in one district in Bihar, India. JEEViKA, a rural livelihoods project, supports self-help groups (SHGs) – savings and credit-based groups of about 15-20 women, mostly targeted toward those from poor households – with the aim of improving their livelihoods and enhancing household incomes. The JEEViKA Multisectoral Convergence (JEEViKA-MC) pilot went a step further, leveraging these SHGs to address the immediate and underlying determinants of undernutrition among women and children. The multisectoral convergence model, developed by the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society with technical support from the World Bank, was piloted in 12 Gram Panchayats of Saharsa district in Bihar. Two complementary sets of interventions-health and nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) to improve women’s knowledge and household practices, and efforts to improve service access through convergence -were layered onto the existing core package of JEEViKA activities and were targeted to women who were members of the SHGs already formed by JEEViKA. Within this target population, households with young children, mothers of young children, and pregnant women were the primary focus of the JEEViKA-MC pilot.

Year published

2019

Project

PHND; A4NH

show me what you eat
Show me what you eat: Assessing diets remotely through pictures

Show me what you eat: Assessing diets remotely through pictures

Goal: Using real-time smartphone meal pictures sent by rural or urban households to better monitor and assess the quality of their diets, and provide tailored recommendations to improve them. Detailed information on household and individual dietary intake is crucial for adequate nutritional monitoring and designing interventions to improve diets. Common recall-based methods are generally time consuming, costly, and subject to non-negligible measurement errors and potential biases. In addition, the scope of information that can be obtained in a regular survey is typically limited. Detailed diaries, in turn, are effort- and time-intensive and prone to errors. With increasing mobile penetration in both urban and rural areas, meal pictures can overcome some of these difficulties, providing real-time, detailed food intake information of individuals remotely and at a minimal cost. Moreover, pictures can be obtained over extended periods of time, beyond the standard short spans (i.e. 24-hours) in recall survey questions, with little to no data quality loss. Such rich consumption data can help identify and better understand vulnerabilities and nutritional imbalances —including specific macronutrient or micronutrient gaps or excesses—, and open the door for low-cost, individually tailored digital interventions to promote healthier diets. Moreover, crowdsourced data allow to identify locally available, affordable foods rich in specific nutrients consumed by similar households in the area. Interventions, in turn, can be delivered through text messages, interactive voice response (IVR), or phone calls, or videos or interactive games integrated into an app, benefitting from a two-way communication channel with individuals.

Year published

2021

Project

MTID

Our experts

Channing Arndt

Channing Arndt

Senior Director, Transformation Strategies, CGIAR and IFPRI, Development
Strategies and Governance, Foresight and Policy Modeling, Natural Resources and Resilience, Innovation Policy and Scaling

James Thurlow

James Thurlow

Director, Foresight and Policy Modeling (FPM), Foresight
and Policy Modeling

Zhe Guo

Zhe Guo

Senior GIS Coordinator, Foresight
and Policy Modeling

Karl Pauw

Karl Pauw

Senior Research Fellow, Foresight
and Policy Modeling

Yumei Zhang

Yumei Zhang

Nonresident Fellow, Foresight
and Policy Modeling