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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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Innovation Policy and Scaling

Victor Taleon

Research Fellow

Bio

Victor Taleon is a Research Fellow with the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit, and is based at IFPRI-Washington, DC.

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Innovation Policy and Scaling

Publications

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Journal Article

Whole maize flour could enhance food and nutrition security in Malawi

2025Ngoma, Theresa Nakoma; Taleon, Victor; Mvumi, Brighton M.; Gama, Aggrey P.; Palacios-Rojas, Natalia; Matumba, Limbikani
Details

Whole maize flour could enhance food and nutrition security in Malawi

Maize is the staple cereal in Malawi, with a daily per capita consumption of 383 g (dry matter basis), primarily consumed in the form of nsima, a thick porridge. We combined a milling experiment with focus group discussions (FGDs) to provide insights into mass and nutrient losses during maize grain dehulling and maize flour consumption patterns in rural Malawi. Milling batches (30 kg) of four maize grain varieties were dehulled at three abrasive disk dehullers under controlled conditions. The impact of maize variety and dehuller design on mass and nutrient losses during dehulling was statistically significant (p < 0.05), with a mean mass loss of 28.1 ± 5.7%, and nutrient losses of 9.8 ± 1.9% for protein, 61.7 ± 2.0% for zinc, and 47.7 ± 3.6% for iron. Six FGDs conducted in rural areas of Lilongwe District revealed a preference for refined flour due to convenience and cultural norms, despite the nutritional benefits of whole grain flour, which was recognized for its ability to provide satiety, particularly during periods of maize scarcity. Participants also highlighted switching between flour types based on seasonal maize availability, social stigma associated with whole grain flour, and awareness of nutrient losses during dehulling. Given Malawi’s precarious food insecurity situation, transitioning from dehulled maize flour nsima to whole maize flour or less refined nsima, is imperative. Our study findings can have food and nutritional savings for other southern Africa countries where the dehulling is a common practice.

Year published

2025

Authors

Ngoma, Theresa Nakoma; Taleon, Victor; Mvumi, Brighton M.; Gama, Aggrey P.; Palacios-Rojas, Natalia; Matumba, Limbikani

Citation

Ngoma, Theresa Nakoma; Taleon, Victor; Mvumi, Brighton M.; Gama, Aggrey P.; Palacios-Rojas, Natalia; and Matumba, Limbikani. 2025. Whole maize flour could enhance food and nutrition security in Malawi. Discover Food 5(1): 40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44187-025-00311-y

Country/Region

Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Southern Africa; Maize; Maize Flour; Nutrition; Food Security; Milling; Food Losses

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1007/s44187-025-00311-y Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Book Chapter

Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets

2024Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jennifer; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; Taleon, Victor
Details

Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets

Addressing the urgent need for food systems to support sustainable healthy diets will require a major improvement in the availability of and access to affordable, nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in low- and middle-income countries, along with increased consumer demand for healthy diets. Plant-source foods are key components of sustainable healthy diets. This chapter examines food crops that could be leveraged to improve health outcomes, describes production systems and their role in providing populations access to highly nutritious crops, and presents examples of evidence-based technologies that improve the nutritional content of crops, especially for vulnerable populations.

Year published

2024

Authors

Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jennifer; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; Taleon, Victor

Citation

Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jennifer; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; and Taleon, Victor. 2024. Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets. In Global food policy report 2024: Food systems for healthy diets and nutrition. Chapter 6, Pp. 54-61. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141888

Keywords

Nutrition; Healthy Diets; Food Crops; Food Consumption; Biofortification; Food Processing

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Journal Article

Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification

2023Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; Rahaman, Md Shajedur
Details

Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification

Zinc deficiency is a severe public health problem in Bangladesh. We examine the effects of nutritional information on rural consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for two ways to increase zinc intake through rice, the main staple crop–low-milling that gives rice grains a distinctive light brown color (a visible trait) and sets it apart from the culturally preferred high-milled white rice grain and biofortification of rice with increased zinc content (an invisible trait), which is also low-milled to retain maximum zinc content. Results of our economic experiments suggest that with nutritional information, consumers are willing to pay a premium of 4.6% for zinc biofortified rice compared to non-biofortified rice, when milled at the same level. However, results confirm the strong preference for high-milled rice by Bangladeshi consumers who discounted low-milled rice by 8%–10% even after receiving information on the nutritional benefits of biofortified or low-milled rice. We find that consumers’ WTP for the two high-zinc-low-milled rice types (biofortified and non-biofortified) is positively correlated with being a female, more educated, belonging to households engaged in non-farm activities and with children under 5 years of age. Results point to the importance of nutritional awareness campaigns for increasing zinc biofortified and low-milled rice consumption and guiding the targeting strategy for such campaigns. Given the consumer preference for high-milled rice, this study also points to the need for exploring the rice fortification strategy to address the challenge of malnutrition.

Year published

2023

Authors

Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; Rahaman, Md Shajedur

Citation

Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; and Rahaman, Md Shajedur. 2022. Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification. Agricultural Economics 54(1) 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Asia; Southern Asia; Biofortification; Consumer Behaviour; Trace Element Deficiencies; Milling; Rice; Willingness to Pay; Zinc

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739 Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Global Food Policy Report 2024: Leveraging plant-source foods for sustainable healthy diets
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 04, 2024

Global Food Policy Report 2024: Leveraging plant-source foods for sustainable healthy diets

By Erick Boy, Inge Brouwer, Jen Foley, Natalia Palacios, Samuel Scott, and Victor Taleon

Integrating more fruits, vegetables, and other high-quality crops into food systems.

Research-backed policy to eliminate miniket rice in Bangladesh will improve nutrition
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 01, 2024

Research-backed policy to eliminate miniket rice in Bangladesh will improve nutrition

By Victor Taleon, Zakiul Hasan, and Jen Foley

Over-processing removes essential nutrients.

Research

Topics/Countries