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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

Danielle Resnick

Danielle Resnick is a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on the political economy of agricultural policy and food systems, governance, and democratization, drawing on extensive fieldwork and policy engagement across Africa and South Asia.

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experts

Development Strategies and Governance

Emily Schmidt

Senior Research Fellow

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Bio

Emily Schmidt is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. Her research focuses on the intersection of development economics and geographic information systems (GIS) with an emphasis on the dynamic process of rural land transformation, rural employment diversification, and agricultural production outcomes on household welfare. Her most recent research explores household livelihood strategies in Papua New Guinea, including linkages between agriculture, poverty, and nutrition outcomes among rural smallholder farmers.

Publications

RePEc

CV

Publications

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Working Paper

The gendered effects of rainfall on early childhood nutrition: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

2025Leight, Jessica; Mukerjee, Rishabh; Schmidt, Emily
Details

The gendered effects of rainfall on early childhood nutrition: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

Rainfall fluctuations can significantly reduce welfare for poor rural households in low- and middle-income countries dependent on rainfed agriculture for consumption, and in some contexts these adverse effects may be borne disproportionately by vulnerable household members, particularly children and girls. We present new evidence around the effects of rainfall fluctuations on child anthropometric status in Papua New Guinea, an understudied context characterized by some of the highest stunting rates in the world. We show that negative fluctuations in rainfall within a 12-month period are associated with reduced household consumption (driven by reduced consumption of own-produced food). Moreover, when these fluctuations are observed in the first year of a child’s life, they lead to a reduction in height forage and weight-for-age (though no shift in stunting), but this effect is observed only for girls: boys seem to be protected from the adverse effects of rainfall fluctuations experienced in infancy.

Year published

2025

Authors

Leight, Jessica; Mukerjee, Rishabh; Schmidt, Emily

Citation

Leight, Jessica; Mukerjee, Rishabh; and Schmidt, Emily. 2025. The gendered effects of rainfall on early childhood nutrition: Evidence from Papua New Guinea. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2358. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/176517

Country/Region

Papua New Guinea

Keywords

Oceania; Anthropometry; Children; Households; Less Favoured Areas; Rainfall Patterns; Child Stunting; Food Security; Nutrition

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Working Paper

Commercialization of Papua New Guinea’s vegetable sector: Identifying constraints using quantitative, qualitative, and large language model methods

2025Fang, Peixun; Anamo, Iga; Gimiseve, Harry; Hayoge, Glen; Mukerjee, Rishabh; Schmidt, Emily; Zhang, Xiaobo
Details

Commercialization of Papua New Guinea’s vegetable sector: Identifying constraints using quantitative, qualitative, and large language model methods

This paper evaluates the constraints within Papua New Guinea’s vegetable sector, drawing on large scale household surveys, extensive qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, and Large Language Model (LLM) methods. Our survey data reveal that vegetable production is ubiquitous, with almost all households surveyed (91%) growing at least one vegetable. Indigenous varieties, such as leafy greens (96%) and fresh beans (69%), are widely cultivated across regions, while high-value vegetables like onion (17%) and tomato (19%) show more regional concentration. Over half (53%) of PNG vegetable farmers sell their produce, with farmers located in the nonseasonal highlands agro-ecological area leading in market participation (66%), contributing to an overall commercialization rate of 24% (defined as the share of pro duction sold). However, modern input use, particularly improved seed adoption, significantly lags behind output commercialization in all agroecological zones except the islands survey areas. The quantitative analysis, using the PNG Rural Household Survey 2023, and the qualitative analysis, drawing from both manual review and LLM-assisted processing of in-depth interview notes, consistently identify poor feeder roads as critical bottlenecks for every stakeholder across PNG’s vegetable value chain. Beyond transportation, these interviews repeatedly highlighted persistent seed supply shortages and high seed costs as significant hurdles. Since PNG depends on imported vegetable seeds, several structural and procedural barriers contribute to these shortages. These include potentially arduous quarantine procedures, limited foreign exchange for seed imports, and cumbersome permit processes, often leaving major distributors with insufficient stock. These reported bottlenecks may contribute to the low improved seed adoption and use reflected in the household survey analysis.

Year published

2025

Authors

Fang, Peixun; Anamo, Iga; Gimiseve, Harry; Hayoge, Glen; Mukerjee, Rishabh; Schmidt, Emily; Zhang, Xiaobo

Citation

Fang, Peixun; Anamo, Iga; Gimiseve, Harry; Hayoge, Glen; Mukerjee, Rishabh; Schmidt, Emily; and Zhang, Xiaobo. 2025. Commercialization of Papua New Guinea’s vegetable sector: Identifying constraints using quantitative, qualitative, and large language model methods. Papua New Guinea Food Policy Strengthening Working Paper 7. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175558

Country/Region

Papua New Guinea

Keywords

Melanesia; Oceania; Asia; Vegetables; Large Language Models; Commercialization; Household Surveys; Artificial Intelligence; Value Chains; Value Chain

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

Resource thumbnail

Brief

Declining purchasing power of minimum wages in Papua New Guinea: Analysis of economic access to healthy diets

2025Mahrt, Kristi; Schmidt, Emily; Hayoge, Glen
Details

Declining purchasing power of minimum wages in Papua New Guinea: Analysis of economic access to healthy diets

Key Messages To address rising living costs which reduce the purchasing power of the minimum wage, the Government of PNG recently launched a review of the country’s minimum wage. The minimum wage has been PGK 3.50 per hour or PGK 28 per 8-hour day since July 2016. At the beginning of 2025, the minimum wage could purchase about three-quarters as much food and other goods and services compared to July 2016. The cost of a healthy diet per adult per day in urban areas increased by 35 percent from PGK 7.70 in 2021 to PGK 10.37 in 2025. The cost of the healthy diet was the most expensive in Port Moresby—PGK 11.15 per adult per day in 2025 and increased the most in Kokopo (54 percent) from PGK 5.81 to PGK 8.92 between 2021 and 2025. One and a half full-time urban minimum wage earners earn just enough to feed a healthy diet to a family of five in 2025, with no money remaining for essential non-food expenses such as clothing, shelter, transportation, health, and education. The government recently published a public notice of Goods and Services Tax (GST) zero-rating of essential goods effective 1st June 2025 to 30th June 2026. We re-evaluate the purchasing power of a minimum wage by decreasing the price of tinned tuna and rice by 10% (reflective of the GST zero-rating) on Q1 2025 recorded prices. Assuming prices remain constant (with no shifts in demand due to decreased tax), the cost of the average urban healthy diet in the first quarter of 2025 is 4.7 percent lower without the GST (PGK 9.87) compared to the cost of a healthy diet with the GST (PGK 10.35) — slightly improving the purchasing power of minimum wage earners.

Year published

2025

Authors

Mahrt, Kristi; Schmidt, Emily; Hayoge, Glen

Citation

Mahrt, Kristi; Schmidt, Emily; and Hayoge, Glen. 2025. Declining purchasing power of minimum wages in Papua New Guinea: Analysis of economic access to healthy diets. Papua New Guinea Project Note 20. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175410

Country/Region

Papua New Guinea

Keywords

Oceania; Economics; Purchasing; Healthy Diets; Consumer Behaviour; Food Security; Nutrition

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Brief

Blogs

Survey: Rural Papua New Guinea faces an array of food security challenges
Research Post
 | 
October 18, 2024

Survey: Rural Papua New Guinea faces an array of food security challenges

By Emily Schmidt and Rishabh Mukerjee

Starch-heavy diets, the reach of extension instruction, and other issues.

2023 Papua New Guinea Rural Household Survey: Insights on livelihoods and the agrifood system
Research Post
 | 
April 22, 2024

2023 Papua New Guinea Rural Household Survey: Insights on livelihoods and the agrifood system

By Trudie Sikas-Iha and Emily Schmidt

New data on diets.

Improving agricultural value chain coordination and gender inclusiveness in Papua New Guinea
Research Post
 | 
December 20, 2022

Improving agricultural value chain coordination and gender inclusiveness in Papua New Guinea

By Lucia Carrillo, Peixun Fang, Katrina Kosec, and Emily Schmidt

Challenges and opportunities for women to engage in more profitable work.

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 […]

2023 PNG Rural Household Survey: Report Launch
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

March 18, 2024, 12:30 – 3:30 pm

2023 PNG Rural Household Survey: Report Launch

In-person Event: March 7, 2024 – 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM GMT+10. This seminar will provide results of the rural household survey and discuss opportunities for promoting agricultural transformation for economic growth and food security in PNG. 

Linkages of Agriculture, Nutrition and Economic Development
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

June 12, 2019, 9:00 – 12:30 pm

Linkages of Agriculture, Nutrition and Economic Development

Approximately 80 percent of the population in PNG is semi-dependent on subsistence agriculture, however limited economic analysis exists to inform policy priorities aimed at sustainable growth and poverty reduction in rural areas. Renewed efforts to inform overall agricultural production and resilience in Papua New Guinea have taken place over the last several years. This workshop […]

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News

June 13, 2019 | In the News

Rural Communities Trapped in Poverty: Survey (Post-Courier)

Recent findings from an IFPRI survey on food consumption in Papua New Guinea found poor households were not getting enough food. Researcher Emily Schmidt calls for increased access to education to improve rural families' predicaments.

March 26, 2019 | In the News

New data offers insights into rural poverty and undernutrition in Papua New Guinea (Reuters)

Reuters published an opinion article by Research Fellow, Emily Schmidt, based on IFPRI’s ongoing work in Papua New Guinea. In the article, Schmidt highlighted how lack of data has hampered the country’s efforts to curb hunger and malnutrition.