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Open data is a public good for the good of the public. Indeed, a growing movement in agricultural development is calling for institutions to open up their data and let it be freely available without restriction, publicly accessible, deliverable and downloadable in desirable and descriptive ways, and easy to mix with other data and tools. […]

Beginning in 2007, the world has suffered three rounds of high food prices. These crises were caused by a variety of factors—from extreme weather events to civil conflict—but poor policies by affected countries exacerbated the problem, according to an expert on the subject who spoke at IFPRI last week. Many policymakers responded to the food price crises in […]

Investment in the African agricultural sector was largely in a state of decline until the early 2000s, followed by what became known as Africa’s “decade of growth.” Between the years 2001-2010, investment in the sector grew more than 3 percent per year, overtaking population growth on the continent for the first time in decades. A major source […]

Decades of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have led to an estimated death toll of 5.4 million and rising, decimated rural infrastructure and institutions, and a chronically underperforming agricultural sector. In 2011, the DRC ranked at the bottom of a list of 81 countries in IFPRI’s Global Hunger Index and dead last of 187 countries in the […]

Originally posted by Emily Hogue, Team Leader for Monitoring and Evaluation, Bureau for Food Security USAID, on the Feed the Future Blog Last year we launched an innovative tool to measure women’s empowerment in agriculture. Last month, we celebrated its one-year anniversary. This month, we’re highlighting how you, yes you, can access data from the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index […]

The world food situation continues to be vulnerable. A series of weather-related shocks in 2012—including severe droughts in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the United States—contributed to global food prices remaining high for a fifth consecutive year, leading many in the development community to call for an end to “costly and distortionary agricultural subsidies in […]

Luz Marina Alvarė, IFPRI’s Head of Knowledge Management, and Soonho Kim, Web Portal Specialist, are actively participating in the G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture, which currently is taking place in Washington, DC. Tomorrow, IFPRI will host aD-8 Open Data for Agriculture G-8 Side Event geared toward sharing its own experience working with Open Data. 1. Can you briefly […]

Just as the sun rises and sets, food price volatility—the variation in food prices over time—is a given these days. Once unexpected price instabilities have now become routine in the era following the food crisis of 2007-2008. For poor households, which spend more than 60 percent of their income on food, price shocks are, indeed, […]

We live in a fast changing world with fast changing trends: urbanization, globalization, industrialization, and more, all of which have a profound impact on the way food moves from field to fork along the agricultural value chain. Understanding the chain, and how to make it work for smallholder farmers, is a central theme in research […]

Last year, IFPRI researchers, in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Oxford Poverty& Human Development Initiative (OPHI), developed the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a tool designed to monitor women’s empowerment and inclusion in agriculture. The index is being used by USAID in its countries focused on in its Feed the Future hunger and poverty reduction […]

Reemerging input subsidy program (ISPs) have sparked a highly contentious debate in Africa. ISPs are government programs that provide items such as seed and fertilizer to farmers at a steep discount. Ten years ago, few countries in Africa had subsidy programs; now, African governments spend an estimated $2 billion annually—an average of 30 percent of […]

Some of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Asia. Yet the region is still home to two-thirds of the world’s poor and the highest proportion of undernourished children. The sustainability of the region’s growth and development is persistently challenged by problems of food insecurity, and increasingly, by climate change and global financial turmoil. Knowledge […]

By 2050, global agricultural production will need to increase by at least 60 percent from 2006, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Both CGIAR and FAO are in the midst of priority setting efforts to identify how they can help accomplish this, in a global situation rife with challenges: high population […]

You can buy a bottle of Coca-Cola just about anywhere in the world, at an affordable price. If it can happen with Coke, why not with nutritious food?  This thought, expressed by Islamic Development Bank Agriculture and Rural Development Director Demba Ba, was one of many posed by experts at a recent DuPont roundtable hosted […]

Could building Somalia’s resilience to weather shocks help bring an end to its civil war? That’s precisely what researchers Jean-Francois Maystadt, Olivier Ecker, and Athur Mabiso discuss in their paper “Extreme Weather and Civil War in Somalia: Does Drought Fuel Conflict through Livestock Price Shocks?”. Research during the last decade has shown strong ties between rising global temperatures and escalating civil […]

Despite its transformation from a country of chronic food shortages to one of food self-sufficiency, Bangladesh still faces food-security challenges. This is the conclusion of a massive IFPRI-designed survey on agriculture, consumption, and nutrition in the country. At a one-day workshop in Bangladesh held in January, policymakers and researchers gathered to discuss the survey results and options for […]

Inaugural event in the 2013 DuPont Agriculture Development Roundtable Series IFPRI is pleased to host the first discussion in this series aimed at fostering action among public and private entities to address the global challenge of feeding nine billion people. Agriculture value chains are being increasingly recognized for their ability to reduce rural poverty and […]

European policymakers must increase development assistance to agriculture to at least 10 percent of overseas development assistance.  That was the first of several key calls to action IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan presented to policymakers from European Union countries at a keynote presentation to the Royal Dublin Society and livecast around the world last week.   […]

As 2015—the target date for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—looms closer, the international community is reviewing how far we have come, and asking what new standards should be set in the development goals after 2015. Nutrition, policy, and advocacy experts recently gathered to discuss that very question. IFPRI researchers Marie Ruel and Stuart Gillespie joined […]

Ethiopia faces many challenges, but the country is quickly shedding its label as one of the world’s poorest countries, finding itself today among the world’s 10 fastest growing economies. The question now at hand is how to sustain this historic growth, and emerge as a middle-income country by 2025. The Ethiopian government is turning to […]