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Who we are

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

Liangzhi You

Liangzhi You is a Senior Research Fellow and theme leader in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit, based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on climate resilience, spatial data and analytics, agroecosystems, and agricultural science policy. Gridded crop production data of the world (SPAM) and the agricultural technology evaluation model (DREAM) are among his research contributions. 

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Research by country and region

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Projects

The Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project is a three-year pilot project from 2015-2018 being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh. It is partially funded by USAID and the IFPRI-led CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), with technical assistance from IFPRI’s Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program (PRSSP) and Helen Keller International (HKI). The project aims to identify actions and investments in agriculture that can leverage agricultural development for improved nutrition, and make recommendations on how to invigorate pathways to women’s empowerment—particularly within agriculture. 

The ANGeL project explicitly recognizes the importance of gender along agriculture-nutrition impact pathways. It includes gender sensitization activities, based on a tool called Nurturing Connections, developed by HKI for use in Bangladesh at the community level with adult male and female household members (including grandparents) to foster communication, negotiation skills, mutual respect, and appreciation within families, even addressing topics such domestic violence and child marriage, and how they can be harmful to overall family health.  

The Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh plans to use the research-based evidence created by the pilot project to design, implement, and scale up the most effective country-wide interventions to improve nutrition and women’s empowerment.

Project duration: 2015 – 2018

Contact

Akhter Ahmed

Donors and funders

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Project partners

Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Helen Keller International (HKI)

Data Analysis and Technical Assistance (DATA)

Publications

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Journal Article

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

2024Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma
Details

Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh

In the context of rural Bangladesh, we assess whether agriculture training alone, nutrition behavior communication change (BCC) alone, combined agriculture training and nutrition BCC, or agriculture training and nutrition BCC combined with gender sensitization improve: (a) production diversity, either on household fields or through crop, livestock, or aquaculture activities carried out near the family homestead; and (b) diet diversity and the quality of household diets. All treatment arms were implemented by government employees. Implementation quality was high. No treatment increased production diversification of crops grown on fields. Treatment arms with agricultural training did increase the number of different crops grown in homestead gardens and the likelihood of any egg, dairy, or fish production but the magnitudes of these effect sizes were small. All agricultural treatment arms had, in percentage terms, large effects on measures of levels of homestead production. However, because baseline levels of production were low, the magnitude of these changes in absolute terms was modest. Nearly all treatment arms improved measures of food consumption and diet with the largest effects found when nutrition and agriculture training were combined. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality. Interventions that combine agricultural training and nutrition BCC can improve both production diversity and diet quality, but they are not a panacea. They can, however, contribute toward better diets of rural households.

Year published

2024

Authors

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona M.; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; Pereira, Audrey; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Roy, Shalini; Younus, Masuma

Citation

Ahmed, Akhter; Coleman, Fiona; Ghostlaw, Julie; Hoddinott, John F.; Menon, Purnima; Parvin, Aklima; et al. 2024. Increasing production diversity and diet quality: Evidence from Bangladesh. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 106(3): 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agriculture; Agricultural Training; Nutrition; Behaviour; Communication; Gender; Diversification; Production; Dietary Diversity; Aquaculture; Rural Areas; Households

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12427 Source record

Project

Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia

Record type

Journal Article

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Working Paper

Pakistan: A cost-benefit analysis of crop rotation practice in rainfed areas

2024Rana, Abdul Wajid; Gill, Sitara; Akram, Iqra
Details

Pakistan: A cost-benefit analysis of crop rotation practice in rainfed areas

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges confronting our global system today. The scientific community has clearly established that global temperatures are rising and the consequences of climate change may swiftly transition from an environmental risk to an economic threat. Agriculture sector is particularly vulnerable to changes in weather and climatic condition. Over 60% of the yield variability is chalked up to to climate change; significantly affecting food production and farmer income. Changes in climate affect the onset and duration of crop growing cycle, and the extent and duration of heat and water stress impact agriculture production. Moreover, it may trigger pest and disease outbreaks causing significant production losses. Small-scale farmers in rain-fed areas of Pakistan face the severe susceptibility to the challenges brought about by climate change. This vulnerability stems from their heavy dependence on traditional farming methods and their limited ability to adapt, exacerbated by their limited access to advanced technologies and high levels of poverty. Worldwide, crop yields from rainfed farming are approximately 50 percent less than those achieved through irrigated methods. In the absence of adaptation measures to cope with climate change, a potential decline of around 50 percent in rain-fed agricultural yields could potentially occur within the next 30-35 years. Promoting climate smart agricultural practices appears to be a dependable strategy for addressing risks posed by climate change.

Year published

2024

Authors

Rana, Abdul Wajid; Gill, Sitara; Akram, Iqra

Citation

Rana, Abdul Wajid; Gill, Sitara; and Akram, Iqra. 2024. Pakistan: A cost-benefit analysis of crop rotation practice in rainfed areas. Working Paper – Climate Smart Agriculture. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/139502

Country/Region

Pakistan

Keywords

Southern Asia; Asia; Agriculture; Climate Change; Crop Rotation; Rainfed Farming; Vulnerability

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Climate Resilience

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Working Paper

Can gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs improve resilience? Medium-term impacts of an intervention in Bangladesh

2023Hoddinott, John; Ahmed, Akhter; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Rakshit, Deboleena
Details

Can gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs improve resilience? Medium-term impacts of an intervention in Bangladesh

There are few studies that rigorously assess how agricultural and nutrition related interventions enhance resilience and even fewer that incorporate a gendered dimension in their analysis. Mindful of this, we address three knowledge gaps: (1) Whether agricultural interventions aimed at diversifying income sources and improving nutrition have sustainable impacts (on asset bases, consumption, gender-specific outcomes and women’s empowerment, and on diets) that persist after the intervention ends; (2) whether such interventions are protective when shocks occur? and (3) whether these interventions promote gender-sensitive resilience. We answer these questions using unique data, a four-year post-endline follow up survey of households from a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a nutrition-and-gender-sensitive agricultural intervention in Bangladesh. We find that treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training had sustainable effects on real per capita consumption, women’s empowerment (as measured by the pro-WEAI), and asset holdings measured four years after the original intervention ended. Treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training (with or without gender sensitization) reduced the likelihood that households undertook more severe forms of coping strategies and reduced the likelihood that household per capita consumption fell, in real terms, by more than five percent between in the four years following the end of the intervention. The treatment arm that only provided training in agriculture had positive impacts at endline but these had largely faded away four years later. Our results suggest that bundling nutrition and agriculture training may contribute to resilience as well as to sustained impacts on consumption, women’s empowerment, and asset holdings in the medium term. These have implications for the design of future gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs.

Year published

2023

Authors

Hoddinott, John; Ahmed, Akhter; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; Rakshit, Deboleena

Citation

Hoddinott, John; Ahmed, Akhter; Quisumbing, Agnes R.; and Rakshit, Deboleena. 2023. Can gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs improve resilience? Medium-term impacts of an intervention in Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2231. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Resilience; Agriculture; Nutrition; Gender; Women’s Empowerment

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.137085 Source record

Project

Gender Equality

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Informing policies with causal impact evaluations: Co-creation and trust matter
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 06, 2023

Informing policies with causal impact evaluations: Co-creation and trust matter

By Kibrom Abay, Akhter Ahmed, Clemens Breisinger, Naureen Karachiwalla, Sikandra Kurdi, and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse

IFPRI assessments provide key information for policymakers.

Lessons from a decade of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
IFPRI Blog
 | 
March 03, 2022

Lessons from a decade of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

By Emily Myers

An essential tool in assessing gender disparities driven by COVID-19, climate change, and other factors.

Is empowering women in agricultural development projects worth the investment? Yes, when done right.
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 02, 2019

Is empowering women in agricultural development projects worth the investment? Yes, when done right.

By Agnes Quisumbing, Joao Montalvao, and Markus Goldstein

A growing body of evidence shows that women's empowerment programs have substantive development impacts that go beyond the goal of gender equality for its own sake. 

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Events

Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Results Dissemination
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

June 6, 2018, 9:00 – 11:30 am

Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Results Dissemination

Preliminary results focusing on changes in agriculture production diversity, dietary diversity, infant and young child feeding practices, and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh.

Donors

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) led by IFPRI

Team members

Akhter Ahmed

Akhter Ahmed

Senior Research Fellow / Country Representative, IFPRI Bangladesh, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Akhter Ahmed

Akhter Ahmed

Senior Research Fellow / Country Representative, IFPRI Bangladesh, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Purnima Menon

Purnima Menon

Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions, Nutrition, Diets, and Health, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

Shalini Roy

Shalini Roy

Senior Research Fellow, Poverty,
Gender, and Inclusion

Other

Topics/Countries

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