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Jo Swinnen Begins Term as Director General of IFPRI
A big welcome to Jo Swinnen, who takes over the reins today as director general of IFPRI. Swinnen is an agricultural economist with more than 30 years of experience in policy-relevant research, including hunger and poverty reduction. ( Read Bio)
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Rural Roles: Improving rural service delivery hinges on strong incentives to deliver high-quality services and information about user preferences, as Katrina Kosec and Catherine Ragasa argue in their analysis of the roles of public and private rural service providers. (Read Brief)
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Rising Uncertainty: Valerie Mueller and colleagues call for new modelling that can better predict people’s migratory responses to looming sea-level changes–and ultimately guide global policy decisions. (Read Article)
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Moving On Up: Migration does not negatively affect agricultural production, and can even spur rural investment and technical change, according to a new paper by Alan de Brauw. (Read Article)
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Details of Decentralization: Katrina Kosec and Tewodaj Mogues find that decentralization in Ethiopia improved agricultural public services (a top priority of the central government) but not drinking water services (a top priority of citizens). (Read Article)
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Fresh Ventures: ICT-enabled entrepreneurship through social ventures like eKutir in India can stimulate both supply and demand for fruits and vegetables, as Samik Ghosh, Summer Allen, P.K. Joshi, and John McDermott explore. (Read Article)
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Accolade for Free Trade
In the face of uncertainties such as climate change, international markets for staple agricultural commodities will become even more important for developing countries in the coming years. Joseph Glauber and Vincent Smith argue in favor of free trade policies, even as countries turn to domestic protections as a way of avoiding short-term food crises. ( Read Article)
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Doubling Down on Nutrition: In discussing her recent article in a special Lancet series, Marie Ruel identifies ten double-duty actions to reduce multiple forms of malnutrition using existing platforms in health, social protection, education, and food systems. (Read Blog)
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Trade Paralysis: The Appellate Body of the WTO has been disabled, wiping out small and poor countries’ best chance for appealing trade disputes and raising the odds of more tit-for-tat tariff wars in the future, as Rob Vos warns. (Read Blog)
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Guardians of Nature: Claudia Ringler and Quentin Grafton call for farmers to become agents of change for climate resilience, as they propose a list of seven questions that guardians of irrigation, watersheds, and agriculture can use to increase the resilience of the systems they oversee. (Read Blog)
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Protection at all Costs: Nigeria continues to enact protectionist policies, triggering a border crisis and disrupting Africa’s free-trade aspirations, as detailed by Antoine Bouët, David Laborde, Fousseini Traoré, and Swati Malhotra. (Read Blog)
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Weathering the Storm: Berber Kramer explores the potential of weather index insurance as a climate adaptation tool for farmers to build up resilience and increase their investments–but many knowledge gaps still remain. (Read Blog)
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Down to Business: India’s prime minister has recently called for doubling Indian farmers’ incomes by 2022. Smriti Verma proposes farmer business schools as an innovative way to achieve this goal and help farmers more accurately tap into market demand. (Read Blog)
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Recruitment Underway for Africa Director
IFPRI seeks an experienced senior researcher to serve as Director of its Africa Region Office. The Director will lead research, policy, and capacity building activities in the region and serve as a member of the Institute’s Senior Management Team. ( Read Position Description)
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 Social norms are squishy and malleable and not immutable, and we really can change them in terms of interventions and policy [on gender equality in rural Africa].” – Sarah Gammage, Director of Gender, Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) (Event)
This evidence [derived from large household datasets] is timely, because the diets of many Ethiopians remain very monotonous, and we have not seen much change in diet diversity.” – Asefa Deressa, Senior Researcher, Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) (Event)
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Our partnership with IFPRI through this new program will help realize the immense potential of agriculture to continue to spur growth and reduce poverty.” – Gérardine Mukeshimana, Rwanda Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (Event)
Some of the key constraints that slow agricultural growth and transformation in Africa are infrastructural, technological, and institutional, and through digitalization, these barriers can be overcome at scale and shorter time and also at lower costs.” – Katrin Glatzel, Program Head, IFPRI (Event)
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