News Overview

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

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

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 JOHANN SWINNEN AND MARTIEN VAN NIEUWKOOP Totaling more than $639 billion per year, public policies and support to agriculture create powerful incentives influencing which crops we grow, the diets we consume, and the impact these decisions have on the environment. Currently, however, the structure of this support contributes to many of the hidden costs our food systems generate. Agriculture,

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

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the global food system. Yet there were concerns that this system was creaking at the seams as far back as 2007. At that time there were

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is having big, and potentially long-lasting impacts on the global supplies of food and energy. On this episode of Radio Davos, Saad Rahim, Chief Economist at trading firm Trafigura, explains what makes oil and gas prices fluctuate so wildly, and considers the short and long-term impacts of the war on those vital commodities. He also

The IFPRI Food Security Portal’s Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System is showing excessive levels of price volatility in the four major food commodities: Wheat, maize, rice, and soybeans, as well as for cotton. Markets for hard and soft wheat and soybeans had already been more volatile than normal since late 2021, well ahead of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, which began