Search IFPRI web

Infants and young children are most vulnerable to malnutrition in the first two years of life. Global indicators tracking progress in promoting exclusive breastfeeding for infants 0-6 months are available; they have been very powerful tools for monitoring, programming, and advocacy. But many children falter and become malnourished after 6 months, once mothers begin the […]

As part of its continuing efforts to facilitate international consultation on the needed actions to address this challenge, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) organized a one-day regional dialogue on “Renewed Policy Action for the Poorest and Hungry in South Asia” on Tuesday, December 2, 2008 in New Delhi, India.

Brief by Joachim von Braun, prepared for CGIAR Annual General Meeting, Maputo, Mozambique, December 1, 2008 High food prices from 2007 through mid-2008 had serious implications for food and nutrition security, macroeconomic stability, and political security. The unfolding global financial crisis and economic slowdown have now pushed food prices to lower levels. Yet the financial […]

Until recently, Dickson Mbogo was a casual laborer at a school near Bombo, Uganda, where he lives with his wife and ten children. In parts of Uganda, nearly a third of young children suffer from a deficiency of vitamin A, which protects against blindness and is needed for a healthy immune system. Many poor, rural […]

The first Uganda Strategy Support Program (USSP) workshop will bring together key stakeholders in the agriculture sector of Uganda and in public sector planning agencies to discuss the current knowledge base for agricultural development, and future research needs for strong sectoral economic growth and broad poverty reduction in the country.

Strengthening local capacities and institutions remains a major challenge for the effective design and implementation of agricultural and rural development programs and policies in developing countries. Sustainable capacity development is also central to making aid work on the ground. Three factors have motivated InWEnt Capacity Building International and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) […]

Co-sponsored by the Global Development Network (GDN), Overseas Development Institute (ODI), World Bank Institute (WBI), and IFPRI. Agricultural development in Africa is regaining attention, particularly in the recent light of food security challenges. The World Bank and other donors, as well as African initiatives such as NEPAD, FARA, AGRA, etc. are investing major resources to […]

The first International Day of Rural Women was observed on 15 October 2008. This new international day, established by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 2007, recognizes “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty. More information at:http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/idrw/index.html […]

World Food Day 2008 is devoted to addressing two related challenges to global food markets—the recent rapid growth in demand for biofuels and the longer term threats from climate change. The work of IFPRI and other organizations has shown that increased biofuels production is having a disproportionate effect on the food security of poor people in developing […]

2008 Global Hunger Index and 2008 India State Hunger Index released for World Food Day Thirty-three countries around the world have alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger, according to the 2008 Global Hunger Index. The Democratic Republic of Congo scored the worst on the Index, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and […]

Three quarters of the world’s poor are farmers in developing countries. Their earnings from farming have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies worsened from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, reducing national and […]

The COM+ Alliance has awarded the 2008 COM+ Communication Award to IFPRI for its response to the global food crisis, noting: “At a time when global food prices soared, doubling or tripling over a 2-year period, leading to social unrest in about 50 countries, compromising poor people’s food and nutrition security, and throwing many deeper into poverty, IFPRI proved remarkably innovative […]

The dramatic rise and volatility of food prices over the last year have shaken the global food system. Governments and the international development community generally have responded to various aspects of the food crisis, but questions remain about whether the right actions are being pursued, how best to respond, and what the future holds. Three […]

Although the Democratic Republic of Congo has long been known for its abundance of natural resources, especially its mineral riches, little attention has been given to the country’s vast, but untapped, agricultural potential. If this potential is unleashed, the DRC could significantly reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition throughout the country, and also become a long-term […]

Property rights, whether individual, collective or customary, have the potential to significantly increase productivity and thus can have impact on food security and prices. However the linkages are complex and the potential does not automatically translate into reality. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor made property rights one of the four fundamental pillars […]

he majority of the world’s poor people depend on agricultural production to sustain their livelihoods and those of their children. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the leading private-sector philanthropic organizations supporting agricultural development. It is actively working to put an end to the cycles of poverty and hunger by promoting the […]

Rohima (not her real name), a 25-year- old woman, lives in a new corrugated iron one-room house in the Manikganj district of Bangladesh with her husband and two daughters. In 2004, her husband, a day laborer, suffered a stomach ulcer which required expensive medication and surgery. With the help of neighbors and private loans from a […]

The purpose of this workshop is to present the findings and discuss the policy implications of a longitudinal study which IFPRI, CPRC and DATA conducted during the past thirty months. The study resurveyed 1,800 households first interviewed in 1994, 1996 and 2000 as part of three IFPRI evaluations on the impact of microfinance, agricultural technologies […]

Odds are 1 in 20 that a farmer in Senegal will have a farm equipped for irrigation, while in Asia, the odds are 1 in 3. Africa lags Asia and the rest of the world in almost every irrigation-related category, according to a recent study conducted by IFPRI for the World Bank. IFPRI researchers Mark Svendsen, Mandy Ewing, and […]

The seminar will analyze the political economy of two fields of agricultural policy in India: fertilizer supply and electricity supply for groundwater irrigation. Subsidizing fertilizer and electricity supply has been an important component of the policy interventions that launched the Green Revolution in India. The subsidies for these two inputs have become subject to increasing […]