BY ALIX UNDERWOOD OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered a series of global food system disruptions that continue today. The two countries are major agricultural exporters, and the war limited the flow of goods and drove up prices of wheat, fertilizers, and other key items around the world. As the war nears the end
BY JENNIFER JOHNSON AND EVGENIYA ANISIMOVA OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 The global food system, with its massive carbon footprint and large-scale impacts on ecosystems and public health, must be transformed to sustainably meet the world’s steadily growing demand for food in the coming decades. The Political Economy of Food System Transformation: Pathways to Progress in a Polarized World, a new book
BY KATE AMBLER, MEHRAB BAKHTIAR, ALAN DE BRAUW, MOHAMMAD RIAD UDDIN OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Farmers in many low- and middle-income countries face a major financial gap, with available resources often insufficient to enable them to increase production—and putting many higher-value products with the greatest potential to increase incomes out of reach. Yet banks and other formal financial institutions
BY KIBROM ABAY, JORDAN CHAMBERLIN, PAULINE CHIVENGE, CHARLOTTE HEBEBRAND, AND DAVID J. SPIELMAN OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Achieving efficient and effective fertilizer usage in agricultural production is a critically important economic and environmental policy objective for countries at all stages of economic development, although the nature of the policy problem may vary radically in different contexts. While the imperatives
BY AULO GELLI AND MARIE RUEL OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 This post is part of a series examining key issues involving climate and agrifood systems tied to the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai (November 30-December 12). To learn more about IFPRI’s engagement at the Conference, visit our COP28 Spotlight page. Evidence suggests a strong link between the
BY NICHOLAS MINOT AND ROB VOS OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 International food commodity prices have experienced a series of shocks over the past decade. The prices of rice, maize, and wheat spiked in 2007-08 as a result of supply shocks, demand for biofuels, and export trade restrictions. Commodity prices increased again in 2010-11. And most recently, global supply chain
BY KIBROM ABAY, AKHTER AHMED, CLEMENS BREISINGER, NAUREEN KARACHIWALLA, SIKANDRA KURDI, AND ALEMAYEHU SEYOUM TAFFESSE OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Policymakers have incredibly complex decisions to make, and they rely on a broad range of information to support that process. Which policies and programs work best for their constituents? What is the best use of limited resources, especially in times
BY ROB VOS, JOSEPH GLAUBER, SOONHO KIM, AND WILL MARTIN OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 Since peaking in April 2022, global agricultural food commodity prices have declined by almost 25% as of October 2023, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index (Figure 1). Contributing to the decrease were strong harvests in large food producing countries,