Subscribe

Back

Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

Erick Boy

researcher spotlight

Erick Boy

Erick Boy is the Chief Nutritionist in the HarvestPlus section of the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit. As head of nutrition for the HarvestPlus Program since 2008, he has led research that has generated scientific evidence on biofortified staple crops as efficacious and effective interventions to help address iron, vitamin A, and zinc deficiency in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.

Back

What we do

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

Research topics

Projects and impact

Modeling tools

Project microsites

What’s new

Where we work

Back

Where we work

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

IFPRI Regional Programs

IFPRI Country Programs

Research by country and region

Subscribe

experts

Timothy Thomas

Senior Research Fellow

Follow

Timothy

at:

ORCiD

Bio

Tim Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. This work has expanded recently to include evaluating the fuller impact of climate change by accounting for uncertainty and interannual variability, especially in regard to extreme events and low-productivity years. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures; generating crop yield emulators to provide intuition and to speed simulations; and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics. Tim has also worked in a variety of domains developing innovative methods such as spatial disaggregation (applied to gridded agricultural GDP in Brazil); determining optimal cropland level subnationally (for Ethiopia); and together with other researchers, investigating the impact of climate change on aflatoxins.

Publications

Publications

Resource thumbnail

Book Chapter

Climate change: Understanding impacts on agrifood systems and evaluating policy options

2025Rosegrant, Mark W.; Bryan, Elizabeth; Thomas, Timothy S.; Wiebe, Keith D.
Details

Climate change: Understanding impacts on agrifood systems and evaluating policy options

Climate change is a major challenge of our time, with global and far-reaching effects on and from agriculture and food systems. This chapter reviews the evolution of research on climate change, food security, and food systems, reflecting on IFPRI’s major contributions to understanding and modeling climate change impacts and identifying promising policies and investments for mitigation and adaptation. Book link: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174108

Year published

2025

Authors

Rosegrant, Mark W.; Bryan, Elizabeth; Thomas, Timothy S.; Wiebe, Keith D.

Citation

Rosegrant, Mark W.; Bryan, Elizabeth; Thomas, Timothy S.; and Wiebe, Keith D. 2025. Climate change: Understanding impacts on agrifood systems and evaluating policy options. In Global food policy report 2025: Food policy: Lessons and priorities for a changing world, eds. Johan Swinnen and Christopher Barrett. Part Two: Sustainability and Natural Resources, Chapter 4, Pp. 75-106. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174179

Keywords

Climate Change; Agrifood Systems; Policies; Impact; Models; Climate Change Adaptation; Climate Change Mitigation; Climate-smart Agriculture; Resilience; Nutrient Density; Agricultural Productivity

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Country profile – Nigeria: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages

2025Iraoya, Augustine Okhale; Balana, Bedru; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Bryan, Elizabeth
Details

Country profile – Nigeria: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages

This country brief supports GCAN’s goal of integrating gender, climate resilience, and nutrition considerations into policy by providing policymakers, program officers, and researchers with an analysis of Nige ria’s current situation and policy objectives in these areas. A recent study from Andam et al. (2023) underscores the vital role of Nigeria’s agrifood system in the country’s economy. In 2019, Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at $469.3 billion, supported by a workforce of 66.8 million people (Andam et al. 2023). The agrifood sector made a substantial contribution, generating $175.3 billion in GDP and providing employment for 41.9 million individuals. This sector encompasses both primary agriculture and off-farm activities, including processing, trade, transport, food services, and input supply. Primary agriculture alone contributed $103.3 billion to GDP and employed 32.2 million people. Off-farm agrifood activities contributed approximately 40 percent of the agrifood GDP and 20 percent of agrifood employment (Andam et al. 2023).

Year published

2025

Authors

Iraoya, Augustine Okhale; Balana, Bedru; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; Bryan, Elizabeth

Citation

Iraoya, Augustine; Balana, Bedru; Thomas, Timothy S.; Ferguson, Nathaniel; and Bryan, Elizabeth. 2025. Country profile – Nigeria: Gender, climate change, and nutrition linkages. Project Note May 2025. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174789

Country/Region

Nigeria

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Western Africa; Gender; Climate Change; Nutrition; Resilience; Agrifood Systems

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Resource thumbnail

Journal Article

Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change

2025Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; Hall, Jim
Details

Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change

Historically Ethiopia’s food security has been sensitive to climatic variability, but changes in future weather and climate could lead to overall reductions and increased variability in agricultural production, without further adaptation. We present an integrated modelling assessment framework which combines climate, crop, and hydrological modelling to quantify future risks to Ethiopia’s food security. We explore the impacts of 2°C and higher climate change scenarios on water availability and crop yields and simulate how future climate shocks may impact Ethiopia’s food. We consider three adaptations to agricultural management practices (improved seed varieties, increased use of nitrogen fertilizer and supplementary irrigation) and quantify their effectiveness in enhancing the resilience of Ethiopia’s food system to climate and hydrological change by 2050. Results show that, without policy intervention, climate change creates a risk of declining Meher season crop yields across Ethiopia. Under the worst climate change scenario, teff (−12.0%), barley (−6.7%), and wheat (−4.4%) are projected to have the largest decline in average yields, whilst maize (−0.1%) and sorghum (+0.9%) yields are less impacted thanks to more favourable growing conditions. However, the results also indicate that the adaptation options have a bigger beneficial effect than the climate impact. Of the policies evaluated, improved seeds have a relatively greater effect than increased fertilizer use. Supplementary irrigation could help to mitigate increases in crop water requirements under warmer climate conditions and is most effective in drought prone basins and for drought-vulnerable crops. Overall, the results show that locally relevant agricultural policies are necessary to build Ethiopia’s food system resilience to climate and hydrological change by the mid-century.

Year published

2025

Authors

Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; Hall, Jim

Citation

Murgatroyd, Anna; Thomas, Timothy S.; Koo, Jawoo; Strzepek, Kenneth M.; and Hall, Jim. 2025. Building Ethiopia’s food security resilience to climate and hydrological change. Environmental Research: Food Systems 2(1): 015008. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/ad99dd

Country/Region

Ethiopia

Keywords

Africa; Sub-saharan Africa; Eastern Africa; Food Security; Resilience; Climate Change; Climate Resilience; Hydrological Cycle

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601x/ad99dd Source record

Project

Foresight

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

For climate change, the American farmer is the sleeping giant
IFPRI Blog
 | 
September 07, 2017

For climate change, the American farmer is the sleeping giant

By Timothy Thomas

U.S. corn farmers have largely avoided rising temperatures during growing seasons. What happens when climate change kicks in?

Heat dome to do approximately $2 billion in damage to U.S. corn
IFPRI Blog
 | 
July 27, 2016

Heat dome to do approximately $2 billion in damage to U.S. corn

By Timothy Thomas

An IFPRI researcher's estimate shows just a few days of widespread high temperatures will end up harming U.S. corn yields

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?
IFPRI Research Blog
 | 
December 01, 2015

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?

By Timothy Thomas

Do economic predictions of damage from climate change cause policymakers to focus on the wrong thing?

View all Blogs

Events

Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

March 21, 2025, 9:00 – 5:30 pm

Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea

The International Food Policy Research Institute, in collaboration with Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Department of Health and the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, will host a research seminar on “Informing Economic Growth and Food Security Opportunities in Papua New Guinea”, on March 21st, 2025. As […]

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists
IFPRI at External Event

 | 

August 2 to 7, 2024

32nd International Conference of Agricultural Economists

The triennial International Conference of Agricultural Economists (ICAE-2024), centred on the theme “Transformation Towards Sustainable Agri-Food Systems” is scheduled from August 2-7, 2024, in New Delhi, India. The conference offers a distinctive platform, providing a golden opportunity for the agricultural academic institutions and researchers to convene in person, exchange knowledge, and actively contribute to the […]

What does climate change mean for the future of agriculture? Insights from the IMPACT modeling system
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

May 15, 2024, 10:00 – 11:00 am

What does climate change mean for the future of agriculture? Insights from the IMPACT modeling system

Virtual Event: May 15, 2024 at 10:00am-11:00am EDT. This webinar, the first in the series, will focus on how IMPACT can be used to analyze how climate impacts on agrifood systems (and particularly crop productivity) may vary both across locations and over time in the coming decades, and how that can inform decisions about policies and investment today.

View all Events