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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

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), one of fifteen CGIAR research centers, helps to improve the lives in developing countries by encouraging more productive, sustainable maize and wheat farming. CIMMYT aims to reducing food insecurity and malnutrition, climate change and environmental destruction. CIMMYT, and its partnerships, help to build and strengthen a new generation of national agricultural research and extension services in maize- and wheat-growing nations.

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Publications

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Journal Article

A novel approach to agricultural policy analysis applied to crop diversification in Bangladesh

2026Nandi, Ravi; Krupnik, Timothy Joseph; Bhuvana, Narayana Rao; Kabir, Wais; Aravindakshan, Sreejith; Kishore, Avinash
Details

A novel approach to agricultural policy analysis applied to crop diversification in Bangladesh

Traditional approaches to policy analysis often provide only a partial understanding of the complexities of agricultural policies and their outcomes. This study addresses the important problem of how to evaluate such policies in a manner that captures their effects across historical, political, socio- economics and environmental dimensions and operational challenges. To do so, the paper develops and applies a new analytical framework that combines elements of policy and program analysis with validation through the views of experts and intended beneficiaries. The framework integrates multiple dimensions into a cohesive structure and specifically applied to the case of crop diversification policies in Bangladesh (1971–2023), combining a PRISMA-guided systematic review of 1223 projects, trend analysis of crop production and qualitative insights from 12 key informants. The findings show that the framework uncovers critical gaps in policy design, highlights institutional and operational constraints, and brings out the perspectives of diverse stakeholders, thereby providing a more grounded account of agricultural policy outcomes of Bangladesh. The study contributes by offering a practical and adaptable method that improves transparency, deepens understanding of institutional dynamics, and supports the formulation of context-specific and effective interventions. The insights from Bangladesh demonstrate the broader relevance of the approach for low- and middle-income countries seeking to strengthen agricultural policy and promote sustainable development.

Year published

2026

Authors

Nandi, Ravi; Krupnik, Timothy Joseph; Bhuvana, Narayana Rao; Kabir, Wais; Aravindakshan, Sreejith; Kishore, Avinash

Citation

Nandi, R., Krupnik, T. J., Rao, B. N., Kabir, W., Aravindakshan, S., & Kishore, A. (2026). A novel approach to agricultural policy analysis applied to crop diversification in Bangladesh. Discover Sustainability, 7(1): 116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-025-02445-6

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

Southern Asia; Frameworks; Case Studies; Diversification; Policy Analysis

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-025-02445-6 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Brief

Climate-smart agriculture technologies in Nepal: Adoption, policy barriers, and way forward

2025Pathak, Himanshu
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Climate-smart agriculture technologies in Nepal: Adoption, policy barriers, and way forward

This discussion brief is part of the knowledge management and capacity building component of the Consortium for Scaling-up Climate-Smart Agriculture in South Asia (C-SUCSeS) project. CSUCSeS is a joint initiative between the SAARC1 Agriculture Centre (SAC), International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). It aims to promote bottom-up applied research on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies through active participation of smallholder farmers based on the participatory research experiences in the region.

Year published

2025

Authors

Pathak, Himanshu

Citation

Pathak, Himanshu. 2025. Climate-smart agriculture technologies in Nepal: Adoption, policy barriers, and way forward. South Asia Policy Perspectives 7. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Nepal

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Agricultural Technology; Capacity Development; Climate-smart Agriculture; Smallholders

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India

2025Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kishore, Avinash
Details

Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India

Despite recognition of the potentially significant cumulative effects of input use on annual crop output—such as the effect of applying inorganic fertilizer in one year on crop output in the subsequent year—real-world evidence from smallholder farmers’ fields in lower-income countries remains scarce. We narrow this knowledge gap using unique district-level and farm-household-level annual panel datasets in India. We start with flexible translog production functions, which are well-suited for identifying cumulative effects in farmers’ actual production environments. We then apply shrinkage methods (LASSO and GMM-LASSO) to approximate the production function with reduced parameter dimensions, addressing various challenges such as multicollinearity among multiple inputs, including the same inputs from the current and previous years, and potential endogeneity in inputs. Our results indicate that, throughout the shrinkage process, potassium remains a key predictor of outputs, while other inputs (land, labor, capital, irrigation, and other fertilizer nutrients) drop out. More important, the cumulative quantity of potassium from both the previous and current years is a consistently more critical determinant of production than the quantity of potassium from the current year alone, demonstrating the potassium’s significant cumulative effects. These patterns hold at both the district and farm levels across diverse agroecologies and cropping systems. Furthermore, the dynamic panel data analyses suggest that farmers’ use of potassium in the current year is significantly negatively affected by its use in the previous year, potentially stabilizing outputs across years. Our results support earlier agronomic findings suggesting that the cumulative effects of potassium may be relevant across wider geographic regions than previously thought.

Year published

2025

Authors

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; Kishore, Avinash

Citation

Takeshima, Hiroyuki; and Kishore, Avinash. 2025. Detecting cumulative effects of inputs within the flexible production function framework through LASSO shrinkage estimation: Implications for potassium fertilizer use in India. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2332. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174101

Country/Region

India

Keywords

Asia; Southern Asia; Fertilizers; Inputs; Machine Learning; Potassium

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Events

Virtual Event - Building back better: How can public food and agricultural research institutions be strengthened and rebuilt after the COVID-19 pandemic?
IFPRI Policy Seminar

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February 2, 2021, 9:30 – 11:00 am

Virtual Event – Building back better: How can public food and agricultural research institutions be strengthened and rebuilt after the COVID-19 pandemic?

How can public food and agricultural research institutions be strengthened and rebuilt after the COVID-19 pandemic?

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Blogs

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia 2024 Conference: Connecting the dots across systems
Event Post
 | 
February 04, 2025

Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia 2024 Conference: Connecting the dots across systems

By Julie Ghostlaw, Esha Sarswat, Shreya Chakraborty, Neha Kumar, Swetha Manohar, and Samuel Scott

Exploring the interconnectedness of food systems.

What can we really learn from sex-disaggregated data?
Research Post
 | 
January 11, 2022

What can we really learn from sex-disaggregated data?

By Bjorn Van Campenhout, Els Lecoutere, and David Spielman

Parsing sometimes contradictory responses in household surveys.

Providing information to empower women in agriculture: Evidence from Uganda
Research Post
 | 
May 08, 2020

Providing information to empower women in agriculture: Evidence from Uganda

By Bjorn Van Campenhout, Els Lecoutere, and David Spielman

A study shows that viewing videos on farming techniques has a range of gender equity benefits.

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