The 2011 Global Food Policy Report is a new annual IFPRI publication that provides a comprehensive, research-based analysis of major food policy challenges at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It highlights important developments and events in food policy that occurred in 2011, discusses lessons learned, offers policy recommendations, presents IFPRI's food policy tools and indicators, and takes a look forward into 2012. The Report reflects perspectives from across the globe. Its nine chapters, written by IFPRI researchers and other food policy experts, provide state-of-the-art analysis on such crucial topics as:food price levels and volatility natural and human-caused disasters climate change biofuels the links between agriculture and nutrition, health, water, and energy sustainable land management regional developments new players in global food policy The Report features numerous tables, figures, infographics, and maps, as well as a collection of stakeholders' thoughts on what influenced food policy in 2011.

The global food system is characterized by large numbers of people experiencing food insecurity and hunger on the one hand, and vast amounts of food waste and overconsumption on the other. This book brings together experiences from different countries addressing the challenges associated with food security. Seen through various disciplinary lenses the different cases included are countries at various stages of food security, with diverse stories of success as well as failures in their efforts. China, Brazil and India, as well as less developed countries in Africa and Asia, such as Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The authors pay special attention to the environmental and socio-economic challenges in the respective chapters and how they contribute to food insecurity. Each of the case studies identifies and analyzes which factors or drivers (environmental, economic, policy, technology, markets) have been the most powerful shapers of the food system and their future impact. The case studies identify interventions at regional, national and local level that contribute positively to food security, highlighting solutions that are effective and easy to implement for all levels of decision makers, from farmers to policy makers. Overall, the book provides insights in order to foster a greater understanding of the issues surrounding food security and support progress towards the goal of a sustainable food system for all.

This book—prepared by Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), which is led by IFPRI—offers a comprehensive perspective on the evolution, current status, and future goals of agricultural research and development in Africa, including analyses of the complex underlying issues and challenges involved, as well as insights into how they might be overcome. Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is at a prospective tipping point. Growth has accelerated in the past decade, but is unsustainable given increasing use of finite resources. The yield gap in African agriculture is significant, and scenarios on feeding the world’s population into the future highlight the need for Africa to expand its agricultural production. Agricultural Research in Africa: Investing in Future Harvests discusses the need to shift to a growth path based on increased productivity—as in the rest of the developing world— which is essential if Africa is to increase rural incomes and compete in both domestic and international markets. Such a shift ultimately requires building on evolving improvements that collectively translate to deepening rural innovation capacity.

Food insecurity, the lack of access at all times to the food needed for an active and healthy life, continues to be a growing problem as populations increase while the world economy struggles. Formulating effective policies for addressing these issues requires thorough understanding of the empirical data and application of appropriate measurement and analysis of that information. Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis, Second Edition has been revised and updated to include hands-on examples and real-world case studies using the latest datasets, tools and methods. Providing a proven framework for developing applied policy analysis skills, this book is based on over 30 years of food and nutrition policy research at the International Food Policy Research Institute and has been used worldwide to impart the combined skills of statistical data analysis, computer literacy and their use in developing policy alternatives. This book provides core information in a format that provides not only the concept behind the method, but real-world applications giving the reader valuable, practical knowledge. - Updated to address the latest datasets and tools, including STATA software, the future of policy analysis - Includes a new chapter on program evaluation taking the reader from data analysis to policy development to post-implementation measurement - Identifies the proper analysis method, its application to available data and its importance in policy development using real-world scenarios - Over 30% new content and fully revised throughout

The IFPRI 2020 Conference on “Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health” was held in New Delhi, India, February 10–12, 2011, and attracted more than 900 attendees. Conference activities included 12 plenary sessions, 15 parallel sessions, 14 side events, an ongoing knowledge fair with more than 25 exhibit booths and tables, six informal discussion groups, and roughly 30 “rapid fire” presentations during coffee breaks. Assessing the impact of this Conference is a task complicated by multiple issues such as assessment coverage and impact attribution. The assessment methods used here include surveys of conferees, Internet searches, website and literature searches, and extensive personal interviews. Distinctions are drawn between short-term and medium-term impacts, and also among impacts on individuals, on institutions, and on professional discourse. Impacts on individual conferees were measured through pre- and post-Conference surveys and telephone interviews. The impacts on the substantive views of those who attended the Conference were found to be small. Most conferees (75 percent) came to Delhi already convinced that a cross-sector approach to agriculture, nutrition, and health (ANH) was appropriate. At the individual level, the Conference impacted motivation and empowerment more than beliefs. The Conference gave those who attended new information, new networking opportunities, and various “positioning advantages” that made them more effective within their own institutions back home. Such advantages were primarily important in the short term. Regarding impacts on institutions, the 2020 Conference produced important but mixed results. Direct impacts on national governments were small, in part because ministerial structures and bureaucratic routines in governments are traditionally segregated by sector, and resistant to anything more than incremental change. Direct impacts from the 2020 Conference on private companies and NGOs were also modest, but for a different reason: these institutions are inherently comfortable working across sectors, so most of the private companies and NGOs participating in the Conference felt little need to change. The strongest institutional impacts from the Conference came within a category of organizations that wanted to integrate nutrition with agriculture, but were unsure of how, or how quickly, to move forward. These institutions included the CGIAR itself as it moved to create the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (CRP4); the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as it responded to an internal evaluation of its own work in nutrition; and a number of donor institutions including most prominently the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), which used the materials and policy energy generated by the 2020 Conference to help guide and push a major expansion of bilateral funding into the ANH arena. These DFID responses alone were a large enough payoff to mark the Conference a success. A third significant impact from the Conference was on professional discourse. The 2020 Conference helped change the conversation about agriculture and food security by boosting the frequency of reference to cross-sector impacts on both nutrition and health. Impact measurement becomes difficult here, because the Conference was not the only initiative highlighting cross-sector linkages underway. Nonetheless, the average number of Google Internet hits per search for the phrase “linking agriculture, nutrition, and health” increased from 9,288 in the pre-Conference period to 13,508 in the immediate post-Conference period of March–May 2011. Searches of organization websites revealed that 18 of 21 of the sites had more links to agriculture, nutrition, and health issues immediately following the Conference compared to just before, and 20 of 21 had an even higher number of such links one year later in July 2012. The most obvious limitation on impact has been at the level of national government policy (excluding donor policies). Partly this reflects attendance. Only 19 percent of those who attended the 2020 Conference were government officials, compared to 41 percent who came from research institutes or universities. Yet, even where Conference impacts on governments might have seemed probable, they have proved (so far) to be mostly tentative or modest. The government of Malawi co-hosted its own version of the 2020 Conference in Lilongwe in September 2011. While this was an important step, the Conference was donor-suggested and donor-funded, and senior officials from the Ministry of Health were unable to attend.In Uganda, the 2020 Conference helped sustain an effort to mainstream nutrition within the Ministry of Agriculture. However, this effort was underway before the Conference, and parallel efforts from USAID, WFP, and FAO did as much to sustain it.In China, the leadership of the State Food and Nutrition Consultation Committee was briefed on 2020 Conference materials, which may have helped to establish a new (but already approved) food safety and nutrition development institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). Since Chinese leaders had been unable to attend the Conference itself, impacts in the country also depended heavily on a separate outreach effort by IFPRI leadership.In India, national officials and researchers—and IFPRI—made concerted efforts to use the Conference to shape language in the new 12th Five-Year Plan (2012–16). While some engaged in this effort claimed progress in that direction, nothing definitive has emerged and in India it appears that little has changed in the traditional separation between the agriculture ministry and the nutrition and health sectors. The Conference’s largest impacts within India were felt at the individual level, at the level of discourse, or within some state administrations, not within national governmental institutions. What can one reasonably expect when looking for impacts from a single international Conference? In the case of the 2020 Conference in Delhi, where the goal was to change the way individuals and institutions were thinking about ANH issues and considering them in professional discourse, measurable progress was made toward each of these goals in both the short term and the medium term. IFPRI took a risk by designing the Delhi Conference to challenge traditional paradigms. This assessment shows that, in both the short term and medium term, the risk has been rewarded.

This report assesses the impact of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Global Research Program on Priorities for Public Investment in Agriculture and Rural Areas (“GRP-3”). Initiated in 1998, the stated objectives of the research program were (1) to increase public investment for rural areas and the agricultural sector given that there is an underspending in the sector and (2) to better target and improve efficiency of public resources to achieve these growth and poverty reduction goals, as well as other development goals. GRP-3 evolved out of research on the impacts of alternative types of public spending on income and poverty outcomes in India and China that was conducted by staff of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division (later the Development Strategy and Governance Division). Those studies indicated that public investments in infrastructure—in particular, investments in roads, agricultural research and development (R&D), and education—yielded sizeable marginal benefits in terms of poverty alleviation and income generation in rural areas. This line of research was later expanded to encompass a number of countries in Africa and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. A second major (and ongoing) thrust of the program is to support African governments in establishing public investment priorities and strategies for promoting rural economic growth and poverty alleviation. Major activities undertaken include providing analytical and institutional support to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and evaluations of individual publicly-funded programs in several African countries. GRP-3 has generated an impressive array of published outputs. The great bulk of these emerged from the research conducted in India and China. A much smaller number of published outputs have been generated by the (more recently conducted) research in Africa; however, a substantial number of papers, book manuscripts, and monographs are in various stages of the publication process. Other important program outputs include a variety of public expenditure databases suitable for assessing the nature and effects of individual countries’ spending priorities. GRP-3 research has had substantial influence on public expenditure priorities in India and China. Most notably, published research in India played a key role in the institution of the Rural Roads Program that directed huge sums toward construction of roads connecting large numbers of previously unserved villages. Quantitative assessment of the positive impacts from these road investments indicates that IFPRI research can reasonably take substantial credit for lifting tens of thousands of individuals out of poverty and increasing agricultural GDP by billions of rupees. Additionally, in both China and India, GRP-3 research has influenced recent policy conversations that have led to increased spending on agricultural R&D and education. Overall, the program has substantially met its stated objectives in Asia. GRP-3 research in Africa has yet to fully meet the program’s objectives, in large part because the policymaking process in the countries where IFPRI has been active are still not far enough advanced for the research outputs to have translated into actual policies. Still, some important outcomes have emerged: The work IFPRI has conducted in support of CAADP has successfully shepherded 19 countries through the Compact process. However, the Compacts are intermediate products; it remains to be seen the extent to which governments follow through on the plans contained within them. IFPRI’s compilations of disparate public expenditure data in a large number of countries represent a useful local public good for use by research and practitioner communities outside of IFPRI. In addition, IFPRI’s role in guiding the formation and operation of a regional strategic assessment and knowledge support system (ReSAKSS) has boosted, if not created, institutional capacity for future monitoring and evaluation activities. Research on the impact of public investments in the agricultural sector has been useful to the donor community by providing empirical backstopping for ongoing policy dialogues with governments. However, the difficult—and often contentious—political environment in which those dialogues occur has meant that policy outcomes are still materializing (and far from certain).

Nutrition Economics: Principles and Policy Applications establishes the core criteria for consideration as new policies and regulations are developed, including application-based principles that ensure practical, effective implementation of policy. From the economic contribution of nutrition on quality of life, to the costs of malnutrition on society from both an individual and governmental level, this book guides the reader through the factors that can determine the success or failure of a nutrition policy. Written by an expert in policy development, and incorporating an encompassing view of the factors that impact nutrition from an economic standpoint (and their resulting effects), this book is unique in its focus on guiding other professionals and those in advanced stages of study to important considerations for correct policy modeling and evaluation. As creating policy without a comprehensive understanding of the relevant contributing factors that lead to failure is not an option, this book provides a timely reference. - Connects the direct and indirect impacts of economic policy on nutritional status - Provides practical insights into the analysis of nutrition policies and programs that will produce meaningful results - Presents a hands-on approach on how to apply economic theory to the design of nutritional policies and programs

The Global Food Policy Report is IFPRI’s flagship publication. This year’s annual report examines major food policy issues, global and regional developments, and commitments made in 2015, and presents data on key food policy indicators. The report also proposes key policy options for 2016 and beyond to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2015, the global community made major commitments on sustainable development and climate change. The global food system lies at the heart of these commitments—and we will only be able to meet the new goals if we work to transform our food system to be more inclusive, climate-smart, sustainable, efficient, nutrition- and health-driven, and business-friendly.

The development of sustainable agricultural systems is an imperative aspect of any country, but particularly in the context of developing countries. Lack of progress in these initiatives can have negative effects on the nation as a whole. Agricultural Development and Food Security in Developing Nations is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on promoting advancements in agricultural systems and food security in developing economies. Highlighting impacts on citizens, as well as on political and social environments of a country, this book is ideally designed for students, professionals, policy makers, researchers, and practitioners interested in recent developments in the areas of agriculture.