News Overview

BY GIRMA KASSIE AND SIMLA TOKGOZ In developing countries where agriculture comprises a significant part of the GDP, such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, agrifood value chains are very important, and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers depend on their development and performance. Agricultural and trade policies have implications well beyond the farm, including for consumers, producers, traders, and processors. In this

BY EUGENIO DÍAZ-BONILLA Food systems must function well in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The operation of food systems affects incomes and employment; poverty and food security; diets, health, and nutrition; energy sources and uses; climate change, environmental sustainability, biodiversity, and ecosystems; and even aspects of peace and governance. Yet progress toward SDG2 and its key component,

BY LAWRENCE HADDAD AND CARIN SMALLER The number of people who go to bed hungry was rising steadily prior to the COVID-19 pandemic due to stresses related to climate, inequality and conflict, and now stands at 690 million. The pandemic has supercharged these trends. The latest UN estimates are sobering, with an additional 130 million projected to be suffering from hunger, even

BY ANNA FABRY,KAAT VAN HOYWEGHEN, HENDRIK FEYAERTS,IDRISSA WADE AND MIET MAERTENS There has been much discussion on the resilience of different types of agrifood value chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Good empirical evidence on this issue is limited because comparing value chains must account for variations in several factors (different commodities, different countries, etc.). The study by Anna Fabry and

BY JEMIMAH NJUKI, HAZEL MALAPIT, SARAH EISSLER AND JESSICA WALLACH A large volume of research has been produced in the last few decades on the roles that women play in food systems, the constraints they face, and how they can play a key role in agricultural transformation. There is evidence that achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems

BY EMILY SCHMIDT AND PAUL DOROSH In general, the COVID-19 pandemic has had only modest impacts on food availability but greater consequences for food affordability. During the food price crisis of 2007-8, rice prices increased dramatically in rice-importing countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG) when rice-exporting countries imposed export bans. In this post, Emily Schmidt and Paul Dorosh model different

BY XINSHEN DIAO,THOMAS REARDON, ADAM KENNEDY AND JESSICA WALLACH While urbanization is shrinking rural populations in many parts of the world, rural areas, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara, will continue to be home to substantial numbers of people—and the livelihoods of many of them depend on small farms. These small farms play essential roles in national food systems and with

BY EUGENIO DÍAZ-BONILLA One of the central aims of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is focusing global attention on how transforming our food systems can contribute to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals—particularly Goal 2 and its key component of eliminating hunger by 2030. The idea of a global fund dedicated to eliminating hunger has been put forward by several international leaders, such as