IFPRI Publications: Books

Transforming agricultural support for a sustainable future: A Latin America and Caribbean view

Addressing the complex challenges facing agricultural and food systems requires a detailed and integrated approach that ensures food security, enhances nutrition, protects environmental sustainability, and supports livelihoods. Governments are crucial in guiding this transformation through a range of policy tools, including regulatory measures, market-based mechanisms, price adjustments that reflect true production costs, and the reassessment of agricultural subsidies. Achieving comprehensive solutions to these challenges across the domains of food security, nutrition, and sustainable development hinges on reforming domestic agricultural support.

Public stockholding programs and the WTO

The issue of how support for public stockholding (PSH) programs is calculated and disciplined within the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) has been a point of contention since 2012. PSH was largely uncontroversial during the Doha negotiations, where issues like the Special Safeguard Mechanism, domestic support, and cotton contributed to the collapse of negotiations in 2008 (Blustein 2009; Jones 2010; Margulis 2023). However, members who raised administered prices to keep up with surging market prices in the late 2000s found themselves facing potential challenges, as support levels for PSH programs threatened to exceed domestic support commitments under the AoA. At the Ministerial Conference in Bali in 2013 (MC 9), members agreed to an interim mechanism, which granted a “peace clause” to countries with existing PSH programs, effectively shielding them from challenges regarding compliance with domestic support obligations under the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism. Under the Bali Decision, members agreed to provide data on how the program operated and to ensure that such programs were not trade distorting or would not affect the food security of other WTO members. PSH remains controversial and members failed to reach agreement on a permanent solution at subsequent Ministerials in Nairobi, Buenos Aires and Geneva. More than 10 years later, failure to reach an agreement on PSH continues to block significant progress in overall negotiations.

Price volatility, export restrictions and the need for transparency

In this chapter, we explore how the WTO has struggled to fulfill its mission of advancing negotiations post the Uruguay Round. As export restrictions were not prioritized during the creation of GATT and the establishment of the WTO, this led to the utilization of export restrictions by countries, particularly in an unstable context, further exacerbating volatility in agricultural commodities. Moreover, as a result of an insufficient WTO notification system, countries have failed to promptly notify all measures. Furthermore, due to the paralysis of the Dispute Settlement Body, the WTO has lost its enforcement capacity, reducing the incentive for countries to engage in discussions within that forum, even when it is necessary to enhance transparency levels that provide greater certainty to dynamic and stressed markets, which is crucial for driving global food security and ensuring efficient allocation.

Agriculture negotiations priorities and sustainable development at the WTO

During a meeting of the WTO Committee on Agriculture in Special Session (CoASS) in June 2023, agricultural negotiators made new submissions on domestic support and export restrictions. Submissions on domestic support were made by the African Group, the Cairns Group -a coalition of developed and developing agricultural exporting economies-, and Costa Rica. The United Kingdom also submitted an analytical paper on export restrictions, making the case for WTO members to pursue more focused discussions on the food security impact of export restrictions on agricultural products, based on data and members’ experiences.

Proposed pathways for moving forward

In Chapter I, the introduction of this book, we present a succinct description of the many difficulties that the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its member countries have encountered over the last decade in their attempts to advance in negotiations toward agreements that could contribute to more open and transparent global trade and the discussions taking place as a result of these difficulties. Starting from this context, the rest of the book aims to contribute to three important themes that have emerged from recent discussions in the WTO. The selection of these themes and the authors’ proposals to solve these themes are influenced by the needs and perspectives of Latin America, specifically the region’s food-exporting countries.

Introduction: Creating context and unveiling crucial issues

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) was held in June 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland, after a year-long delay due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions and other disruptions. The same year, a new wave of export restrictions and trade disruptions resulted from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year, adding to the disruptions brought on by the pandemic. In many ways, these events were the beginning of geopolitical changes that have now led to a profound transformation in the structure of production and trade, including a growing tendency toward protectionism. MC13 took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in February 2024. Little progress was made in general, but especially in relation to agricultural trade. With respect to the latter, the main discussion centered on reducing trade-distorting agricultural subsidies to ensure fair competition, improving market access for developing countries by lowering tariff and nontariff barriers, addressing export restrictions to ensure stable supplies during food crises, and providing flexibility and support to developing countries through special and differential treatment. Additionally, strategies were discussed to enhance global food security amid challenges such as climate change and conflicts, aiming to create a more equitable and sustainable global agricultural trading system. However, positive outcomes from these discussions were few and not very significant.

Navigating the trade landscape: A Latin American perspective building on the WTO 13th ministerial conference

This publication-a joint effort by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)-is being released in the context of growing changes and fragmentation in global economic and trade relationships. Countries are increasingly adopting protectionist measures in response to recent crises and the decreased competitiveness of value chains, due to rising production, marketing and transportation costs. The complex multilateral trade system and the urgent need to implement concrete actions in this area are prompting countries to work towards the adoption of new standards that aim to protect and preserve the environment but could also become barriers to trade that impose a significant economic and social cost on other countries. The countries of the Americas must continue to support efforts to strengthen the multilateral trade system, ensuring that it is open, transparent and science-based, as well as to effectively participate in discussion forums such as the ministerial conferences of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Amidst this scenario, international trade plays a vital role in transforming food systems, by interconnecting them and contributing to creating a more sustainable global food system. In recent years, the growth of production and exports has converted Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) into the largest net food exporting region in the world. On average, agrifood exports from the region in 2021-2023 accounted for 17% of global agrifood exports, representing one fourth of total exports from the region. During that period, LAC agrifood exports grew by 7.6%. Yet, it bears mentioning that, despite its important role, the region has its share of challenges. During 2023, 85% of LAC agrifood exports were directed at external markets and 53% of the value of exported agrifood exports was concentrated among only 10 products. This demonstrates the region’s significant vulnerability and is undoubtedly a challenge that must be addressed. This document is an inter-institutional effort to share ideas and reflections on the main issues to be tackled building on the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference. We hope that it will serve as input in strengthening the participation of the countries of the Americas in WTO multilateral negotiations, while also highlighting the key role of agricultural trade in agrifood system transformation.

Shaping multilateral trade: The changing institutional landscape

This chapter highlights the fact that many international trade stakeholders agree on the urgent need to strengthen the multilateral trade system and its governing body, the World Trade Organization (WTO). This will mean that the WTO will need to strengthen its intrinsic negotiating function, in particular its ability to achieve results in different processes in the trade agenda, and particularly in the negotiations on agriculture. Indeed, it has failed to completely fulfill its mandate to deepen the reform process, through the adoption of key disciplines in the major negotiation pillars, among them, domestic support, export restrictions and the search for innovative options to fulfill the Bali mandate on the establishment of public entities to promote food security. Moreover, negotiations on other issues that are relevant to a significant group of countries, such as market access, are moving at their own pace. Undoubtedly, tackling major challenges such as food security and climate change will require innovation and the adoption of new technologies and science, in order to increase production and the productivity of agrifood systems. Production volume, quality and sustainability must be improved, without losing sight of the fact that producers are social and economic players in the countries whose economic activity must be profitable. It must also be mentioned that trade and national production play an important role in achieving global food security.

Climate smart agriculture and food systems that reduce poverty and hunger

Poor communities that rely on functioning food systems for their livelihoods are highly vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change while agri-food systems are significant emitters of greenhouse gases. This chapter reviews opportunities to scale up innovative technology and practices to transform food systems and to leverage climate action to reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition in line with the complementary Sustainable Development Goals. Drawing on country experiences – India, Tajikistan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Myanmar – with integrated strategies, it looks at how climate strategies such as nationally determined contributions can be aligned with national agricultural and antipoverty strategies; the need for multisector and multistakeholder action and participation; challenges to joint financing for climate action, poverty and hunger goals; and adapting government and donor systems to co-ordinate implementation.

Demographie

Sustainable cassava: Strategies from production through waste management

Sustainable Cassava: Strategies from Production through Waste Management presents viable approaches to promote sustainability in this globally important crop, enabling future generations to benefit. Presented in three parts, the first addresses cassava diversity and distribution, sustainable production and cultivation practices, and root processing innovations of the crop. Cassava trade policies and economic value chains, food safety and use of cassava, and agro-industrial cassava products are addressed in the second part. The third part focuses on bioeconomy aspects, cassava waste quality assessment, toxicology, sanitary practices, environmental risk assessment as well as sustainable management strategies for cassava waste using biotechnological and industrial advances. Addressing the need for a unified and standardized approach for the trade, management, and utilization of cassava genetic resources, finished products, and cassava processing wastes, the book also explores policy and governance structure for addressing environmental and economic issues emanating from their use.

Food environments: Improving their healthfulness

The food environment is the setting in which people choose what to eat, where they buy those foods, and where, when, and how they eat. This chapter examines some of the key challenges and opportunities for food environments amid the rapid transitions occurring in low- and middle-income countries. It presents examples of evidence-based food environment policies and actions that are being implemented to promote diet quality in a diverse range of countries. The conclusions reflect on potential policies for improving diets through changes in food environments, and discuss actions needed to move forward in strengthening the healthfulness of food environments.

Diets and nutrition: The potential of a food systems approach

As priorities in nutrition research and practice have evolved over time, food systems have increasingly become the organizing principle for work on nutrition and diets, with “food systems for sustainable healthy diets” emerging as the latest paradigm in nutrition. This chapter summarizes how learning from decades of work on the linkages between agriculture and nutrition paved the way to adopting the new food systems for sustainable healthy diets framework, and reflects on the emerging challenges and opportunities that arise for the nutrition community as we navigate this new global agenda.

Improved governance: Creating supportive environments for diet and nutrition policies

Most policy interventions to improve diet quality and nutrition require sound governance to be successful. Governance encompasses the interrelationships between formal institutions and informal modes of power, across different geographic scales, and among state and non-state actors. This chapter examines how multilevel and multistakeholder governance can be strengthened to improve diets, with a focus on enhancing state capacities, navigating corporate influence, and fostering citizen agency. The chapter highlights existing challenges in each of these areas while also discussing approaches that have potential to improve the governance environment at national and local scales.

Diet affordability: Understanding the high cost of healthy diets

As new metrics of healthy diet affordability have been developed in the past five years, it is estimated that between 2 and 3 billion people worldwide — mostly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) — cannot afford a healthy diet. The implications for human nutrition are striking: affordability is a binding constraint to achieving a healthy diet in the world’s poorest countries. This chapter poses several questions to initiate strategic thinking on possible responses to this challenge and recommends actions to support shifts toward healthy diets in LMICs.

Animal-source foods: Their role in sustainable healthy diets

As part of the rapid evolution of diets in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), consumption of animal-source foods (ASFs) has increased sharply in recent decades. This chapter examines ASFs as part of a sustainable healthy diet by exploring the beneficial role of ASFs in providing essential micronutrients in some age cohorts and populations in LMICs, the potential negative health impacts, and the environmental impacts associated with livestock production. It concludes with recommendations for ASF consumption, including policies and interventions for reducing excess consumption and promoting consumption where ASFs could play a larger role in sustainable healthy diets.

Demand-side approaches: Supporting healthier food choices

Understanding individual food choices and their net aggregate — which constitutes demand — is essential for any effort to reshape food systems to achieve broad nutrition and sustainability goals. This chapter presents an overview of food choice and consumer food demand in complex food systems, provides a summary of evidence for demand-side approaches to improve the healthfulness of diets, and identifies key areas where demand-side approaches can foster healthier food choices to achieve optimal health and nutrition.

Advancing nutrition: Food system policies and actions for healthy diets

Hunger, food insecurity, and unhealthy diets underpin many critical public health challenges, including all forms of malnutrition and diet-related noncommunicable diseases. These health outcomes, in turn, have short- and long-term impacts on the well-being and productivity of human populations worldwide. Amid these complex, interconnected challenges, the global focus on how to leverage food systems for nutrition has shifted toward sustainable healthy diets that promote well-being for both people and the planet. This chapter provides an overview of the thematic chapters of the 2024 Global Food Policy Report, which look at food demand and affordability, food environments, plant- and animal-source foods, and governance for sustainable healthy diets.

Global food policy report 2024: Food systems for healthy diets and nutrition

Food systems and diets underpin many critical challenges to public health and environmental sustainability, including malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and climate change, but sustainable healthy diets have the unique potential to reshape the future for both human and planetary well-being. The 2024 Global Food Policy Report draws on recent evidence to examine the role of food systems in driving nutrition outcomes and opportunities for transforming food systems to ensure healthy diets for all. Chapters by IFPRI researchers and partners evaluate proven and innovative ways to sustainably improve diet quality and reduce malnutrition, including ways to make healthy diets more affordable, accessible, and desirable, how to improve food environments, the role of both agricultural crops and animal-source foods, and governance for better diets and nutrition, all with a major focus on the most vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. Regional sections explore the diverse challenges countries face and promising policy responses for transforming food systems for sustainable healthy diets. For information on the launch event, go to https://www.ifpri.org/event/improving-diets-and-nutrition-through-food-systems-what-will-it-take To see more on this report and past reports, go to https://gfpr.ifpri.info

Regional developments [in 2024 Global Food Policy Report]

The regional section of the 2024 Global Food Policy Report examines the evolving problem of malnutrition—including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity—in low- and middle-income countries across the world’s major regions. Policy interventions are highlighted that address the particular challenges and opportunities in each region, with recommendations that aim to transform food systems to make healthier, more diverse, and more sustainable diets available, affordable, accessible, and desirable for everyone, including the most vulnerable. Africa: Diverse diet and nutrition conditions in Africa call for targeted strategies to increase the supply, affordability, and consumption of healthy foods, especially for the most vulnerable. Addressing the high burden of micronutrient deficiencies and undernutrition in the region will require lever¬aging local, national, regional, and continental food systems to increase the supply and reduce the cost of nutritious foods. This regional section discusses the importance of contextualizing evidence-based multisectoral policy and program approaches, and strengthening people’s resilience and capacity to cope with global threats posed by climate change, conflicts, and other shocks to support a shift to sustainable healthy diets. Middle East and North Africa: To achieve sustainable healthy diets in the Middle East and North Africa, multifaceted policy approaches are needed to boost the resilience of food systems to frequent shocks, which raise food prices and affect diet quality. National policy responses need to consider the region’s double burden of malnutrition along with other vulnerabilities, including climate change, water scarcity, and conflict, as well as more effective targeting of social protection for the most vulnerable groups, and reform of food subsidies to improve diets. Central Asia: Food systems in Central Asia face serious challenges related to diet quality and nutrition. Obstacles include the high cost of a healthy diet, inadequate nutrition knowledge, unhealthy consumption habits, and domestic and regional policies. This regional section discusses the additional impact of climate change, unstable commodity markets, and a heavy reliance on remittances and undiversified trade flows, and highlights several policy interventions that have potential to transform Central Asian food systems. South Asia: In South Asia, where levels of malnutrition are high and rates of diet-related noncommunicable diseases are rising, a shift toward healthier, more sustainable diets will require allocating more resources to promote production and consumption of non-staple foods. This regional section explores “crop-neutral” policies that would allow farmers to respond to market sig¬nals and contribute to diversification in domestic food production that could also reduce poverty. Taxes on foods high in fat, sugar, and salt could help slow the rapid increase in consumption of these foods, and effective front-of-package labeling can promote healthy food choices. East and Southeast Asia: Major challenges to achieving sustainable healthy diets in East and Southeast Asia include poor food standards, lack of consideration of diets and health in trade policies, and changing food demand. This regional section highlights multi-duty policy actions that are needed to address the double burden of malnutrition and its drivers, including rapid urbanization, income growth, and environmental changes. Policy reforms must consider the needs and preferences of diverse populations in the region, support the agency of the most marginalized producers and consumers, and strengthen regional cooperation to make diverse, healthy food available and accessible for all. Latin America and the Caribbean: To achieve sustainable healthy diets, the Latin America and Caribbean region will require both demand- and supply-side solutions, as well as changes in food environments to increase demand for healthy foods. This regional section discusses the complex challenge of identifying the most effective policies and standards to tackle malnutrition and obstacles to accessing and affording healthy diets. It highlights the importance of clearly defining objectives, strengthening social protection programs, addressing the driv¬ers of obesity and overweight, and increasing the availability and affordability of nutritious foods, while maintaining and expanding the region’s crucial role in global food security and nutrition.

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.

Land tenure change and agricultural production and productivity in Uzbekistan

Sustainable Development Goal 1: Ending poverty

What is food security?

Epilogue: The significant role of public policy analysis and evidence in informing policy change and informing our future

Approaches to population estimations and their use in food policy analysis in urban settings

Approaches to analysing labour productivity in agriculture and food systems

Approaches to assessing malnutrition and its impact on food security

Approaches to assessing the impact of poor sanitation on child nutrition

Assessing the economics of fuel for food: Approaches to assessment of time allocations for household chores and roles

Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good health and well-being

Handbook on public policy and food security

The Handbook on Public Policy and Food Security provides multi-disciplinary insight into food security analysis across the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As food security is an essential outcome and a part of sustainable and healthy food systems, this Handbook addresses the urgent need to provide a comprehensive overview of the field’s current developments.

Introduction to public policy and food security

With less than a decade to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition continue to threaten far too many lives worldwide. Around 2.3 billion people worldwide were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021 (Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), et al., 2022). Just under 12 per cent of the global population faced food insecurity at severe levels in 2021, with between 702 and 828 million people affected by hunger (FAO et al., 2022). According to the FAO et al. (2022), the prevalence of undernourishment jumped from 8.0 per cent in 2019 to 9.3 per cent in 2020, but rose more slowly in 2021 to reach 9.8 per cent of the world’s population. Progress towards the SDGs is threatened by ongoing and developing crises and challenges affecting global food availability and distribution as well as a mix of complex economic, political and social access to food.

Policies and policy instruments to address food security in Asian developing and developed economies

Reaching smallholder women with information services and resilience strategies to respond to climate change

The project Reaching Smallholder Women with Information Services and Resilience Strategies to Respond to Climate Change aimed to increase the climate resilience of poor women and men farmers in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia — especially those in Kenya, Uganda, and India — by overcoming the gendered information gap on accessing climate-smart agricultural (CSA) approaches. The project did this through piloting participatory video-based extension on CSA approaches with more than 30,000 farmers in the three countries. The notes in this collection summarize the key methods and findings from the study. It is hoped that they will inspire similar projects and programs that together will help eliminate the gap between rural men and women in resources, agency, and achievement once and for all. This book is a compilation of 12 policy notes. Links can be found in the ‘Policy Notes’ file available for download on this page.

Solving global nutrition and dietary challenges: More than proteins

The global focus on protein transition must not detract attention from other nutritional and dietary challenges that are at least as important, specifically the high prevalence of vitamin and mineral deficiencies in low-and middle-income countries. Unlike in many high-income countries, low- and middle-income countries may benefit from increased access to and consumption of animal-sourced foods. Policymakers should set locally tailored dietary guidelines and look beyond proteins to the food system as a whole.

Food systems transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the past and policy options for the future

The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment, and it is widely expected to address key food and agricultural challenges with a new set of policies and programs. This policy brief presents key recommendations from a forthcoming book, Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, which provides research-based “food for thought and action” to support the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve food security.

Agricultural productivity in Kenya: 2000-2020

Agriculture is key to economic growth and poverty reduction in Kenya as it plays a pivotal role in employment creation, food security, exports, and sustainable development. In 2019, it directly contributed 22.7 percent of GDP, accounted for 20.9 percent of total exports, and generated 43.3 percent of employment (Chapter 2). The sector is thus not only an important driver of Kenya’s economy but also the means of livelihood for many Kenyan people. Given the economic and social importance of agriculture in Kenya, policies have revolved around the main goal of increasing productivity and incomes, especially for smallholders, to enhance food security and equity, with an emphasis on production intensification, commercialization, and environmental sustainability (Alila and Atieno 2006). In this context, the declining perfor mance of the sector measured in terms of its growth has been a major concern for policymakers. This file includes the introduction to Part Three.

Gender and food systems in Kenya: A case study of the poultry value chain in eastern Kenya

Women are key stakeholders in sustainable and resilient food systems, given their roles as primary food producers and household caretakers (Visser and Wangu 2021). Understanding how gendered roles affect food security and women’s well-being is essential for pursuing sustainable development (Angel-Urdinola and Wodon 2010; Doss, Meinzen-Dick, and Quisumbing 2018; Meinzen-Dick et al. 2019). Their participation in agriculture is documented widely, but there is a need for more gendered data on the roles of men and women in different contexts and agricultural value chains, including livestock value chains (Micere Njuki et al. 2016; Richardson 2018; Doss and Rubin 2021; Njuki et al. 2021). This file also includes the introduction to Part Five.

Assessing the resilience of Kenya’s food system: A production approach

A food system includes all elements (environment, people, inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, including socioeconomic and environmental outcomes (HLPE 2017). Thus, a food system links society and nature (Blesh and Wittman 2015). Resilience is “the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth” (USAID 2018). Applied to food systems, resilience is defined by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) as the ability to withstand major shocks and stressors emanating from climate/weather, conflict, disease, external economic shocks, and other sources, which, if not prevented or mitigated, would delay, or limit economic progress, transformation, prosperity, and self-reliance (AGRA 2021). In this sense, resilience of a food system may be considered a system property that plays a critical role in its sustainability (Jacobi et al. 2018), thus ensuring sustained food security. This chapter adopts this definition with the objective of assessing the resilience of Kenya’s food system and its components using systemwide metrics. Specifically, we use a production approach based on input–output linkages. This file also includes the introduction to Part Four.

Transforming food systems through risk-contingent credit in rural Africa: Development, experimentation, and evaluation

Throughout Africa, climate change is posing severe challenges to agricultural production and food security. Agricultural risks—particularly those associated with drought—are a major cause of low agricultural productivity in most African countries, including Kenya. According to the Government of Kenya, four consecutive years (2008–2011) of drought caused US$12.1 billion in losses, accounting for about 8 percent of GDP, including losses in assets and disruptions to the economy across sectors (Kenya, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries 2014). Currently, Kenya is in the middle of an acute drought following three consecutive poor rainy seasons. This has led to a drop in crop production nationally of about 70 percent, which has disproportionately exposed the communities of arid and semi-arid lands to hunger and malnutrition.

Introduction [in Food systems transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the past and policy options for the future]

The whole world has experienced a series of global and local crises since 2019, and Kenya has been no exception. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, poverty and food poverty rates in the country had been declining steadily, falling from 52.3 percent to 36.1 percent and from 38.3 percent to 26.7 percent, respectively, between 1997 and 2016 (KNBS 2007, 2018). Income inequality also declined in the period from 1994 to 2015/16 (KNBS 2020). Estimates suggest that, since then, progress in poverty reduction has reversed, as a result of COVID-19 (Nafula et al. 2020), and that the impacts of the Ukraine and global crises have further increased poverty levels and the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet (Breisinger et al. 2022). In addition, ongoing droughts in the arid and semiarid areas of Kenya meant that an estimated 3.5 million people were in need of assistance in May 2022 (UNICEF 2022).

Mechanization of agricultural production in Kenya: Current state and future outlook

Agricultural mechanization is the use of machinery, equipment, and implements—rather than human or animal power—to carry out agricultural practices. When the use of mechanization is sufficiently high, it can help improve the overall efficiency of food systems, reduce the costs of producing outputs and providing services, enhance economies of scale, and raise labor productivity and incomes (FAO and AUC 2018; Diao, Takeshima, and Zhang 2020). While mechanized practices are traditionally thought of in terms of tilling, seed drilling, and spraying, in recent years mechanization has been considered to include broader applications along the food system, such as irrigation, postharvest cleaning of harvests, cold storage, value addition, and processing.

A way forward: Policy-driven transformation

This book has adopted a food systems framework as a new way of conceptualizing and designing food policies and research. Looking beyond agriculture and value chains makes it possible not only to turn food systems into a driver of economic transformation but also to better include health, productivity, resilience, inclusivity, and sustainability as integral parts of system transformation. Such a fresh approach is urgently needed in light of limited development progress over the past years in Kenya and other countries. The share of manufacturing—traditionally a driver of economic transformation—in total output remains low; maize yields have been stagnating for the past 20 years; and poverty and food insecurity are on the rise again (Nafula et al. 2020; FAOSTAT 2022). In addition to structural challenges, growing challenges and vulnerabilities such as the threat of pandemics, commodity price crises, climate change, and conflicts, call for a new development and food policy paradigm (Breisinger et al. 2022; UNICEF 2022). At the same time, such a fresh approach can also help in harnessing the new opportunities that come with digitalization and with (policy) lessons from other countries that can be adapted to the Kenyan context.

An enabling environment for the national flour blending policy: A food systems analysis

A national flour blending policy is about to be implemented in Kenya. This requires maize flour (the country’s main staple) to be blended with at least 10 percent of either one or a composite of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet.1 The blending ratio is expected to increase gradually, with the goal of ultimately reaching 30 percent. The policy envisages achieving several goals. The first is to improve the nutritional quality of maize flour: sorghum and millet (and other candidate blending crops) have micronutrient characteristics that are absent in maize. The second is to promote more climate-tolerant crops and technologies: sorghum and millet can be grown in less favorable arid and semiarid lands (ASALs), in the very conditions that many farmers face in Kenya. This is particularly important given that maize is more susceptible than other staple crops to climate change. The third is to reduce the country’s overreliance on imported maize and concerns about its food sovereignty. This file includes the introduction to Part Six.

Toward sustainable transformation through postharvest management: Lessons from Kenya’s mango value chain

Management of postharvest food loss and waste (FLW) is an important strategy in efforts to sustainably meet the food and nutrition needs of the world’s growing population. Sustainable food systems are critical to achieving food security and nutrition for all, now and in the future. Food systems cannot be sustainable when a large proportion of the food produced using limited resources is lost or wasted in the supply chain. At the global level, it is estimated that poor postharvest management means this is the case for 30 percent of the food produced for human consumption (FAO 2011, 2019). The figure for Kenya is similar (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives 2018). The 2021 Food Waste Index Report (UNEP 2021) indicates that every Kenyan wastes about 100 kg of food every year, which adds up to 5.2 million metric tons1 per year, excluding food loss that happens upstream, from production to retail. In monetary terms, wasteful consumption accounts for slightly over US$500 million annually (Mbatia 2021). FLW exacerbates food insecurity and has negative impacts on the environment through waste of precious land, water, farm inputs, and energy used in producing food that is not consumed. In addition, postharvest losses, caused by poor storage conditions, reduce income to farmers and contribute to higher food prices.

Climate insurance: Opportunities for improving agricultural risk management in Kenya

Climate change represents a major challenge to food systems. It is associated not only with rising average temperatures but also with less predictable weather and changes in humidity, with severe consequences for agricultural production, input markets, aggregation, processing, distribution, and consumption. Negative impacts on food production can raise consumer prices, potentially leading to social unrest and conflict; increased temperatures and changes in humidity require stronger cold chains and improved storage facilities to avoid postharvest damage (de Brauw and Pacillo 2022). This chapter highlights several innovations in climate insurance that were developed and tested in Kenya with the aim of improving smallholder farmers’ ability to manage the production risks associated with climate change.

Kenya’s agrifood system: Overview and drivers of transformation

The 2010s were a decade of strong economic development in Kenya. Gross domestic product (GDP)—an indicator of the economy’s size—expanded by an average of 5 percent per year (KNBS 2022). This exceeded population growth and helped raise household incomes, leading to a decline in poverty rates and, more importantly, in the number of poor people, for the first time in at least three decades (World Bank 2022). Agriculture played an important role in this. The sector grew alongside the rest of the economy, despite facing many challenges, including climate variability (Ochieng et al. 2020), weak rural infrastructure (Benin and Odjo 2018), shrinking farm sizes (Jayne et al. 2016), and inaccessibility of farm inputs combined with poor agronomic management (Worku et al. 2020). Agriculture, as part of the broader food system, also contributed to growth in downstream or off-farm sectors and helped cushion the economic damage resulting from COVID-19 in 2020 (Pauw, Smart, and Thurlow 2021). This file includes the introduction to Part One.

Agricultural inputs in Kenya: Demand, supply, and the policy environment

Agricultural inputs, including fertilizers, seeds, breeding stock, crop protection chemicals, machinery, irrigation, and knowledge, are key to innovation and productivity improvement, and are the backbone of any agricultural revolution. They are an integral part of the food supply chain, which comprises the production and distribution of food, and as such a key component of the food system (HLPE 2017). The food supply chain involves various actors at different stages of the chain but this chapter focuses only on agricultural inputs, including both farm inputs and agricultural advisory services.

Intensification of the maize-based farming: What happened to the maize green revolution?

Maize is the major food crop in eastern and southern Africa, including Kenya. Maize-based farming systems make up the largest proportion of agricultural land, and maize is central to the food system, in both rural and urban areas. Because of its importance, maize has received wide attention from the government, including in policy and research. As a result, Kenya has been at the forefront of the “maize green revolution” in Africa (Hassan and Karanja 1997; Hassan, Njoroge et al. 1998c). It was one of the first countries in Africa (with South Africa and Zimbabwe) to develop its own maize hybrids and combine them with fertilizer in demonstration trials, demonstrations, and dis semination (Hassan and Karanja 1997). In both South Africa and Zimbabwe, the settler communities continued to dominate commercial maize production (Eicher 1995), but in Kenya, indigenous African farmers took over most of the maize production right after independence.

Fresh produce value chains in Kenya: Challenges and prospects for enhanced market access and inclusion of smallholders

Contract farming is one potential mechanism that smallholder farmers in developing countries can use to participate in and benefit from domestic and global value chains (Okello and Swinton 2007; Barrett et al. 2012; Minot and Sawyer 2016; Ruben 2017; Ton et al. 2017). Linking smallholder farmers more directly with national and global consumers should increase both the demand and producer prices for their fresh produce. Increased access to and participation in such value chains increases farm income earned by smallholders. Improvements in inclusion and efficiency of value chains are vital to enhance the effectiveness of contracting models, and to enhance the market access and integration of smallholders. Inclusion is important because large buyers, including processors, modern retailers, and exporters, are often hesitant to engage with small and marginal farmers and may prefer working through brokers, which reduces benefits to farmers. Also, market integration is becoming increasingly important for smallholders in order to avoid marginalization of the less organized sector in the more organized, growing global fresh produce market (Ruben 2017; Ton et al. 2017).

Digital innovations and agricultural transformation in Africa: Lessons from Kenya

Digital innovation is a key feature in the global and national discourse on food systems transformation. Efforts to better integrate food systems—defined here as the constellation of actors and their activities originating from agriculture, livestock, forestry, or fisheries, as well as the broader economic, societal, and natural environments in which they operate, including the production, aggregation, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of food products (Dwivedi et al. 2017; FAO 2018; Njuki et al. 2021)—will depend partly on how digital technologies can be used to bolster engagement, coordination, and innovation among a wider and more inclusive set of actors, including marginalized and vulnerable groups (Benfica et al. 2021).

Youth engagement in agriculture and food systems transformation in Kenya

Food systems incorporate many actors at different intersecting levels and spaces. Young people1 constitute one of the most significant groups of these actors and contribute significantly to food systems in a variety of ways, from agricultural production and processing to food-related retail services, through formal and informal employment, paid and unpaid labor, and self employment. In addition to engaging through work and livelihoods, young people are involved in research, conservation, and knowledge acquisition and transmission. They also participate in consumer pressure groups and social movements raising awareness on the need for food system transformation and demanding climate change action. Through all these contributions, young people support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal targets such as those on food security, economic growth, poverty reduction, and environ mental sustainability (HLPE 2021; FAO and AUC 2022).

Food safety in Kenya: Status, challenges, and proposed solutions

Foodborne disease—that is, disease caused by consuming foods contaminated with biological or chemical hazards—is an important and often underrecognized public health concern in low- and middle-income countries around the world, including Kenya. While comprehensive national statistics on the foodborne disease burden are not available, the best available evidence from the region indicates that diseases transmitted via contaminated food have a greater impact on public health in Africa than either tuberculosis or diabetes (Havelaar et al. 2015; GBDCN 2016). Beyond its contribution to illness and death, foodborne disease also plays a role in child stunting, which remains a persistent problem in Kenya, affecting 16 percent of children (KNBS and ICF 2023). One study based on 20 years of data from 5 countries attributed 25 percent of stunting to repeated diarrheal episodes (Checkley et al. 2008), many of which can be traced to microbial contamination of food.

Livestock sector transformation in Kenya: Current state and projections for the future

The livestock sector plays a major role in the Kenyan food system, contributing about 12 percent of the country’s overall GDP and 40 percent of agricultural GDP, and employing about half of the agricultural labor force (Kenya Markets Trust 2019a). The livestock sector also contributes 22 percent of food system GDP. Projections from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) indicate that the country’s population will continue to grow, and may reach around 96 million by 2050, with nearly 50 percent residing in urban areas by then compared with 27 percent in 2019 (FAO 2019; MacMillan 2019). Demand for animal-source foods is expected to grow substantially with this population growth and as higher numbers of affluent and more urban consumers seek nutrient-rich foods and more diversified diets (FAO 2019). This change in demand could potentially drive exponential growth in the livestock sector, generating new business opportunities along various livestock value chains. Realizing such growth will require concerted investments to support increased productivity and enhanced natural resource management, including enhanced water availability and management, to ensure sustainable growth of the sector (ILRI 2019; Bosire et al. 2022).

Breeding efforts on grain micronutrient enhancement in pearl millet

Mobile money mitigates the negative effects of weather shocks: Implications for risk sharing and poverty reduction in Bangladesh

Frequent weather shocks stemming from global climate change are significant for rural and poor households. Floods deprive households’ assets and agricultural production, resulting in a reduction of household income. Moreover, droughts substantially reduce crop yields, inducing food insecurity. For example, South Asian countries confront various climate risks such as extreme floods and cyclones with the idiosyncrasies of summer and monsoon rainfall having short- and long-term impacts on the lives of more than 1 billion people (Turner and Annamalai 2012). To cope with climate shocks, adaptive strategies are urgently needed. Existing literature points to the potential effectiveness of financial services, such as microfinance and weather index insurance, in response to the shocks. Rural financial services challenge transaction costs that render markets for financial services costly or missing. The emergence of digital technologies such as mobile phones and mobile or digital money recreate rural markets for savings, credit, and insurance services, especially in developing economies. In recent years, mobile phones have been widely adopted in developing countries contributing to economic growth. Bangladesh has also experienced an expansion of mobile phone subscriptions. This in turn has led to the development of mobile money services enabling people to transfer, deposit, and withdraw money from an online account without having a bank account (Suri et al. 2023). Mobile money greatly reduces transaction costs, while enhancing the convenience, security, and time taken for transactions. Since mobile money allows people to transfer and deposit money using short message services without access to the internet and overcomes the challenges of formal insurance, it is important that we examine how mobile money can help households smooth their consumption in Bangladesh where the number of mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people was over 100 in 2020, but the ratio of individual internet users remained at only 25% in 2020.

Sino-Asia agricultural trade and development cooperation: Progress, challenges, and outlook

This book includes twelve chapters on agricultural trade and cooperation in Asia, which cover both the review of agricultural development in selected countries and analyses of their development linkages through trade and cooperation. Specific attention has been given to agricultural trade between China and the rest of developing Asia, as China has become the second largest country in agricultural trade, and the unique importance remains for trade partners in Asia due to geographic proximity. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also reveal how the global regime of agricultural trade and the Sino-Asia agricultural trade, in particular, has been affected. Overall, the book aims to enhance understanding of the progress, challenges, and outlooks of the Sino-Asia agricultural trade and highlight the room for further cross-country collaborations in agricultural development.

African food systems transformation and the post-Malabo agenda

This year marks 20 years of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which was broadened under the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The 2023 Annual Trends and Outlook Report generates evidence on the implementation of the CAADP/Malabo agenda and thus contributes to the design of the post-Malabo phase of CAADP implementation. The report assesses the current state of Africa’s food systems, explores strategic issues related to food systems transformation, and reflects on necessary methodologies and approaches to provide a better understanding of key challenges and necessary actions to accelerate transformation.

Investing in science, technology, and innovation for sustainable, productivity-led agricultural growth

A forensic framework and decision support system for harmonized and holistic food system resilience and sustainability analysis

Today, many innovative food system transformation programs are taking place in several parts of the world, including developing, and low-income countries as well as those in Africa south of the Sahara (Benfica et al. 2023). Notably, in Africa, food systems are at a crossroads, facing several endogenous and exogenous shocks and stressors. Approximately 282 million people in Africa are undernourished, with a prevalence of 22.8 percent as measured by the prevalence of undernourishment, a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator (FAO et al. 2017; Agyemang and Kwofie 2021). Furthermore, continuous floods and droughts in many parts of the continent have reduced food security and calorie intake, respectively, by 5–20 percent and 1.4 percent below 2019 levels (Balgah et al. 2023). By 2050, climate change is anticipated to slow the fight against hunger, with an estimated 78 million people in Africa projected to experience chronic hunger in addition to the current numbers (Hasegawa et al. 2018). The individual and combined effects of external shocks and stressors on the African food system, including climate change, soil degradation, price fluctuations, political conflict, and widespread fragility, have created a complex risk environment that threatens food security and the overall well-being of many Africans. Against the above background, there is a consensus within the scientific and policy advocacy community that the African food system is flawed.

A paradigm shift in food safety for Africa

Food safety systems globally, and more so in Africa, have not kept pace with the complexity of food safety challenges. In Africa, these challenges include, inter alia, fragmented food safety management and mandate, and poor investment and budgetary finances on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS)related quality infrastructures (Jaffee and Henson 2004; Czubala, Shepherd, and Wilson 2009; PAQI 2020). The challenges are further aggravated by the poor food safety culture in the continent. These challenges of unsafe food have undermined the pace and state of food system transformation in the continent. This is because unsafe foods adversely impact public health but also thwart efforts at boosting trade in food and agricultural commodities and reduce agricultural trade (Jaffee et al. 2019; Kareem, Martínez-Zarzoso, and Brümmer 2022), thereby leading to loss of earnings and income (Kareem, Martínez-Zarzoso, and Brümmer 2022; Kareem and Martínez-Zarzoso 2020). In addition, unsafe food undermines the potential and actual gains in improving food security and nutrition.

Gender and food systems: Avenues for transformation?

Worldwide, approximately 1.23 billion people are employed in agrifood systems, and 3.83 billion live in households that are linked to or reliant on these systems in some way (Davis et al. 2023). In Africa, experts estimate that between two-thirds and four-fifths of all jobs are in agrifood systems; nonagricultural agrifood system jobs account for only a small portion of this employment and are mainly concentrated in urban areas (Davis et al. 2023). Population growth and rapid urbanization, the growing risks of climate change, and persistent problems of malnutrition all mean that rural and urban African agrifood systems need to transform both substantially and rapidly to achieve the goals of sustainable, equitable, and healthy food systems.

Economics of climate adaptation for resilient food systems in Africa

Tracking key CAADP indicators and implementation processes

2023 marks two decades since the 2003 launch of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), a continentwide framework for agriculture-led development. The implementation of CAADP has coincided with a period of strong agricultural and economic growth across Africa. CAADP has been credited with galvanizing increased recognition by the international community of the key role agriculture plays in broader economic development on the continent (Benin et al. 2018). After the first decade of implementation, the CAADP agenda was deepened through the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods (AUC 2014). Through the Malabo Declaration, African leaders recommitted to the principles and values of CAADP, including evidence-based planning, dialogue, and review, and reaffirmed the original CAADP targets of achieving 6 percent annual agricultural growth and 10 percent of public expenditures being directed to agriculture. The 2014 Declaration further expanded the CAADP commitments to include sharply reducing hunger and poverty, expanding intra-continental trade, building resilience to the adverse effects of climate change, and strengthening mutual accountability for CAADP-focused actions and results to advance agricultural transformation in Africa. The CAADP Biennial Review was designated as the operational tool to monitor the progress of African countries toward achieving these commitments.

Introduction [in African food systems transformation and the post-Malabo agenda]

This year marks 20 years of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which was launched with the Maputo Declaration in 2003. With CAADP, African leaders committed to promoting agricultural growth as a key catalyst of broader economic development. After the first decade of CAADP implementation, characterized by strong agricultural and economic growth across the continent, the CAADP agenda was broadened under the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The Malabo Declaration reaffirmed the commitments of African heads of state to the original CAADP targets of achieving a 6 percent agricultural growth rate and a 10 percent agricultural expenditure share, while adding further commitments to be achieved by 2025 in areas including nutrition, poverty, resilience, and trade.

Food system diagnostics and policy implications: The Malawi case

Food systems are at the heart of Africa’s economic growth and development plan, Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. Without ending hunger and improving the food and nutrition status of Africa’s population, the agenda’s first aspiration for a “prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development” cannot be effectively reached. To realize this aspiration, African countries need to progressively implement the seven Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) Malabo commitments while having strategies to address wider food system challenges (AU 2023). The concept of a food system has various definitions, but for the purposes of this chapter, a food system is considered as a network of actors or players and their activities along the entire food value chain from inputs to production, distribution, and consumption. This aligns with the definition espoused by the Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), that food systems are constitutive of food actors and their interlinked activities from production all the way to consumption or utilization (von Braun et al. 2020).

Bioeconomy: A path to African food system transformation

2023 ATOR: The call for nutrition-smart food systems

A shift from agriculture to manufacturing was one of the hallmarks of job creation, poverty reduction, and rapid growth in low-income countries during the latter half of the 20th century. This experience in earlier decades of structural transformation was characterized by labor-absorbing, productivity-increasing manufacturing. Recent structural change in African countries has been markedly different—productivity gains are realized through reallocation of economic activity away from agriculture without the accompanying within-sector productivity growth in nonagriculture, and manufacturing in particular (Diao, McMillan, and Rodrik 2019; Diao et al., 2021; McMillan and Zeufack 2022). This chapter examines the extent to which agrifood processing follows these trends.

Conclusion: Toward resilient and sustainable African food systems

The 2023 ATOR aims to inform the design of the post-Malabo phase of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The comprehensive discussions provided in this report offer a multifaceted blueprint to transform Africa’s food systems in the post-Malabo era. From the in-depth analysis of the implementation challenges and successes of the Malabo Declaration to the exploration of cutting-edge approaches in bioeconomy and technology, this volume paves the way for a holistic and inclusive approach to food systems transformation in Africa. The findings underscore that while significant progress has been made in certain areas, such as the implementation of the CAADP/Malabo agenda, considerable challenges remain. These challenges are multidimensional, involving policy, institutional, and infrastructural barriers, and will need to be addressed with evidence-based, sustainable, and inclusive policies and practices.

Committing to transform food systems: Responsiveness of food systems transformation pledges by African governments to the WHO priority food systems policies and food-related CAADP biennial review performance categories

For several decades, Africa’s food security situation has been dire. However, that dire state has recently been complicated by rising rates of overweight and obesity and other diet-related noncommunicable diseases. By 2030, noncommunicable diseases are predicted to become the leading cause of death on the continent amid other pandemic and economic challenges. Several interventions have been deployed to address the emerging challenges. African heads of state and government have been committing, declaring, pledging, and developing national and regional nutrition strategies, and they have envisioned the Africa they would want by 2063—the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Other actions include commitments made as part of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. With less than a decade to go to meet the 2030 agenda for transforming food systems in a sustainable way, we must ask whether these new commitments and recommitments can fulfill that promise. In this chapter, we assess the responsiveness of some African nations’ commitments to (1) the World Health Organization’s food priority policy actions, and (2) select Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Biennial Review performance categories. Both actions are touted as game changers—actions that have the potential to pave the way for the needed changes in Africa’s food systems.

Data challenges and opportunities for food systems transformation in Africa

African food systems began to transform during the last decade in response to higher agricultural productivity growth, rising per capita incomes, a growing middle class, and rapid urbanization. Africa’s emerging food systems transformation was also driven by changes in food consumption patterns (dietary transformation) and the growth of small and medium enterprises operating in downstream and midstream segments of food supply chains such as processing and distribution (Tschirley, Haggblade, and Reardon 2014; Reardon et al. 2015). These changes have contributed to greater availability and consumption of highly processed and high-calorie foods, which have been significant drivers of the growth in overweight and obesity and related noncommunicable diseases on the continent (Ecker and Fang 2016), as well as having far-reaching implications for nutrition and the sustainability of African food systems as a whole.

Seven years of implementation of the Malabo Declaration: Making sense of the Malabo theory of change

The youth dividend and agricultural revival in India

Fifty-four per cent of India’s population is under 25 years of age and, as per the 2011 Population Census, close to 34 per cent of India’s rural population belonged to the age group 15–34. While the presence of a sizeable young population is believed to offer a demographic dividend, policy efforts to realize the dividend have not met with success. Poor prospects for livelihoods within agriculture, its declining importance as a sector in the national economy, and aspirations of rural youth and their parents to find futures in nonfarm sectors suggest that, like elsewhere, agriculture today is an unlikely option for the young in India. The chapter brings the question of youth in agriculture into focus. Despite a large share of rural youth involved in farming, there is limited research or policy attention on the issues and challenges that they face around farming, non-farm opportunities, succession, and intergenerational transfer of resources and knowledge. It makes the case for improving the livelihood prospects within agriculture in a context of changing youth aspirations. We argue that a clearer understanding of the issues is essential to frame a nuanced approach to support the role of youth in agriculture and the role of agriculture in youth livelihood strategies.

“I had to bear this burden”: Youth transcending constraints to become farmers in Madhya Pradesh, India

In the context of a wider trend in India of young people’s reluctance to pursue farming as an occupation, the experience of young farmers in Madhya Pradesh provides evidence to the contrary. This case study of two districts in Madhya Pradesh suggests that several young farmers, given a choice, would rather engage in agriculture as a full-time activity. In this, the main barriers for young farmers are in the form of larger constraints such as water availability, the quality of land, and these farmers’ limited ability to expand farm size through land purchase. To be sure, several young farmers feel stuck in agriculture and are waiting to find off-farm jobs. Even for this group of farmers, however, agriculture seems to provide a fallback option, in a context where these off-farm jobs are difficult to obtain and often are of poor quality. As in many other contexts, significant differences exist between young men and women in terms of their aspirations to become farmers and their ability to fulfill these aspirations.

China’s accession to the WTO and its impact on global agricultural trade

China’s rapid rise as a leading global exporter of manufacturing goods since its accession to the WTO in 2001 has been the focus of both admiration and, increasingly, concern (Mavroidis and Sapir, 2021). But it is sometimes overlooked that China is also a large importer of goods, particularly agricultural products. Since China’s accession to the WTO, China’s agricultural exports have increased by 8 per cent annually while imports have risen by almost twice that rate. China has become the world’s largest importer of agricultural products and the first or second largest destination for many of the world’s top agricultural exporters such as the US, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Argentina.

Nurturing soil life through agroforestry: The roles of trees in the ecological intensification of agriculture

The political economy of food system transformation: Pathways to progress in a polarized world

The current structure of the global food system is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. In addition to the environmental impacts of agricultural production, unequal patterns of food access and availability are contributing to non-communicable diseases in middle- and high-income countries and inadequate caloric intake and dietary diversity among the world’s poorest. While the need to transform food systems is widely accepted, the policy pathways for achieving such a vision often are highly contested, and the enabling conditions for implementation are frequently absent. Moreover, transformation implicitly requires reforms that depart from the status quo, which will generate resistance from those groups that stand to lose the most. These dynamics are examined in detail in a new book co-edited by Danielle Resnick and Johan Swinnen on The Political Economy of Food System Transformation: Pathways to Progress in a Polarized World, published jointly by IFPRI and Oxford University Press. The book emphasizes that the viability of reforms requires joint consideration of both the complexity of local, national, and global food systems and the increasingly polarized political and institutional contexts in which food policy decision-making occurs. In recent decades, food systems have encompassed a broader range of non-traditional stakeholders, including insurance companies, banks, technology firms, and transnational civil society advocates. Moreover, food systems are no longer just responsible for generating sufficient calories but also are expected to meet a whole host of other objectives, including racial and gender justice, human rights, and the preservation of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Yet, not only are food systems changing but so are politics; a wave of populism over the last decade has caused misinformation and ideological bias to compete with rigorous analysis when informing policy recommendations. Polarization at the national level is also reflected in the geopolitical sphere and exacerbated in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A perceived crisis of multilateralism makes it difficult to coordinate on cross-national issues, such as climate change and trade, while the rise of multi-stakeholderism in global convenings like the United Nations Food Systems Summit obscures who is ultimately obligated and accountable for food system actions. Given these complexities, how do we achieve action? To address this question, this book draws on scholarship from a global set of authors whose disciplines span economics, political science, nutrition, ecology, geography, and public policy. Their contributions, which draw on diverse methodologies, analyze binding constraints to reform and showcase factors that have led to progressive change in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. The substantive areas of political economy focus include, among others, repurposing agricultural subsidies, reducing red meat and ultra-processed food consumption, increasing uptake of appropriate biotechnologies, adopting sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, implementing the European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy, adapting urban food system councils to the Global South, and tracking accountability for global food system commitments. In doing so, the authors highlight the necessity of navigating incentive structures, identifying strategies and opportunities for mobilization, and finding innovative policy designs that broaden coalitions for change. This page also includes a synopsis: Resnick, Danielle, ed.; and Swinnen, Johan, ed. 2023. The political economy of food system transformation: Pathways to progress in a polarized world: Synopsis. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://doi.org/10.2499/9780896294585

Facts, interests, and values: Identifying points of convergence and divergence for food systems

Better policies offer significant potential to meet the challenges facing food systems, but policy reform has often proved difficult. This chapter argues that the difficulty lies in disagreements over facts, interests, and values—alone or in combination.¹ For Sunstein (2018), politically contentious issues “are fundamentally about facts rather than values,” and “[i]f we can agree on the facts, we should be able to agree on what to do—or at least our disagreements should be narrowed greatly.” By contrast, a considerable literature on political economy has long emphasized the importance of tensions between the public interest and special interests (Rausser et al. 2011), while a third perspective emphasizes the importance of (differences over) values (Thacher and Rein 2004; Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Stewart 2006; Enke 2020). In reality, all three are likely to play a role, although their relative importance will vary by issue.

The political economy of reforming agricultural support policies

In both developed and developing countries, agricultural support policies provide enormous transfers of resources to agriculture—about US$817 billion per year worldwide in the 2019–2021 period (OECD 2022).¹ Some agricultural support policies, such as input subsidies, have boosted global food production, particularly of staple crops, thereby reducing hunger and poverty. Yet, there are serious concerns about their impacts on achieving sustainable, healthy, and inclusive food systems. Redirecting or “repurposing” agricultural subsidies toward investments that support both increased production and greater sustainability—such as agricultural research and development (R&D) and rural infrastructure—has the potential for win-win-win gains for people, planet, and prosperity. This chapter first considers how shifts in agricultural support would affect global efforts to promote healthy, inclusive, and sustainable food system transformation. Since such reforms are contingent on political economy considerations, the chapter subsequently presents a framework for analyzing how interests, institutions, ideas and information, and policy characteristics intersect to facilitate or stymie reform efforts. Case studies of attempted reforms from different regions are presented that highlight the relevance of the framework. The chapter concludes by summarizing some potentially enabling political economy conditions for repurposing agricultural support policies.

Ultra-processed food environments: Aligning policy beliefs from the state, market, and civil society

Why is finding solutions to combat the increasing access to affordable ultra-processed foods so controversial and what strategies are necessary for policy change? Beyond the existing rational choice answers to this question, this chapter applies a political economy analysis of coalitions and policy beliefs in the ultra-processed food environment in a developing economy context. By combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework with the discourse analysis approach and factor analysis to a case study in Ghana, the chapter reveals a trichotomy of coalitions in the food environment, consisting of state, market, and civil society actors. The discourses reveal shared policy beliefs on the need for more regulation; independent beliefs on production incentives; and divergent beliefs on public awareness. The evidence highlights entry points for policy-oriented learning and policy change, including subsidies to support access to healthy foods, a prohibitive tax on ultra-processed foods, voluntary regulations, labelling and advertisement bans, and regulations.

Sustainable food and farming: When public perceptions depart from science

This chapter examines four important food production innovations that have been favored by scientists but opposed by influential swathes of the public: Green Revolution farming, industrial agriculture, the use of synthetic chemicals versus organic farming, and genetically engineered crops (GMOs). While three of the four innovations enjoy widespread use despite civil society opposition, GMOs do not. This chapter explains why: except for GMOs, public misgivings did not find political expression until after farmers had experienced the benefits from these innovations, making them impossible to take away. However, activists raised strong objections early with respect to GMOs, before the seeds were in wide use, and therefore most farmers never had a chance to enjoy and defend the benefits. Genome editing, a more recent crop science breakthrough, met early legal resistance in Europe, but broad popular resistance is unlikely to follow, so widespread deployment in farming is likely.

From re-instrumenting to re-purposing farm support policies

The world’s agrifood systems have served society well since 1798 when Malthus anonymously published An Essay on the Principle of Population. That is especially so since the 1950s, when famines became a thing of the past except where deliberately contrived by a country’s leaders or rebels for local political purposes (Ravallion 1987, 1997). Yet global food supplies have not been produced very efficiently, equitably or sustainably, especially during the past seven decades. Nor has food been consumed so as to optimize individuals’ nutrition and health. Institutions and policies have contributed to this unsatisfactory outcome, particularly insofar as they distort incentives facing producers and consumers, and thereby dampen investor incentives. Moreover, numerous communities are calling out for a major overhaul of agrifood systems and policies, demanding among other things that they do more to improve nutrition and human health and ease natural resource and environmental stresses, particularly in the face of changing climates (United Nations 2021; Gautam et al. 2022; FAO et al. 2022).

Policy coalitions in food systems transformation

Coalitions—or a set of individuals and groups with shared policy preferences—lie at the heart of political economy.¹ They are also often considered central to policy change. For instance, in 1999, the president of the World Bank argued that many of the world’s most intractable development issues could only be tackled by marshaling “coalitions for change” (Wolfensohn 1999). The implied positive potential of coalitions was reiterated during the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, where coalitions were seen as a fundamental tool for addressing the multi-sectoral and multi-scalar nature of food systems transformation. In fact, more than two dozen coalitions were formed to address various elements of the food system, from halting deforestation to improving data to enhancing wages for food system workers.

Asymmetric power in global food system advocacy

Food systems policy has multiple legitimate aims, and different policy actors hold different values, beliefs, and interests around these issues. In low-income countries, global narratives and non-national coalitions regularly intervene in food policy processes, and they exert influence due to historical and current power relations. There are significant questions, however, about the implications and legitimacy of this international intervention into national food policies. Focusing on Zambia, this chapter finds that internationally formulated ideas are increasingly evident over time in food policy, transferred to national policy through the normative promotion of certain ways of understanding the issue of malnutrition. With its focus on multi-sectoral action to reduce stunting, the recent nutrition policy narrative impinges directly on an existing food security narrative by attempting to alter agriculture policy away from maize reliance. The nutrition policy sub-system in Zambia is therefore split, with implications for both sides on progressing a coherent policy agenda.

Introduction: Political economy of food system transformation

In August 2022, the Razoni cargo ship, laden with 26,000 tons of grain, navigated a narrow corridor of mined waters outside Ukraine’s port of Odessa. After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine exacerbated rising food prices, threatening to plunge millions into hunger, the Razoni was the first ship allowed out of Ukraine under the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative. The ship’s journey symbolized the world’s dependence on grain from the Black Sea—which supplies 30 percent of the world’s wheat exports and constitutes the source of 12 percent of glob ally traded calories (Glauber and Laborde 2022)—and revealed the vulnerability of countries to dependence on concentrated supply sources (IPES 2022). More over, it underscored that food security and food systems are rarely the byproduct of agriculture policy alone but often intertwined with a broad set of political objectives. The impacts of the Ukraine war reverberated far and wide in 2022, amplifying weaknesses in many countries’ agricultural and food strategies and generating citizen demands for government accountability. From massive food protests in Tunisia that threatened the country’s fragile democracy to the siege of Ecuadorean cities by indigenous groups demanding more affordable food, global unrest reminded the world of the centrality of political economy to food systems at the international, national, and local levels.

Government response to ultra-processed and sugar beverages industries in developing nations: The need to build coalitions across policy sectors

How were the governments of three middle-income countries with high levels of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)—India, Mexico, and South Africa—able to implement sugar-sweetened beverage taxes (SSBs) despite intense opposition from powerful corporations? Employing a multiple streams analytical framework to explain the agenda-setting process, this chapter highlights several factors that generated supportive coalitions for SSBs, including the importance of transnational advocacy in each country as well as governments’ interest in generating more revenue from the tax. By contrast, regulatory measures to regulate the soda and snack food industries, such as limits on advertising, sales, and food labeling, have been less accepted by the same governments. To explain why, the chapter argues that coalitions around these policies are weaker, regulation generates lower levels of public contestation and visibility, and the prospect for generating government revenue is less pronounced.