IFPRI Insights: September 2020

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September 9, 2020

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Agricultural Extension Book Released
The book Agricultural Extension: Global Status and Performance in Selected Countries, edited by Kristin Davis, Suresh Babu, and Catherine Ragasa, provides a global overview of agricultural extension and advisory services, assesses the performance of extension approaches in various countries, and shares lessons and policy insights. The publication is a valuable resource for policymakers and extension practitioners on how to reform agricultural extension so that it improves development outcomes at a greater scale. (Read Book)

Dried Up Jobs: Climate change has serious potential to hit African agriculture hard, dampening job creation in non-agricultural sectors. A brief by Nicola Cenacchi and IFPRI colleagues calls for large-scale investments in climate adaptation to ensure that the region’s booming youth population still has job prospects. (Read Brief )

COVID and Child Malnutrition: Analysis by Derek Headey, Marie Ruel, and colleagues suggests that there could be a 14% increase in the prevalence of moderate or severe wasting among children younger than 5 years due to COVID-19-related losses in GNI per capita. (Read Article)

From Seeds to Tractors: In Nepal and Ghana, the adoption of tractors and other agricultural equipment has been induced by improved, high-yield seeds, especially on smaller farms, new research from Hiroyuki Takeshima and Yanyan Liu shows. (Read Article)

The Limits of Extension: Gashaw Abate, Mekdim Dereje, Kalle Hirvonen, and Bart Minten conclude that geography shapes public service delivery in rural Ethiopia, based on their findings that access to agriculture (but not health) extension is lower in more remote villages. (Read Article)

Toward Gender Equality: A gender transformative intervention in Ethiopia increased HIV knowledge and reduced sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) when delivered to men but did not reduce IPV when delivered to couples or women, according to research by Jessica Leight and colleagues. (Read Article)

>> Read More Research

Picturing a Better Way to Measure Consumption
The photo essay “Data collection in a diverse and complex food system” illustrates the story of Emily Schmidt and Gracie Rosenbach’s journey as they worked with partners to develop an innovative method for better measuring household food consumption in Papua New Guinea. Viewers can get a close-up look of the researchers’ site visits to farms and markets, as well as how they used photos to obtain more accurate data in digital household surveys. (View Photo Essay)

High Altitudes, High Stunting: Children living in high altitudes experience higher rates of stunting than their peers at sea level, even when they live in ideal home environments where their households had a high standard of living, according to the first global study on this issue from Kalle Hirvonen and Kaleab Baye. (Read Blog)

Why Do Spouses Disagree?: Using data from Bangladesh, Kate Ambler and colleagues show that spousal disagreement in household surveys indicates asymmetric information between partners, most often in the form of wives owning assets or making decisions that their husbands are unaware of. (Read Blog)

Biofortification and Noncommunicable Diseases: Laura Pompano and Erick Boy discuss results showing that low-dose and long-duration zinc supplementation—similar to how zinc is delivered by biofortified staple crops—improved more risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease than either high-dose or short-duration supplementation. (Read Blog)

Challenging Consumer Behavior: Temporary discounts, advertising campaigns, and safety labels have a limited ability to address aflatoxin consumption over the long term in Kenya, and consumers do not understand the relationship between the observable quality of food and its safety very well, as Vivian Hoffmann and Emily Wu explain. (Read Blog)

Decades of Data: Nienke Beintema reflects on ASTI’s work in providing open-source data, analyses, and outreach around agricultural research systems in developing countries around the world, as the program marks its 20th anniversary. (Read Blog)

Smallholders and Supermarkets: Dennis Ochieng describes recent findings from his research showing that supermarket contracts in Kenya increase small farming households’ incomes by around 40%, and also reduce multidimensional poverty. (Read Blog)

>> Read More Blogs

Podcast Episode #8: Safety Nets, Safe Households: How Cash Transfers Can Reduce Intimate Partner Violence
In the latest episode of Research Talks, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Melissa Hidrobo and Research Fellow Shalini Roy tell the story of how development programs can sometimes have surprising impacts. When Melissa found that a cash transfer program in Ecuador reduced intimate partner violence, she and Shalini decided to team up and see whether the same results held in Bangladesh and Mali. (Listen to the Episode)

Book Award
IFPRI Director General Johan Swinnen received the 2017-2019 Best Book Award by the European Association of Agricultural Economists for his book The Political Economy of Agricultural and Food Policies. The book documents major changes and variations in agricultural and food policies and describes how institutions, as well as economic and political forces, shape policies. (Read More)

POSHAN Conference
POSHAN will hold its third India-focused implementation research conference on “Delivering for Nutrition in India: Insights from Implementation Research” virtually on September 15-18, 2020. Event participants will discuss research studies and implementation programs focused on the core pillars of POSHAN Abhiyaan, India’s National Nutrition Mission, and platforms supporting actions for nutrition.

We radically and urgently need to change our relationship between food production and the ecosystems that support it.” – Izabella Koziell, Director, CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) (Event)

This [country-level] analysis has allowed us to look not only at the size of these impacts [of COVID-19], but also how those impacts are likely to impact the number of people in poverty.” – Chris Hillbruner, Division Chief, Analysis and Learning Division, Office of Policy, Analysis, and Engagement; Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (USAID) (Event)