The Russia-Ukraine conflict has roiled agricultural markets, particularly wheat, which has seen prices rise by 30% since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. This post focuses on the impacts of the crisis on Yemen, whose poverty, civil war, and dependence on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine make it uniquely vulnerable to the current market and supply disruptions. Yemen’s civil war has ravaged the
When Ukraine banned the export of wheat this month and started scattering land mines in fields of winter cereals and sunflowers to slow invading Russian troops, it was bad news for Egyptian families struggling to put food on the table. Egypt, which counts on Ukraine and Russia for half its food imports, was already facing food supply disruptions and high
BY SWATI MALHOTRA OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 For decades, governments have provided massive support to agriculture—an average of $639 billion per year during 2016-18—yet global food production is environmentally unsustainable and a major contributor to climate change, and food security remains tenuous for many. A Feb. 2 IFPRI policy seminar explored potential solutions to these problems laid out in the new IFPRI-World
BY ZHE GUO AND BILLY BABIS Accurate and precise monitoring of agricultural output in developing countries is a crucial tool for the proper allocation of public funds and services, in addressing poverty, and in sustainably increasing yields to feed growing populations. But accurate crop yield estimation is particularly challenging in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where heterogeneous smallholder farms predominate, making data
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has imperiled global food security—creating suffering within Ukraine and displacing millions while disrupting agricultural production and trade from one of the world’s major exporting regions. The latter threatens to drive rising food prices still higher and create scarcity, especially for regions most dependent on exports from Russia and Ukraine—particularly the Middle East and North Africa. In
BY CARIN SMALLER The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world, leading to terrible suffering, and harsh impacts are already being felt beyond the conflict zone. The war has the potential to spark a global food security crisis, driven by two factors: Skyrocketing costs of food for consumers and of fertilizers for producers. This crisis demands an immediate global
BY PAUL STASTNY With global stresses rising on food and agriculture from climate change, pandemic effects, conflicts, and other problems, what role can technology play in building more sustainable practices? This was one focus of a Feb. 2 panel discussion at ICTC Horizon—the two-day virtual summit of Canada’s Information and Communications Technology Council. A Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security panel, including Claudia
BY EMILY MYERS OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Since its launch in 2012, IFPRI’s Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been used by over 230 organizations across 58 countries to track progress in empowerment and gender equality. A Feb. 16 IFPRI event marked the WEAI’s 10th anniversary, focusing on lessons learned over the past decade and potential paths going forward. In particular, WEAI will