News Overview

By Kibrom Abay, Hailemariam Ayalew Tiruneh, Zelalem Terfa, Joseph Karugia, and Clemens Breisinger July 16, 2025 Livestock supports the livelihoods of around 1 billion people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (Thorne and Conroy 2017, Baltenweck et al. 2020). However, growth and productivity of the livestock sector in many LMICs are not keeping pace with the increasing demand for animal-source foods. Boosting the sector’s productivity

By Alan de Brauw and Johann Swinnen July 14, 2025 Agrifood value chains (AVCs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been expanding due to a range of factors, including income growth, urbanization, more market-oriented policies, globalization, and technological changes. Integrating smallholder farmers into those growing value chains, particularly for higher-value commodities, is an important path towards reducing poverty and generating employment

By David Stevenson, Abdul Kamara, Yero Baldeh, Martin Fregene, and Steven Were Omamo July 11, 2025 Humanitarian agencies around the world face a never-ending race against time to save lives in places where conflicts, extreme weather, and other shocks lead to collapsing economies, leaving populations facing hunger and other forms of food insecurity. Nigeria is a prime example. Across the

By Will Martin July 11, 2025 Latest in a series of posts focusing on potential impacts of U.S. tariff proposals. Read the others here, here, and here. The “Liberation Day” tariffs proposed by the United States on April 2 included a blanket 10% increase for countries with which the U.S. runs bilateral trade surpluses or small deficits, and a range of higher tariffs

By Tushar Singh and Himangshu Kumar July 10, 2025 Food systems research—and more generally, policy and development research—often relies on structured surveys, administrative data, or experiments. While these approaches yield valuable quantitative insights, they tend to miss critical qualitative dimensions. One useful qualitative approach is open-ended interview questions. When such responses are collected in participants’ native languages, they can provide rich and

By Kate Ambler, Jeffrey Bloem, Alan de Brauw, Mehrab Bakhtiar, and Eduardo Maruyama July 1, 2025 Transforming food systems requires more than technological innovation and policy reforms—it calls for bold and strategic investments. This is the second post in a special blog series, Financing Food Systems Transformation, that explores the scale and scope of financing needed to support this transition. It examines current funding flows, identifies gaps,

By Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, Geeta Sethi, and Johan Swinnen June 30, 2025 Transforming food systems requires more than technological innovation and policy reforms—it calls for bold and strategic investments. This is the first post in a special blog series, Financing Food Systems Transformation, that explores the scale and scope of financing needed to support this transition. It examines current funding flows, identifies gaps, and highlights

Press Release – June 30, 2025 A new study by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) finds that if Sudan’s conflict continues through the end of 2025, the country could face catastrophic economic losses, widespread unemployment, and a dramatic rise in poverty, with women and rural populations hit hardest. Published in The Journal of Development Studies, the paper uses