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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.

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Timothy Thomas

Timothy 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. Tim’s work involves developing innovative methods for simulated climate futures and model coordination between climate, crop, water, energy, and economics.

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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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Cynthia Paz

Senior Research Analyst

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Bio

Cynthia Paz is a Senior Research Analyst with the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, and is based at IFPRI-Washington, DC.

Publications

Publications

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Working Paper

Integrated value chain interventions in vulnerable settings: Evidence from Guatemala

2026Ceballos, Francisco; Espinoza Hernandez, Alvaro; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia
Details

Integrated value chain interventions in vulnerable settings: Evidence from Guatemala

Guatemala experiences high and persistent poverty and chronic malnutrition, especially in rural areas of the Western Highlands, where agricultural productivity is low, market integration is limited, and households remain vulnerable to multiple shocks. This paper evaluates the impacts of a regional value chain project combining interventions aimed at strengthening agricultural production, market access, and nutrition-sensitive practices. Using household survey data collected from beneficiary and control households in 2019 and 2022, we assess project impacts on outcomes related to production and income, food security, and nutrition. The findings suggest relatively modest impacts during the evaluation period. The intervention contributed to some degree of agricultural diversification, particularly through increased production of fruits and vegetables, while reducing moderate or severe food insecurity episodes and improving children’s weight-for-height z-scores. However, we do not find broader improvements in household expenditures, dietary diversity, or longer-term child nutritional outcomes. Additional analyses reveal limited evidence of meaningful differences in impacts across implementing partners, project components and treatment intensity, household groups, and exposure to specific shocks. These findings highlight the challenges of achieving measurable gains through integrated value chain and nutrition interventions in vulnerable environments and point to the importance of accounting for broader contextual factors in project design and evaluation.

Year published

2026

Authors

Ceballos, Francisco; Espinoza Hernandez, Alvaro; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia

Citation

Ceballos, Francisco; Espinoza Hernandez, Alvaro; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Paz, Cynthia. 2026. Integrated value chain interventions in vulnerable settings: Evidence from Guatemala. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2458. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/186301

Country/Region

Guatemala

Keywords

Central America; Latin America and the Caribbean; Value Chains; Agriculture; Diversification; Household Expenditure; Food Security; Nutrition; Rural Communities; Vulnerable Groups

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Journal Article

COVID-19 and rural livelihoods: Lessons from a longer-term assessment and the path to recovery

2026Berrospi, Maria Lucia; Ceballos, Francisco; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia
Details

COVID-19 and rural livelihoods: Lessons from a longer-term assessment and the path to recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic had profound effects on livelihoods across rural populations worldwide. Building on earlier work that examined the initial effects of the pandemic on food security and nutrition among smallholder agricultural households in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, this study offers a longer-term assessment of the impacts and the path to recovery. We rely on a unique longitudinal survey of 1,262 households conducted over four rounds between 2019 and 2022, with the first round in person and the subsequent ones by phone. The results show substantial recoveries in food security and dietary diversity in the region by mid-2022 compared to 2020, but at levels still worse than pre-pandemic ones for some indicators. There is also a sustained increase in the intention to emigrate. The households that were initially more affected in terms of food security and nutrition but recovered faster include those located in one of the three studied departments and families living above the poverty line, while smallholders affected by hurricanes, non-coffee producers, and indigenous populations took longer to recover. We additionally provide quantitative estimates for a subsample of households interviewed in person during a fifth survey round at the end of 2022, showing an average decline of about 16 percent in total household income three years after the start of the pandemic, mainly driven by a decrease in agricultural income, combined with a 26-percent increase in expenditures and an important surge in indebtedness. Overall, the study offers valuable lessons regarding the recovery of vulnerable households following a major global crisis and in a context of additional shocks.

Year published

2026

Authors

Berrospi, Maria Lucia; Ceballos, Francisco; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia

Citation

Berrospi, Maria Lucia; Ceballos, Francisco; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Paz, Cynthia. 2026. COVID-19 and rural livelihoods: Lessons from a longer-term assessment and the path to recovery. World Development 197(January 2026): 107200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107200

Country/Region

Guatemala

Keywords

Americas; Latin America and the Caribbean; Covid-19; Livelihoods; Food Security; Dietary Diversity; Migration; Expenditure; Shock; Rural Areas

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107200 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

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Journal Article

Can survey design reduce anchoring bias in recall data? Evidence from smallholder farmers in Malawi

2024Godlonton, Susan; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia
Details

Can survey design reduce anchoring bias in recall data? Evidence from smallholder farmers in Malawi

Recall biases in retrospective self-reported survey data have important implications for empirical research. We leverage the survey design literature and test three strategies to attenuate mental anchoring in retrospective data collection: question ordering, retrieval cues and aggregate (community) anchoring. We focus on maize production and happiness reports among smallholder farmers in Malawi. Asking for retrospective before concurrent data on average reduces recall bias (i.e. the deviation of the recalled versus the concurrent outcome reported in the previous period) by 34 per cent for maize production, a meaningful improvement with no increase in data collection costs. Retrieval cues are less successful and community anchors can exacerbate the bias. None of the strategies help to ease the recall bias for happiness reports.

Year published

2024

Authors

Godlonton, Susan; Hernandez, Manuel A.; Paz, Cynthia

Citation

Godlonton, Susan; Hernandez, Manuel A.; and Paz, Cynthia. 2024. European Review of Agricultural Economics 51(4): 1129–1167. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbae026

Country/Region

Malawi

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Survey Design; Data Collection; Maize; Smallholders; Agriculture

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbae026 Source record

Record type

Journal Article

Blogs

Survey: Short-term impacts of COVID-19 in rural Guatemala call for a closer, continuous look at the food security and nutritional patterns of vulnerable families
Research Post
 | 
May 13, 2021

Survey: Short-term impacts of COVID-19 in rural Guatemala call for a closer, continuous look at the food security and nutritional patterns of vulnerable families

By Francisco Ceballos, Manuel Hernandez, and Cynthia Paz

A lockdown and other pandemic measures erode incomes, food security, and dietary diversity in the Western Highlands.