News Overview

By Anton Liutin, Paul Castañeda Dower, and Muzna Alvi January 28, 2025 Policymakers in countries that are transitioning away from authoritarian regimes can face challenges in obtaining unbiased information about local conditions—as do researchers and international community representatives working in these countries, including those trying to understand policy change. This information problem is a critical challenge for water security. As

By Tamsin Zandstra, Samuel Benin, and Seth Asante January 30, 2025 Africa’s agricultural sector, particularly south of the Sahara, has enormous potential to provide jobs and food for a growing population—contributing to food security, economic growth, and poverty reduction. But none of this will happen on its own; realizing this promise requires robust, sustained investment into the sector.  At the same time,

By Julie Ghostlaw, Esha Sarswat, Shreya Chakraborty, Neha Kumar, Swetha Manohar, and Samuel Scott February 4, 2025 Even as it grapples with complex food system challenges such as climate change and water scarcity, South Asia, the world’s most populous region with more than 2 billion people, is home to many notable examples of progress in advancing nutrition. Every year, the Delivering for Nutrition (D4N) in

By Manuel Hernandez, Francisco Ceballos, and Maria Lucia Berrospi February 10, 2025 Recurring spikes and high volatility in international food and fertilizer prices (Figure 1) have triggered economic impacts around the world over the past two decades. These major shocks include the global food price crises of 2007-2008 and 2010-2011, the market disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war. In

Press Release: February 20, 2025 A new study published in Advances in Nutrition critically examines the effectiveness of Growth Monitoring and Promotion (GMP) in diagnosing or screening for inadequate growth in children. GMP tracks children’s growth through regular measurements (usually weight) plotted on a growth chart. This information is used to support promotional activities, including personalized counseling sessions for parents. Conducted by researchers from

By Carlo Azzarri, Beliyou Haile, and Sedi-Anne Boukaka February 24, 2025 Sustainable agricultural development has long been heralded as a vital pathway to alleviating poverty and hunger in Africa, where smallholder farming predominates across diverse landscapes and local conditions changing due to climate impacts and other factors. Sustainable intensification (SI) approaches—tailored to local conditions—offer a range of farming techniques designed

By Abdullah Mamun and Joseph Glauber February 26, 2025 Global agricultural markets have been in a constant state of uproar over the past five years. Trade wars between major trading nations such as China, the United States, and Australia, supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, crisis in the Middle East, and export restrictions in many countries have

By Joseph Glauber, Valeria Piñeiro, and Juan Pablo Gianatiempo March 4, 2025 With new U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico now in effect, what are the potential impacts on trade among those countries and across the Western Hemisphere? In a previous post, we examined how the tariffs could potentially impact countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) based on current agricultural trade