News Overview

BY FRANCISCO CEBALLOS, SAMYUKTHA KANNAN AND BERBER KRAMER Lockdowns and other social distancing measures imposed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 disrupted agricultural operations around the world, with particular force on smallholders and the poor. While many studies have documented these effects, few have directly quantified the losses. In a recent paper published in Agricultural Economics, we measure the sources

BY JOSEPH GLAUBER AND DAVID LABORDE The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has roiled commodity markets and threatens global food security. Ongoing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors have already driven up food prices. Poor harvests in South America, strong global demand, and supply chain issues have reduced grain and oilseed inventories and driven prices to their highest levels

BY THOMAS REARDON, JOHAN SWINNEN AND ROB VOS In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and other measures restricting the movements of people and goods led to disruptions in food value chains, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)—quickly followed by a number of surprisingly rapid adaptations and innovations to keep food supplies flowing. What is the situation now,

BY SWATI MALHOTRA Over the last few years, global food systems have been disrupted by conflict, economic shocks, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing global food insecurity and malnutrition. A Jan. 19 policy seminar examined the implications of fragile agrifood systems and the findings of FAO’s The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 (SOFA) report. The report analyzes the vulnerabilities of food supply chains

BY ROB VOS, JOSEPH GLAUBER, MANUEL HERNÁNDEZ AND DAVID LABORDE Food prices are skyrocketing around the world. In January, international prices for major food items climbed to a level near the heights of the global food price crises of 2007-08 and 2010-11, according to the FAO Food Price Index (Figure 1). The spike has raised concerns over the potential for

BY JABOURY GHAZOUL At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, 26 countries pledged to introduce new policies to foster more sustainable and less polluting agriculture. “Nature-based climate solutions” were hyped as a means to make “food and farming sexy.” All of this is in the abstract. “Agriculture” itself is an abstraction that glosses over the diverse and complex realities of farming. International

BY KIBROM ABAY, HOSAM IBRAHIM, CLEMENS BREISINGER AND ALI ABDELHADI Global overweight and obesity rates have almost tripled since 1975 and are expected to continue rising over the next few decades (Shekar & Popkin, 2020). This trend is alarmingly steeper in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared to high-income countries, where the same rates are gradually declining (Ng et al., 2014, Shekar

BY SWATI MALHOTRA,FUTOSHI YAMAUCHI AND HIROYUKI TAKESHIMA As many developing countries face enormous food system challenges such as the double burden of malnutrition, with both undernutrition and obesity on the rise, Japan’s rare nutrition success story—it has achieved zero hunger and is also unaffected by rising overweight—offers a positive example to the world. It owes this success partly to a