Outlooks and scenarios are critical, forward-looking elements of policy-oriented research. A variety of demographic, economic, and environmental futures models form part of the scenario-building process IFPRI uses to understand how food prices and other welfare outcomes might evolve under global change. IFPRI is working to improve the representation of global environmental change, as well as the influence of socioeconomic dynamics and other factors influencing food security and welfare outcomes, within comprehensive food and related ecosystem scenarios.
More on Outlooks and Scenario Development
See also IMPACT: Global Trends in Food Supply and Demand
This research program will help policymakers determine the impacts of climate change on growth and food security, particularly on the livelihoods of poor and rural households. To reduce the vulnerability of rural people to income shocks from random weather and market events, greater efforts are needed to fully understand the various dimensions of risk exposure and vulnerability to climate change. IFPRI will help policymakers understand how small farmers and poor people will be affected and how they can best adapt.
See Climate Change.
The implications of increased bioenergy production for food prices, food security, water use, and international trade, and their subsequent impacts on poor people in developing countries, must be a key consideration in national plans for biofuel expansion. IFPRI is modeling the potential impact of biofuel production growth on agricultural markets and food security, and providing policy analysis to help mitigate the negative effects of increased biofuel production on the poor.
See Bioenergy.
IFPRI aims to provide an integrated assessment of the relationships between production technology, food and environmental policies, international markets, and producer and consumer welfare in poor countries, focusing on:
- Safeguarding and enhancing the productivity of agricultural lands that are most susceptible to demographic and environmental pressures;
- Evaluating the economic impacts of improved production technologies—such as nutritionally-enhanced and pest resistant crops, drip irrigation, and conservation tillage—on cropping patterns, food demand and supply, and resource sustainability, and helping to make the best use of these technologies; and
- Assessing the potential benefits of pro-poor, environmentally-friendly technologies, as well as the drawbacks and opportunities of organic and low-input farming vis-á-vis other production technologies.
See HarvestChoice and South Asia Biosafety Program.
- Design and implementation of long-term scenario analyses
- Spatial characterization of socio-economic drivers of change, production and consumption, natural resource availability, and human vulnerability
- Biophysically-based models of production, resource allocation, and land use
- Agronomic crop growth simulation models (i.e. DSSAT, ORYZA, APSIM, WOFOST)
- High-resolution global models of hydrologic flow
- Spatially-explicit models of agricultural and non-agricultural land use
- Economic and statistical evaluation tools:
- International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT)
- Dynamic Research EvaluAtion for Management (DREAM)
- Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models
- Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM)