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The new IFPRI Discussion Paper “Climate Change and Floods in Yemen” by Manfred Wiebelt, Clemens Breisinger, Olivier Ecker,Perrihan Al-Riffai, Richard Robertson , and Ranier Thiele assesses the impact of climate change on Yemen’s economy and food security. The effects of climate change are extremely salient considering Yemen’s high levels of food import dependency, food insecurity, and poverty. An estimated 43 percent of Yemenis live […]

Donors, governments, and researchers throughout the world are recognizing the dire effects of malnutrition, and the importance of policies and programs to fight it. Programs and research to improve nutrition are coming to the forefront of global discussions on poverty and hunger, and government officials are realizing that simply filling bellies will not fill important […]

Beirut, 7 February 2012 (UN Information Service) – Participants in an international conference on Arab food security today concluded two days of meetings with a call to highlight the need to focus on supporting job-creating growth for the poor in countries with household-level food insecurity, and on encouraging exports to finance food imports and agriculture […]

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) have come together to develop a Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index to measure women’s roles and engagement in the agriculture sector. Women are a primary focus of the US Government Feed the Future […]

Beirut, 6 February 2012 – The Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Nadim Khouri called for the need to take advantage of available opportunities to improve food security in the region through trade and foreign investments to ensure benefits for all. The call came in a statement delivered […]

February 6—Poverty and income inequality rates in the Arab world are higher than official numbers have suggested. Food security and poverty are particularly closely linked in Arab countries due to high vulnerability to food-related external shocks, including food price volatility, natural disasters, increasing water scarcity, and conflicts. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report […]

This year’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos took place as the world faces slowed and uncertain economic growth and continuing shifts in economic power toward emerging and developing economies. Discussions focused on unemployment, increasing inequality, and the alarming speed at which we are approaching the limits of natural resource use. All of these […]

IFPRI welcomes a familiar face to the role of South Asia director with the appointment of Pramod Kumar Joshi on February 1, 2012. After serving as the Institute’s South Asia coordinator from 2003 to 2006, P. K. became the director of the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management in Hyderabad before rejoining IFPRI as senior program manager in New Delhi. […]

In January 2012 IFPRI is launching two major research programs. These CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs), led by IFPRI, will bring together researchers from across the CGIAR centers to address some of the most pressing problems facing the global food system. The first of these two programs—Policies, Institutions, and Markets to Strengthen Food Security and Incomes […]

The new year brings with it exciting changes at IFPRI, including a new director for the Institute’s Communications Division. Gwendolyn Stansbury begins her role as the division’s director on January 3, 2012. She has been at IFPRI since 2006, serving most recently as head of the Publications Unit. Gwendolyn received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia […]

Pascal Lamy, Director General of WTO, foresees that “the cost to the world economy of high intensity protectionism would be in the order of $ 800 billion, the estimated value of space or “water” in WTO commitments today,” which would be very bad news. He called on members to “stand up for the values of […]

IFPRI’s Mark Rosegrant will present today at an official side event of the 2nd Intersessional Meeting of UNCSD at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. He will discuss a current IFPRI project on the impact of agricultural technologies. Co-organized by IFPRI, Croplife International, and Farming first, the side event, Technology and Knowledge Sharing for Sustainable Agriculture, is one of only […]

Without land and water resources, agriculture cannot survive. But in a world facing increased scarcity of both, farmers—especially those in the developing world—are increasingly hard-pressed to feed the hungry. To assess the scope of this pressing problem, the FAO recently launched an authoritative study of the global status of land and water resources. The State of Land and Water […]

Washington, D.C.— Climate change presents a major threat to sustainable food security. Recent changes to agriculture consistent with climate change include shifts in the production of rice and maize in the northern hemisphere and climate-induced changes in crop productivity across the world. There will be additional changes as global temperatures rise, precipitation patterns change, and […]

Food price volatility is one of the most critical economic and food security challenges facing policymakers today. Spikes in food prices can have a significant impact on incomes, markets, and nutrition worldwide and, in extreme cases, can cause widespread violence and social unrest. Understanding the causes behind price volatility and exploring policy responses to it […]

Climate change experts from an influential bloc of developing countries known as BRICS—expected to play a key role in upcoming global climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa—will gather in China next week to present new research on the impact of climate change on food security. Representatives of BRICS–Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa–and […]

On October 27, TEDxWashingtonCircle will host three speakers from different disciplines, who will come together and talk about their own experiences with development initiatives and share effective communication strategies. People in developing countries need easy access to useful information in order to improve their lives. Widened public awareness allows communities to devise and execute initiatives that lead […]

In a long-awaited move, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission on October 18 approved limits on trading in the commodities markets. Specifically, the new rules limit the number of commodity contracts that any investor can hold in agriculture, energy, or metals contracts. The trade limits, originally mandated in the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act which was passed in […]

John Agyekum Kufuor, President of Ghana from 2001-2008, received the World Food Prize at an award ceremony yesterday at the Borlaug International Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa. Kufuor’s economic and educational policies led to significant positive changes in Ghana during the first decade of the new millennium. Ghana recently attained middle-income status and will likely achieve the […]

Today marks the launch of the 2011 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report, the sixth in an annual series, which presents a multidimensional measure of global, regional, and national hunger. This year’s report shows that although the world has made some progress in reducing hunger, the proportion of hungry people remains high. The 2011 GHI has improved […]