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With research staff from more than 70 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

David Spielman

David Spielman is the director of IFPRI’s Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit and has been with the institute since 2004. His research agenda covers a range of topics including agriculture and rural development policy; agricultural science, technology, and innovation; plant genetic resources and seed systems; agricultural extension and advisory services; and community-driven rural development.

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

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IFPRI currently has more than 480 employees working in over 70 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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partnerships

Founded in 1883, the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) is one of the oldest trade organizations in the United States. Its membership consists of over 700 companies involved in seed production and distribution, plant breeding, and related industries in North America. As an authority on plant germplasm, ASTA advocates science and policy issues of industry-wide importance.

ASTA’s mission is to be an effective voice of action in all matters concerning the development, marketing and movement of seed, associated products and services throughout the world. ASTA promotes the development of better seed to produce better crops for a better quality of life.

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Publications

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Working Paper

Crop diversification and nutritional resilience amid conflicts: Evidence from farmers in Myanmar

2026Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Masias, Ian; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Naing, Phyo Thandar; Ei Win, Hnin
Details

Crop diversification and nutritional resilience amid conflicts: Evidence from farmers in Myanmar

Resilient food and nutrition systems that support dietary diversity are central to improving welfare outcomes and fostering the formation of human capital, with lasting implications for socioeconomic development. Historically, while smallholders in developing countries have accessed food both from diversified farms or kitchen gardens, markets have increasingly become the more dominant source of diet diversity as agrifood systems continue their transformation. Yet little is known regarding how intensifying conflicts and social instability affect these linkages between agrifood systems and households’ dietary diversity. Addressing this knowledge gap is particularly relevant for countries like Myanmar, which is characterized not only by escalating conflicts in recent years but also by relatively lower levels of overall crop diversification and dietary diversity at the national level compared to many other countries in East and Southeast Asia. By using unique panel datasets from Myanmar that cover significant spatiotemporal variation in conflict intensity and addressing the potential endogeneity of crop diversification, we provide new evidence on the resilience of household dietary diversity in conflict-affected settings. We find that increased incidence of violent events at township levels (a proxy for conflict intensity) significantly lowers household dietary diversity during the post-monsoon season, particularly the diversity derived from purchased food items. These adverse effects are relatively more pronounced for healthier food items, such as pulses/legumes/nuts and vegetables/leaves. However, the negative impacts of conflicts on dietary diversity in the post-monsoon season are significantly mitigated by greater diversity in food crop production for farm households during the preceding monsoon season. Results are robust across different measurements of crop diversification and violent events. These findings suggest that in conflict-prone developing countries like Myanmar, household-level crop diversification remains an important strategy for farmers to safeguard household dietary diversity.

Year published

2026

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Masias, Ian; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Naing, Phyo Thandar; Ei Win, Hnin

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Masias, Ian; Minten, Bart; van Asselt, Joanna; Naing, Phyo Thander; and Win, Hnin Ei. 2026. Crop diversification and nutritional resilience amid conflicts: Evidence from farmers in Myamar. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2406. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/181989

Country/Region

Myanmar

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Conflicts; Diversification; Diet; Crop Production; Resilience

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

The making of a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI)

2026Ulimwengu, John M.
Details

The making of a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI)

Households in low- and middle-income countries increasingly face overlapping economic, climatic, health, and conflict-related shocks that jointly erode welfare and food security. Yet many empirical and operational tools still measure shocks one at a time or aggregate them using ad hoc rules that assume equal severity and linear effects. This paper proposes a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI) that summarizes household exposure to multiple shocks using an assumption-light, data-driven approach. The MSI construction proceeds in two steps: (i) shocks are empirically filtered based on their observed negative association with food security outcomes (anchored to the Food Consumption Score), and (ii) retained shocks are aggregated using alternative weighting schemes, including unweighted, population-weighted, and prevalence-weighted variants. We validate the MSI using multiple food security measures—Food Consumption Score (FCS), Reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI), Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS). An application using FAO’s Data in Emergencies (DIEM) household survey for Nigeria illustrates the approach and shows that cumulative exposure—especially systemic and compound exposure—is strongly associated with deteriorating food security outcomes. Among tested variants, the prevalence-weighted MSI provides the clearest discriminatory power and distributional sensitivity, supporting its use for targeting, monitoring, and shock-responsive programming (FAO, 2016; Maxwell et al., 2014; World Bank, 2018).

Year published

2026

Authors

Ulimwengu, John M.

Citation

Ulimwengu, John M. 2026. The making of a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI). IFPRI Discussion Paper 2407. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/181990

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Western Africa; Food Security; Diet; Resilience; Modelling; Indicators; Surveys

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Ghana: Cost effective options for inclusive and sustainable development

2026Aragie, Emerta A.; Pauw, Karl; Jiang, Shiyun; Thurlow, James; Jones, Eleanor
Details

Ghana: Cost effective options for inclusive and sustainable development

In this policy brief, we present findings of a systematic evaluation and ranking of investment options for Ghana’s agrifood system based on their cost-effectiveness in achieving multiple development outcomes, including agrifood gross domestic product (GDP) growth, agrifood job creation, poverty reduction, declining undernourishment, and lowering diet deprivation. Additionally, the study assesses their environmental footprints, focusing on water consumption, land use, and emissions. In Ghana, extension in agronomy and post-harvest food loss reduction are the most cost-effective ways to improve social outcomes, including notably reducing poverty and undernourishment levels. Meanwhile, advisory services in livestock and support to small and medium enterprise (SME) processors are highly ranked in accelerating agrifood GDP and employment. Moreover, extension services for agronomy and climate, and investments in mechanization are also highly ranked. However, many of these cost-effective investments come with relatively high environmental footprints, which highlights potential tradeoffs. The study further reveals shifts in the cost-effectiveness ranking of investment options over time and moderately so in the presence of extreme production shocks.

Year published

2026

Authors

Aragie, Emerta A.; Pauw, Karl; Jiang, Shiyun; Thurlow, James; Jones, Eleanor

Citation

Aragie, Emerta A.; Pauw, Karl; Jiang, Shiyun; Thurlow, James; and Jones, Eleanor. 2026. Ghana: Cost effective options for inclusive and sustainable development. Agrifood Investment Prioritization Country Series Brief 9. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/181872

Keywords

Agrifood Systems; Development; Investment; Economic Aspects; Environmental Impact

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief