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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

Emily Schmidt

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

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Since 1975, IFPRI’s research has been informing policies and development programs to improve food security, nutrition, and livelihoods around the world.

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experts

Timothy Thomas

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Tim Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. This work has expanded recently to include evaluating the fuller impact of climate change by accounting for uncertainty and interannual variability, especially in regard to extreme events and low-productivity years. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures; generating crop yield emulators to provide intuition and to speed simulations; and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics. Tim has also worked in a variety of domains developing innovative methods such as spatial disaggregation (applied to gridded agricultural GDP in Brazil); determining optimal cropland level subnationally (for Ethiopia); and together with other researchers, investigating the impact of climate change on aflatoxins.

Publications

Publications

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Journal Article

Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change

2025Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; Hall, Jim
Details

Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change

Historically Ethiopia’s food security has been sensitive to climatic variability, but changes in future weather and climate could lead to overall reductions and increased variability in agricultural production, without further adaptation. We present an integrated modelling assessment framework which combines climate, crop, and hydrological modelling to quantify future risks to Ethiopia’s food security. We explore the impacts of 2°C and higher climate change scenarios on water availability and crop yields and simulate how future climate shocks may impact Ethiopia’s food. We consider three adaptations to agricultural management practices (improved seed varieties, increased use of nitrogen fertilizer and supplementary irrigation) and quantify their effectiveness in enhancing the resilience of Ethiopia’s food system to climate and hydrological change by 2050. Results show that, without policy intervention, climate change creates a risk of declining Meher season crop yields across Ethiopia. Under the worst climate change scenario, teff (−12.0%), barley (−6.7%), and wheat (−4.4%) are projected to have the largest decline in average yields, whilst maize (−0.1%) and sorghum (+0.9%) yields are less impacted thanks to more favourable growing conditions. However, the results also indicate that the adaptation options have a bigger beneficial effect than the climate impact. Of the policies evaluated, improved seeds have a relatively greater effect than increased fertilizer use. Supplementary irrigation could help to mitigate increases in crop water requirements under warmer climate conditions and is most effective in drought prone basins and for drought-vulnerable crops. Overall, the results show that locally relevant agricultural policies are necessary to build Ethiopia’s food system resilience to climate and hydrological change by the mid-century.

Year published

2025

Authors

Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; Hall, Jim

Citation

Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; and Hall, Jim. 2025. Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change. Environmental Research: Food Systems 2(1): 015008. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/ad99dd

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Food Security; Resilience; Climate Change; Climate Resilience; Hydrological Cycle

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601x/ad99dd Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Journal Article

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Brief

Climate change and the impact on taro in Papua New Guinea

2025Thomas, Timothy S.; Robertson, Richard D.
Details

Climate change and the impact on taro in Papua New Guinea

In this paper we present a brief summary of recent historical climate of Papua New Guinea (PNG), finding that rainfall has been increasing greatly compared to pre-1995 levels, but that temperature has only been rising at a moderate rate. We then examine the 5 climate models used in this study from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) / ISIMIP / CMIP3b, discovering one – IPSL – which best reflects the climate trends noted in PNG since 1995. The climate model projections show that temperature changes in PNG are expected to be less than most other places in the world and precipitation changes in PNG are projected to be higher than most other places in the world. Despite noting that IPSL seems to best represent climate changes observed thus far, we use all 5 climate models in the DSSAT crop model for taro, investigating how each climate model will lead to changes in taro yields at each half-degree pixel. In the aggregate, we find that the IPSL model leads to the greatest projected reduction in taro yield at -6.4% for the nation, with Southern region projected to have greater than 10% yield reduction for taro. Across the 5 climate models, the median across model results suggest only a 1.6% yield reduction, while the most optimistic model projects a 4.4% gain. Because of uncertainty across climate models and different impacts across regions, as well as potentially increasing climate variability which would lead to more extreme events including droughts and floods, we recommend developing a suite of options to help farmers navigate future climate uncertainty. For example, developing and testing crop varieties that would offer better yields whether the future is wetter or drier, as well as varieties that are less sensitive to temperature extremes. These could include new varieties of taro but might also include alternative crops and farming techniques designed to protect the plants during ad-verse climate events.

Year published

2025

Authors

Thomas, Timothy S.; Robertson, Richard D.

Citation

Thomas, Timothy S.; and Robertson, Richard D. 2025. Climate change and the impact on taro in Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea Project Note 19. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/173654

Country/Region

Papua New Guinea

Keywords

Oceania; Climate Change; Crop Yield; Rainfall; Taro

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Climate Resilience

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Country profile – Senegal: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages

2025Marivoet, Wim; Diatta, Ampa Dogui; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Bryan, Elizabeth
Details

Country profile – Senegal: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages

This country brief supports GCAN’s goal of integrating gender, climate resilience, and nutrition considerations into policies, interventions, and research by providing policymakers, program officers, and researchers with an analysis of Senegal’s current situation and policy landscape in these areas. In 2019, the agrifood system of Senegal accounted for 36% of total GDP and employed 43% of the total work force. The off-farm components (i.e., processing, trade/transport, food services, and input supply) are slightly more (less) important than primary agriculture in terms of GDP (employment), which implies that labor productivity is higher for off-farm activities. The most important value chains as a percentage of total agrifood system’s GDP are groundnuts (15%), cattle/dairy (14%), and sorghum/millet and fish (both around 11%) (Diao et al. 2023). In part due to important food losses observed during storage and distribution, Senegal’s agrifood system is generally failing to provide nutritious and affordable diets to its population. In fact, total food supplies are dominated by energy-dense food items, with supplies in fruit and pulses amounting to only 55 and 15 grams per capita per day, respectively, resulting in 50% of all Senegalese being unable to afford a healthy diet in 2022.

Year published

2025

Authors

Marivoet, Wim; Diatta, Ampa Dogui; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Bryan, Elizabeth

Citation

Marivoet, Wim; Diatta, Ampa Dogui; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; and Bryan, Elizabeth. 2025. Country profile – Senegal: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages. Project Note February 2025. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/173369

Country/Region

Senegal

Keywords

Africa; Western Africa; Agrifood Systems; Climate Change; Climate Resilience; Gender; Nutrition; Policies

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Blogs

For climate change, the American farmer is the sleeping giant
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 07, 2017

For climate change, the American farmer is the sleeping giant

By Timothy Thomas

U.S. corn farmers have largely avoided rising temperatures during growing seasons. What happens when climate change kicks in?

Heat dome to do approximately $2 billion in damage to U.S. corn
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 27, 2016

Heat dome to do approximately $2 billion in damage to U.S. corn

By Timothy Thomas

An IFPRI researcher's estimate shows just a few days of widespread high temperatures will end up harming U.S. corn yields

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?
IFPRI Research Blog
 | 
December 01, 2015

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?

By Timothy Thomas

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?

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Events

Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

March 21, 2025, 9:00 – 5:30 pm

Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea

The International Food Policy Research Institute, in collaboration with Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Department of Health and the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, will host a research seminar on “Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea”, on March 21st, 2025. As […]

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]

What does climate change mean for the future of agriculture? Insights from the IMPACT modeling system
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

May 15, 2024, 10:00 – 11:00 am

What does climate change mean for the future of agriculture? Insights from the IMPACT modeling system

Virtual Event: May 15, 2024 at 10:00am-11:00am EDT. This webinar, the first in the series, will focus on how IMPACT can be used to analyze how climate impacts on agrifood systems (and particularly crop productivity) may vary both across locations and over time in the coming decades, and how that can inform decisions about policies and investment today.

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