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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

Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Vi Thanh Market is the largest and most special outdoor agricultural market in Vietnam

Drastic changes in the functioning of food markets are needed to achieve food security and adequate nutrition for all people, as well as contributing to poverty reduction and environmental sustainability.

Research units

Overview

The Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit (MTI) provides innovative, evidence-based policy solutions to help drive inclusive and sustainable economic growth for smallholders, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and workers in the agrifood sector. By analyzing local, regional, and global economic environments, trade conditions, and value chains from farm to fork, MTI identifies policies that can transform agricultural and rural economies and build resilience to climatic and market shocks.

These policies include measures toward more effective market institutions and regulation, greater market efficiency, lower transaction costs, and reduced food loss and waste, along with greater market access and income and employment opportunities for smallholders, SMEs, and workers in the agrifood sector. MTI conducts research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Areas of Focus

Market-based solutions

Market imperfections impede healthy and sustainable food system outcomes. To address these imperfections, MTI conducts research on market-based solutions and adequate policy support for achieving food safety, affordable healthy diets, food loss reduction, and sustainable production. This research includes analysis of options and trade-offs of reorienting existing agricultural support for achieving these multiple objectives for food system change.

Inclusive value chains

Agrifood systems are a major source of employment but fail to provide decent livelihoods for most farmers and workers. MTI research seeks to leverage food value chain innovations, using inclusive business models and process innovations in logistics, wholesale and retail trade, and finance to make food production and distribution more efficient, while creating better incomes, jobs and livelihoods, especially for women and youth. A gender perspective is integrated into all MTI research.

Trade policies

World food markets are volatile, but increasingly important for food security and sustainability. MTI research evaluates the impact of trade barriers, including nontariff barriers and food standards, and the potential for trade policy reform to achieve food system sustainability, food safety, and food security across countries. MTI’s research and expertise also contribute to global agendas, including G20 and World Trade Organization discussions on trade and farm policy.

Shocks and resilience

Conflict, climate change, and global economic shocks pose increasing risks to rural livelihoods and food security. MTI contributes to decision-making for increased food system resilience by providing real-time monitoring of risks, building evidence on risk-management options such as innovative approaches to crop insurance and bundled risk management mechanisms, and tools for assessing impacts of global shocks on domestic food systems.

Methods and tools

MTI researchers use state-of-the-art global trade and economywide modeling tools, causal impact analysis, assessment of risk-management innovations, and farm-to-fork value chain analysis, including measurement of food loss and its causes. MTI contributes to capacity building and knowledge sharing through the Food Security Portal, AGRODEP, the AgIncentives Consortium, the G20 Technical Platform for the Measurement of Food Loss and Waste (TPFLW), G20’s Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), and the Knowledge Platform for Inclusive Markets and Value Chains (KISM).

Explore our latest research

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Working Paper

Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets – September 2024 survey round

2024Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis
Details

Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets – September 2024 survey round

We assess changes in food prices and diet costs based on large-scale surveys of food vendors (fielded from June 2020 until September 2024) and households (fielded in six periods between 2022 to 2024) across rural and urban areas and in all states/regions of Myanmar. Key Findings  Between July 2023 and September 2024, the cost of a healthy and commonly consumed diet increased by 34 and 35 percent, respectively.  The price of rice – the major staple – was more than twice as high in September 2024 compared to two years prior. Prices rose by 29 percent between July 2023 and September 2024, and by only 7 percent between March and September 2024.  In September 2024, cooking oil prices were 88 percent higher than the previous year, but 15 percent lower than two years prior.  In September 2024, the median prices of most protein-rich foods, except for fish, were at least 50 percent higher compared to two years prior. Over the same two-year period, banana prices doubled.  The highest costs for both common and healthy diets are seen in the conflict-affected states of Rakhine and Kachin, where in September 2024, the costs of the healthy diet was about 65 percent higher than the national average and the costs of the common diet costs was about 40 percent higher.  Compared to average casual wages, the healthy and common diets are least affordable in Kachin, Rakhine and Magway and most affordable in Kayin and Mon.  Between the fourth quarter of 2023 and September 2024, the prices of petrol rose by 90 percent, bar soap and paracetamol by nearly 50 percent, and toothpaste by 160 percent. Recommended Actions  Ensuring food is available at affordable prices is crucial to prevent food security and nutrition issues in the country. Therefore, prioritizing a well-functioning agri-food system should be a key focus for all stakeholders.  The food price situation in Rakhine State is most concerning among all states and regions, and the state should be prioritized – to the extent that this possible – for assistance.

Year published

2024

Authors

Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis

Citation

Myanmar Agrifood Program for Strategy and Analysis. 2024. Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets – September 2024 survey round. Myanmar Strategy Support Program Research Note 116. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

Asia; South-eastern Asia; Agrifood Systems; Diet; Food Prices; Households; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Training Material

Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline farmers’ survey instrument

2024Andam, Kwaw S.; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom A.; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Fasoranti, Adetunji
Details

Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline farmers’ survey instrument

Year published

2024

Authors

Andam, Kwaw S.; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom A.; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Fasoranti, Adetunji

Citation

Andam, Kwaw; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; and Fasoranti, Adetunji. 2024. Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline farmers’ survey instrument. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/159878

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; School Feeding; Nutrition; Farmers; Training Materials

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Training Material

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Training Material

Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline cooks’ survey instrument

2024Andam, Kwaw S.; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom A.; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Fasoranti, Adetunji; Idowu, Ifetayo
Details

Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline cooks’ survey instrument

Year published

2024

Authors

Andam, Kwaw S.; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom A.; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Fasoranti, Adetunji; Idowu, Ifetayo

Citation

Andam, Kwaw; Amare, Mulubrhan; Gelli, Aulo; Kosec, Katrina; Abay, Kibrom; Bamiwuye, Temilolu; Fasoranti, Adetunji; and Idowu, Ifetayo. 2024. Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline cooks’ survey instrument. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/159879

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; School Feeding; Nutrition; Training Materials

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Training Material

Blogs

India lifts export restrictions on rice
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 08, 2024

India lifts export restrictions on rice

By Joseph Glauber and Abdullah Mamun

Assessing impacts on global markets and African consumers.

One year of war in Gaza: Food emergency continues with no end in sight
IFPRI Blog
 | 
October 04, 2024

One year of war in Gaza: Food emergency continues with no end in sight

By Rob Vos

Problems of feeding more than 2 million people in a war zone.

The likely U.S. longshoreman strike and its implications for agricultural trade
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 30, 2024

The likely U.S. longshoreman strike and its implications for agricultural trade

By Joseph Glauber

Disruptions ahead for some developing countries exporting to the U.S.

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News

September 03, 2024 | Press Release

Ruth Hill joins IFPRI as the new Director of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit

Ruth Hill joins IFPRI as the new Director of its Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI) Unit, starting September 3, 2024. 

January 25, 2024 | In the News

The timing of the Red Sea attacks could not be worse for Democrats (Politico)

Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber is quoted in a Politico story about how the growing military conflict in a key trade corridor is threatening to unleash economic havoc on the global economy ahead of November. “If energy prices go up and remain high, you’d see food inflation persisting,” said Joe Glauber. He added that potential […]

January 18, 2024 | In the News

Red Sea attacks reverberate in food and ag trade (Successful Farming) 

Successful Farming quotes the IFPRI blog post on the Impacts of Red Sea shipping disruptions on global food security by senior research fellow Joseph Glauber and senior research analyst Abdullah Mamun.  According to the article, Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea are disrupting grain shipments from Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. “Trade disruptions are most likely to impact […]

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Events

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

December 3 to 5, 2024

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia: Connecting the Dots Across Systems

South Asia grapples with escalating levels of malnutrition in various forms, including undernutrition, overweight and obesity, and micronutrient deficiencies, alongside increasing incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases. Malnutrition results from a complex interplay of factors incorporating household and individual decision-making, agriculture and food systems, healthcare services, education, and socio-ecological systems that determine access to services and […]

Advancing Sustainable Agri-food Systems for Climate Resilience, Food Security, and Global Collaboration
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

November 12, 2024, 5:00 – 6:30 pm

Advancing Sustainable Agri-food Systems for Climate Resilience, Food Security, and Global Collaboration

The livestream will be available on Tuesday November 12, 2024 at 5:00 – 6:30 pm (America/Sao_Paulo) / 3:00 – 4:30 pm (US/Eastern). Join us for an in-depth discussion on Avanzar2030, an evidence-based initiative that identifies promising innovations in agri-food systems and estimates the costs of implementing them. Launched in response to the 2021 UN Food […]

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security
IFPRI Policy Seminar

 | 

November 5, 2024, 9:00 – 10:30 am

Learning Support for a Multi-Country Climate Resilience Programme for Food Security

The Learning Support for a Sub-Saharan Africa Multi-Country Climate Resilience Program for Food Security, launched in 2023, aims to enhance food security and climate resilience across 14 African countries. This collaboration among CGIAR, the World Food Programme, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) has three pillars: scaling disaster risk financing, transforming food systems […]

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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

Ruth Hill

Ruth Hill

Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Purnima Menon

Purnima Menon

Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Nutrition, Diets, and Health, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Valeria Piñeiro

Valeria Piñeiro

Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Latin
America and the Caribbean, Markets, Trade, and Institutions

Francisco Ceballos

Francisco Ceballos

Research Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Latin America and the Caribbean

Manuel Hernandez

Manuel Hernandez

Senior Research Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Latin America and the Caribbean

Antoine Bouet

Antoine Bouet

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Weilun Shi

Weilun Shi

Research Analyst, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions