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Who we are

With research staff from more than 60 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

Agnes Quisumbing

Agnes Quisumbing is a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. She co-leads a research program that examines how closing the gap between men’s and women’s ownership and control of assets may lead to better development outcomes.

Where we work

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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Research by country and region

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TOPIC

Trade

In today’s global economy, international agricultural trade plays an increasingly important role in ensuring food security. But domestic and international policies as well as administrative restrictions can hinder trade flows between domestic and foreign markets and producers. Policies to achieve domestic objectives in one country can affect trade flows in ways that lead to indirect effects in other countries.

IFPRI’s research informs the design of domestic and international trade policies in developing countries, as well as regional and global negotiations to promote an inclusive and efficient international trade system. This includes work on the impact of tariffs, quotas, and nontariff barriers as well as market-distorting food safety and environmental regulations, export bans aimed at food security, and agricultural support payments.

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IFPRI partners with institutions to strengthen developing countries’ capacities to do their own research and independently develop long-term, sustainable trade policies that help to eradicate poverty and support food security. To support rapid responses to market disruptions, IFPRI maintains the Food Security Portal, which provides early warning on international price changes and restrictive trade policies.

IFPRI’s research on this topic is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG1, SDG2, SDG16, and SDG17, and contributes to the CGIAR Impact Areas on Nutrition, Health, and Food Security and Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs.

trade

topics

Publications

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Working Paper

Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy

2024Benin, Samuel
Details

Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy

The results of the recently released Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) 4th Biennial Review (BR) report indicate that Africa’s performance in 2023 toward achieving the Malabo Declaration commitments by 2025 has strayed farther away from being on-track. Using a scorecard method to review progress in 58 indicators that represent the commitments, previous BR reports show that the number of countries assessed to be on-track to achieve the commitments has dwindled over time, from twenty in 2017 to four in 2019 and only one in 2021. In the 4th BR in 2023, none of the 49 participating countries was on on-track. This seems to conflict with evidence of positive trends in other continent-level reports on related development indicators. According to the African Economic Outlook for example, the contribution of agriculture to overall economic growth in Africa has remained stable, especially as growth in the services and industry sectors has been irregular—and even negative in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest editions of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, Africa Agriculture Status Report, and Annual Trends and Outlook Report5 also show substantial progress in terms of expansion of agricultural investments, trade, and growth and improvement in poverty and nutrition outcomes, amid challenges associated with the pandemic, climate change, conflicts, and epidemics such as the locust and fall armyworm infestations. The BR scoring method and data have some issues that contribute to the seemingly worsening performance.

Year published

2024

Authors

Benin, Samuel

Citation

Benin, Samuel. 2024. Africa cannot achieve the Malabo Declaration commitments: Statistical impossibility or logical fallacy. AFR Project Note 2. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute

Keywords

Africa; Development; Indicators; Agriculture; Economic Development; Covid-19; Trade; Climate Change; Conflicts

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Real-time market price monitoring: Current dynamics in southern Rwanda

2024Warner, James; Manners, Rhys
Details

Real-time market price monitoring: Current dynamics in southern Rwanda

Recent collaborative CGIAR research has developed a prototype for tracking district-level costs of a healthy diet using monthly eSoko data.1 High frequency monitoring of diets allows for near real-time generation of insights on price impacts on diet costs. The temporal richness of this data allows for immediate analytics of current food system events. This research provides an analysis of district-level price movements of healthy diet compositions, as well as food prices that compose the diet. We use this prototype to demonstrate how eSoko data could be used for monitoring an economic shock and how to evaluate the effects in near real time. The general goal is to demonstrate a potential early warning system that could improve the menu of policy choices for enhanced resilience.

Year published

2024

Authors

Warner, James; Manners, Rhys

Citation

Warner, James; and Manners, Rhys. 2024. Real-time market price monitoring: Current dynamics in southern Rwanda. Rwanda SSP Policy Note 12. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/144172

Country/Region

Rwanda

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Market Prices; Healthy Diets; Data; Trade

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets

Record type

Brief

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Working Paper

Food trade policy and food price volatility

2024Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; Minot, Nicholas
Details

Food trade policy and food price volatility

Food trade barriers in many countries are systematically adjusted to insulate domestic markets from world price changes—a response not predicted by traditional political economy models. In this study, policymakers are assumed to minimize the political costs associated with changing domestic prices and deviating from longer-run political-economy equilibria. Error correction techniques applied to domestic and world price data for rice and wheat collected to measure trade policy distortions allow estimation of policy response parameters. The results suggest that systematic short-run price insulation reduces shocks to domestic prices but sharply increases world price volatility and the costs of trade distortions. However, idiosyncratic domestic price shocks resulting from inefficient policy instruments such as quantitative restrictions increase domestic price volatility relative to the magnified volatility of world prices—frequently outweighing the stabilizing impacts of price insulation. This fundamentally changes our understanding of the impacts of price-insulation—from a zero-sum game where some countries reduce the volatility of their prices using beggar-thy-neighbor policies that raise price volatility elsewhere, into one where price volatility rises in most countries. National policy reforms to move away from discretionary, destabilizing policies could lower costs, reduce volatility in domestic and world prices, and facilitate reform of international trade rules.

Year published

2024

Authors

Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; Minot, Nicholas

Citation

Martin, Will; Mamun, Abdullah; and Minot, Nicholas. 2024. Food trade policy and food price volatility. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2253. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141800

Keywords

Food Prices; Volatility; Consumer Economics; Trade Policies; Behaviour; Econometric Models

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Source

Source record

Project

Rethinking Food Markets

Record type

Working Paper

Blogs

Responding to Malawi’s impending food crisis
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 31, 2024

Responding to Malawi’s impending food crisis

By Jan Duchoslav, Mazvita Chiduwa, Simon Denhere, Joachim De Weerdt, Rodwell Mzonde, and George Phiri

Food imports can make up for shortages if quick action is taken.

Global fertilizer trade 2021-2023: What happened after war-related price spikes
IFPRI Blog
 | 
April 05, 2024

Global fertilizer trade 2021-2023: What happened after war-related price spikes

By Charlotte Hebebrand and Joseph Glauber

Impacts of shifting market flows.

Report launch: The key role of trade in strengthening food security in Latin America and the Caribbean
IFPRI Blog
 | 
December 20, 2023

Report launch: The key role of trade in strengthening food security in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Brian McNamara

Building resilience by diversifying risk.

Events

Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor: Launch of the 7th edition – AATM 2024
Series/Special Event

 | 

August 29, 2024, 8:30 – 10:35 am

Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor: Launch of the 7th edition – AATM 2024

AKADEMIYA2063 and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), are convening a hybrid event to debate and promote the findings of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM) 2024. As in prior editions, the seventh AATM provides improved trade statistics, uses consistent indicators to […]

How does agricultural productivity growth affect agrifood system transformation goals? Exploring trade-offs using IMPACT
IFPRI Program/Country Event

 | 

July 9, 2024, 9:00 – 10:00 am

How does agricultural productivity growth affect agrifood system transformation goals? Exploring trade-offs using IMPACT

Agrifood systems are complex and changing, so it is critical to explore different potential futures to inform decisions today that can put the world on a better path for livelihoods, health, and the environment. In the coming decades, changes in population, income, and diets will put increasing pressure on agrifood systems to meet evolving food […]

Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition: The MENA launch of IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report
Series/Special Event

 | 

July 8, 2024, 9:00 – 11:30 am

Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Nutrition: The MENA launch of IFPRI’s 2024 Global Food Policy Report

Unhealthy diets are a major driver of all forms of malnutrition, including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity. Despite increasing global efforts to address malnutrition, as many as 3 billion people globally cannot afford healthy diets. The need to transform our food systems to ensure sustainable healthy diets for everyone is more urgent than […]

News

September 06, 2023 | In the News

Unpacking the 2023 Africa agriculture assessment report (CNBC Africa) 

CNBC Africa interviewed John Ulimwengu, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow and the technical editor and lead researcher of the Africa Agriculture Status Report 2023, launched on September 6 at the Africa Food Systems Forum (AGRF). .  The Report titled “Empowering Africa’s Food Systems for the Future” highlights the ways in which Africa is uniquely positioned to redefine its future and […]

January 25, 2024 | In the News

The timing of the Red Sea attacks could not be worse for Democrats (Politico)

Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber is quoted in a Politico story about how the growing military conflict in a key trade corridor is threatening to unleash economic havoc on the global economy ahead of November. “If energy prices go up and remain high, you’d see food inflation persisting,” said Joe Glauber. He added that potential […]

January 18, 2024 | In the News

Red Sea attacks reverberate in food and ag trade (Successful Farming) 

Successful Farming quotes the IFPRI blog post on the Impacts of Red Sea shipping disruptions on global food security by senior research fellow Joseph Glauber and senior research analyst Abdullah Mamun.  According to the article, Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea are disrupting grain shipments from Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. “Trade disruptions are most likely to impact […]

Our experts

Nicholas Minot

Nicholas Minot

Deputy Division Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Devesh Roy

Devesh Roy

Senior Research Fellow, Development
Strategies and Governance

Khalid Siddig

Khalid Siddig

Senior Research Fellow, Development
Strategies and Governance

Ian Masias

Ian Masias

Program Head, Development
Strategies and Governance

Antoine Bouet

Antoine Bouet

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions

Abdullah Mamun

Abdullah Mamun

Senior Research Analyst, Markets,
Trade, and Institutions