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World Breastfeeding Week 2023
Infants and young children are most likely to survive, grow, and develop to their full potential when breastfed. Yet, despite clear scientific evidence and WHO recommendations, breastfeeding is not practiced enough, with only one in two newborns being put to the breast within the first hour of life and fewer than half of infants under 6 months old being exclusively breastfed.
To mark this year’s World Breastfeeding Week (August 1-7), we spoke with Purnima Menon, Sunny Kim, and Phuong Hong Nguyen about the benefits of breastfeeding and insights from IFPRI research and other recent scientific findings on how to improve programs and policies to support breastfeeding.
(Read Interview)
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 Food security trends and resilience-building priorities
September 1, 2023, 9:00 – 10:30 AM EDT
Market concentration in the grain industry: Implications for food security?
September 7, 2023, 9:30 – 11:00 AM EDT
Africa’s Food Systems Forum (AGRF) 2023 Summit
September 5 – 8, 2023
IFPRI @ Tropentag 2023
September 20 – 22, 2023
The conference features a keynote address from IFPRI DG Johan Swinnen and an impressive representation of CGIAR and IFPRI researchers, including a CGIAR/Systems Transformation Action Area session and a CGIAR Policy Seminar “Payments for Ecosystem Services: Win-Win Solutions?” See program
Please check our Events page for most recent updates.
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Biodiversity loss, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution are increasingly affecting our ability to produce sufficient and nutritious food, and provide clean water for people and the planet. In this short video, Claudia Ringler, Director of IFPRI’s Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, talks about how CGIAR, IFPRI, and our partners can work together to support tangible progress for more equitable, resilient, and environmentally sustainable food systems. (Watch Video)
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Landslides: The geographic distribution of natural ecosystems is affected by both climate and cropland. Discussions of future land use/land cover usually focus on how cropland expands and displaces natural vegetation especially as climate change impacts become stronger. Richard Robertson, Alessandro De Pinto, and Nicola Cenacchi explore the less commonly considered direct influence of climate change on natural ecosystems simultaneously with cropland incursion, finding that globally climate change drives larger gains and losses than cropland incursion. (Read Article in Climatic Change)
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Spend money to make money: Impacts of price spikes on poverty are not always clear-cut; while food is a large expense for the poor, many also earn income from producing or marketing food, and higher prices should incentivize greater food production. Derek Headey and Kalle Hirvonen analyze annual data on poverty rates, real food price changes, and food production growth for 33 middle-income countries from 2000 to 2019 and find that increases in the real price of food predict reductions in poverty headcount, except in more urban or non-agrarian countries. (Read Article in Nature Food)
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Beefing up food systems: Kristi Mahrt, Ben Belton, and colleagues examine changes in animal-source food (ASF) consumption in Myanmar amid economic transformation. Using 2010 and 2015 data, they analyze ASF’s nutrient contribution to different population groups based on location and income. Findings reveal shifts in ASF types consumed, rising inequality in consumption, and declining micronutrient intake adequacy due to changing ASF composition. The study highlights implications for food security, nutrition-sensitive policies, and future interventions in Myanmar and beyond. (Read Article in Food Security)
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Mind the gap!: Progress to improve nutrition among women, infants and children in South Asia has fallen behind the pace needed to meet established global targets. Renewed political commitment and monitoring of nutrition interventions are required to improve coverage and quality of care. Sumanta Neupane and colleagues assess the availability of national nutrition policies, programs, and coverage data of nutrition interventions for women, children, and adolescents in eight countries in South Asia, finding that significant data gaps remain. (Read Article in Maternal and Child Nutrition)
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To measure the inclusion of women in agriculture, WEAI uses a core set of empowerment indicators, including aspects such as women’s control over the use of income, workload, and autonomy in production. The indicators fall within five domains — Production, Resources, Income, Leadership, and Time — allowing women’s and men’s empowerment to be compared across and within contexts.
In our latest “Making a Difference” visual story, Hazel Malapit, Eleanor Jones, and Emily Myers explain how using the “dumpling approach” allows the Index to better measure and contextualize women’s empowerment in alignment with a project’s specific goals.
(Read Story)
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Nigeria’s lesson on scrapping fuel subsidies: Nigerian President Bola Tinubu recently announced the end of the country’s decades-old fuel subsidy. This is not the first time that Nigeria has attempted to abandon the policy, which has had disastrous consequences for the economy and the climate. Jordan Kyle and Kwaw Andam discuss the implications of the quiescence of ordinary citizens in response to President Tinubu’s “cold turkey” approach. (Read Blog)
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Unlocking the potential of irrigation for improved nutrition in Ethiopia: To address the pressing problem of malnutrition, the Ethiopian government has developed numerous policies and programs that aim to increase agricultural production and productivity to ensure year-round access to food plus education to improve nutrition, but these goals are not always congruent. Kaleab Baye and Claudia Ringler explore how irrigation, which enables the production of high-value, nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables that require more water, can be used to improve nutrition in Ethiopia. (Read Blog)
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‘Dirty laundry is washed at home’: Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a persistent global problem. Developing effective policies to reduce violence depends on having accurate data. Yet household surveys, a principal source of data on VAWG, often underrepresent the extent of the problem. Amber Peterman, Melissa Hidrobo, and Malick Dione discuss a randomized experiment in Senegal that compared two methods of survey data collection on VAWG and explore ways to increase accuracy and quality of data. (Read Blog)
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Is Ethiopia missing a golden opportunity for addressing hidden hunger? The silent epidemic of micronutrient deficiencies is driven by poverty and continues to be a major public health challenge in the developing world, primarily in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Taddese Zerfu, Fantu Bachewe, Tirsit Genye, Meron Girma, Aregash Samuel, James Warner, and Cornelia Van Zyl discuss a recent study that assesses the state of biofortification in Ethiopia and finds that the practice could be used to help tackle the country’s hidden hunger problem. (Read Blog)
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Enhancing groundwater governance through experimental games in Ghana: Irrigators living in Ghana’s Keta and Anloga districts are grappling with declining groundwater tables and insufficient freshwater during the peak of the dry season due to low groundwater tables, high evaporation, and saltwater intrusion. Most farmers cope by reducing the volume of water used for irrigation, while others develop multiple wells for abstracting more water and relocate wells with salty water to locations with freshwater. Emmanuel Obuobie, Claudia Ringler, Hagar ElDidi, and Wei Zhang discuss how experimental games can help enhance groundwater governance. (Read Blog)
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Russia’s July 17 withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) has sparked fears of reduced exports of wheat and other key commodities to developing countries, along with other market disruptions. The BSGI, in place for nearly one year, clearly benefited global markets and food security, and allowed Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grain and other agricultural products from its Black Sea ports—with most going to developing countries.
Joseph Glauber, Soonho Kim, Elsa Olivetti, and Rob Vos use a new source of international trade data to examine the impacts of the war on Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports to sub-Saharan Africa, as well as exports from other regions, and possible effects of renewed interruptions. (Read Story)
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Informal cross-border trade plays a major role in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) region. Formal agrifood trade between India and Bangladesh increased from 12.1 percent to 26.9 percent between 2017 and 2022. Yet many major agricultural items like seeds, fertilizers, vegetables and fruits, machinery and other inputs are still traded informally between the two countries in vast quantities.
A new interactive by Devesh Roy, Abul Kamar, Mamata Pradhan, and Sunil Saroj, alongside partners Nisha Taneja, Sanjana Joshi, and Sanya Dua of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), illustrates an analytical framework for understanding informal agrifood trade between India and Bangladesh. (Explore)
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Mideast countries that are already struggling fear price hikes after Russia exits grain deal: While there is enough production to meet worldwide demand, IFPRI senior research fellow Joseph Glauber says to Associated Press, for low-income countries like war-torn Yemen or Lebanon that are big wheat importers, finding suppliers that are farther away will add costs.
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The soaring price of rice is affecting many parts of the world where it’s the staple diet: Abdullah Mamun, IFPRI senior research analyst, spoke with NPR host Scott Simon for the Weekend Edition Saturday to discuss Indian export policies and what prompted the disruption in rice crops over the past year.
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Why India’s rice ban could trigger a global food crisis: BBC, in its analysis of the recent trade restrictions imposed by India, quotes Joseph Glauber: “I suspect that the action to ban non-basmati rice exports is largely precautionary and hopefully it will prove temporary.”
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Russia’s shift to divert fertilizer exports toward China and India raises food security concerns: Nikkei (Japan) quotes IFPRI’s Charlotte Hebebrand who notes, “Russia is clearly concerned about fertilizer exports. With rising fertilizer prices and ongoing conflict in Ukraine, securing revenue through exports has become even more crucial.”
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We are delighted to announce that Dr. Ismahane Elouafi has been appointed as CGIAR’s Executive Managing Director (EMD) and will assume duty on December 1, 2023. A visionary leader and strategic thinker, Elouafi is currently Chief Scientist at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. She previously served as Director General at the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture based in the United Arab Emirates and held senior scientific and leadership positions, including advising the Canadian government. Ismahane Elouafi served as an IFPRI Board Member from 2015-2020.
Read More
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