IFPRI Datasets

Changes in height-for-age of Egyptian children from 1995 to 2014: Implications for improving child health outcomes

Background
Stunting is a serious health problem in Egypt. Stunting rates and height-for-age z-score (HAZ) distributions changed notably in Egypt over time, yet the factors that led to these changes remain unknown. This study examines the factors associated with these changes and provides important considerations for designing interventions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Methods
Leveraging data from Egypt’s Demographic and Health Survey for the years 1995, 2003, and 2014, we employ a Recentered Influence Function (RIF) approach that goes beyond the conventional way of measuring stunting as a binary indicator to examine changes across the entire HAZ distribution. The RIF decomposes changes in the HAZ distribution over time into differences attributable to changes in the levels of the determinants of nutrition (covariate effects) and in the strength of the association between these determinants and HAZ (coefficient effects).

Results
The stylized facts show a puzzling increase in stunting rates despite improvements in the level of the determinants of nutrition. Our RIF results attribute the change in stunting rates and other parts of the HAZ distribution primarily to changes in the association between the determinants of nutrition and HAZ (coefficient effects) rather than in the level of the determinants (covariate effects). The results also show that the determinants of nutrition could have heterogeneous impacts at different quantiles of the HAZ distribution.

Conclusion
To reduce stunting rates and achieve the SDG of ending malnutrition, our findings highlight the need for targeted interventions. Interventions should be geographically targeted, promote gender and income equality, improve maternal nutrition, and expand access to better sanitation facilities. This is in addition to wealth redistribution and reforming Egypt’s subsidy program to focus on nutritious food.

Associations between exposure to nutrition, WASH interventions and children’s academic performance in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background

Poor nutrition and inadequate WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) practices significantly impact children’s health, nutrition, and cognitive development, especially in low-income settings. These factors further aggravate the incidence of undernutrition, weaken the immune system, increase susceptibility to illnesses and reduce cognitive performance. Evidence on the effectiveness of existing WASH interventions is needed.

Objective

This review evaluated the effectiveness of nutritional and WASH interventions on the academic performance of children in Ethiopia.

Methods

A systematic search of Cochrane, DOAJ, Google Scholar, and PubMed (2010–2024) was conducted using MeSH terms and keywords related to WASH. Two independent reviewers screened studies and extracted data. Eligible studies included cross-sectional and cohort studies on Ethiopian schoolchildren with quantifiable academic outcomes. The JBI SUMARI was used to assess bias, and the GRADE approach was used to evaluate evidence quality. The meta-analysis used a random-effects model in Stata and reported pooled RRs with 95% CIs. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses examined moderators such as study design, intervention type, and sample size.

Results

A total of 19 studies, 16 cross-sectional (n= 16) and three prospective (n= 3) cohort studies with a total of 9034 participants, were included. The random effects model revealed a significant improvement in academic performance among students receiving both nutrition and WASH, with a pooled large positive effect size of 2.05 (95% CI: 1.26, 2.28; I2=). In the subgroup meta-analysis, the effect of the intervention was more positive among those who skipped breakfast (3.47, 95% CI: 0.47, 6.47), chronic iodine deficiency (4.49, 95% CI: 4.08, 4.90), food insecurity (2.810, 95% CI: 1.281, 4.339), and underweight (0.61, 95% CI: 0.46, 0.75).

Conclusion

Despite moderate variability and some risk of bias, the evidence supports the integration of comprehensive nutrition and WASH programs into school health initiatives. Future research should focus on long-term effects and cost-effectiveness.

Tajikistan Rural Household Survey (TRHS) 2025

The Tajikistan Rural Household Survey (TRHS) is a survey data collection effort led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Tajik Academy of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS). It is an ambitious attempt to generate data critical to filling pertinent evidence gaps on the livelihoods and the resilience of rural households in Tajikistan. The TRHS interviewed 3,267 households in the country's three most populated regions (Sughd Region, Khatlon Region, and Districts of Republic Subordination).

The in-person household survey includes a household-level questionnaire that was administered to any knowledgeable adult household member. An accompanying individual-level questionnaire was administered in private to one randomly selected household member, aged 18 to 54 years old. In households were no adult was present in the specified age range, another household member 55 years or older was allowed to respond to the individual-level questionnaire. The dataset also consists of a brief enumerator survey.

Food subsidies in India: Revisiting the estimates

There is a view that the fis­cal bur­den of food sub­si­dies in India is un­sus­tain­able. Yet pop­u­lar de­bate and dis­cus­sion around the costs of these food sub­si­dies, rel­a­tive to their ben­e­fits, are mis­lead­ing for two rea­sons. First, they typ­i­cally treat re­ported bud­getary sub­sidy es­ti­mates—i.e. the fis­cal cost to the gov­ern­ment of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of food via ra­tion shops—as equiv­a­lent to “trans­fers” to ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Sec­ondly, they tend to focus ex­clu­sively on con­sumers. In doing so, they ne­glect the two-part na­ture of the food dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, which in­cludes pay­ments to farm­ers at the time of pro­cure­ment. This paper ex­am­ines ways of mea­sur­ing the costs and value of the food sub­sidy. We pre­sent es­ti­mates that com­bine the im­plicit value of ben­e­fits to con­sumers aris­ing from the re­duced price of grain sold to con­sumers via ra­tion shops, with im­plicit ben­e­fits to farm­ers, in terms of the price dif­fer­ence be­tween what farm­ers are paid by the gov­ern­ment and what they would have ob­tained in the open mar­ket. This ap­proach shows that each rupee of the “food sub­sidy” re­ported in gov­ern­ment ac­counts rep­re­sents a trans­fer worth Rs 1.29 to con­sumers and farm­ers, on av­er­age, over the pe­riod 2001–02 to 2022–23. That is, each rupee trans­ferred to these groups is as­so­ci­ated with a cost of Rs 0.79 to the gov­ern­ment.

Using method of moments quantile regression to examine the influences of fishery operations and their ramifications for marine water contamination

This study aims to investigate the dynamic impact of the fishing industry on marine water contamination in 27 European countries by taking into account the roles of fisheries output, the use of fossil fuels, economic development, and governance between 1990 and 2022. The results, which used a novel technique called the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) in addition to factors that are fixed effect, demonstrated that, at most quantiles, there was a significant positive correlation between fishing production and marine water contamination. At the earliest and latest quantiles, fishery production significantly exacerbates marine water contamination, with a smaller impact at the lowest and a larger impact at the highest. Additionally, the data indicate that affluent EU14 countries produce more fish than developing EU13 countries, which has a significant and negative impact on the contamination of marine water. Marine water contamination from the usage of fossil fuels has increased significantly in the EU13 developing countries as compared to the EU14 wealthy countries. Policymakers can reduce marine water contamination in EU14 and EU13 countries by using eco-friendly fishing gear, more sustainable fishing methods, and energy technologies like wave and tidal power.

C’est la vie!: Mixed impacts of an edutainment television series in West Africa

Edutainment is a promising tool for changing behavior at scale, yet little is known about how to maximize impacts. We undertake an experimental evaluation of a popular West African television series, C’est la vie!, delivered through film clubs targeted at adolescent girls and young women in rural Senegal. We examine impacts on violence against women and girls and sexual and reproductive health. Results show C’est la vie! improved knowledge on both domains three months after film clubs ended, as well as violence-related attitudes nine months later, however, had no impact on behaviors. We investigate design components intended to strengthen impacts, generally finding no additional impacts from post-screening discussions, engaging men, and podcasts. Our findings suggest that edutainment is an engaging way to reach viewers on sensitive themes, however more evidence is needed on how to effectively deliver edutainment content for sustained behavior change at scale.

Antimicrobial and other aquamedicine use for disease treatment in pond-based commercial tilapia farms in Bangladesh

This study addresses the limited information on use of antimicrobials and other chemical use in commercial tilapia farms in Bangladesh. A retrospective cross-sectional survey was conducted in November 2022 in the Mymensingh district, a major tilapia production hub. Nearly half of the farms (46.6%) experienced fish mortality during the last production cycle, and 75.0% of farmers did not seek professional assistance during disease outbreaks. Among those who did, 68.0% relied on chemical or drug suppliers for guidance rather than veterinary experts. Biosecurity practices were inadequate, with 98.3% not implementing four basic monitored measures: disinfection of vehicles, footwear, hands, and equipment. Awareness of antimicrobial use (AMU) risks among respondents was low, with 56.0% unaware of its negative impacts and 88.8% unfamiliar with antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Antibiotic use was low, with only 15.5% of farms reporting antibiotic treatments, primarily oxytetracycline hydrochloride (23.8%), enrofloxacin (19.0%), and erythromycin–sulphadiazine–trimethoprim (19.0%). However, other chemicals with antimicrobial properties, such as disinfectants, were more commonly applied, reported by 39.7% of farms for disease management. The use of both antimicrobial and non-antimicrobial medicine varied significantly by location, being significantly less likely observed in Tarakanda (p < 0.05) and Fulbaria (p < 0.01), suggesting location-specific differences in disease management. The presence of clinical signs was significantly associated with increased use of both antimicrobials, non-antimicrobial medicine and use of overall aquamedicine (p < 0.001), while longer cultivation durations showed a weak association with reduced AMU. Imprudent use of antimicrobials and other chemicals may pose One Health risks, including disruption of pond microbial ecosystems, AMR development, chemical residues, and occupational hazards. In-depth qualitative studies are needed to further understand and optimize antimicrobial and other chemical use practices and determine how tilapia farmers may benefit from improved biosecurity, training, and veterinary access.

Scaling biofortified wheat production for agrifood and nutritional security in eastern India: Evidence from five years of multi-location field evaluations in Bihar

Climate stressors and rural incomes: Multi-country evidence on wealth, gender, and age disparities

Multi-stakeholder platforms for enabling agroecological transitions: Configurations and lessons from seven agroecological living landscapes

Agroecological transition (AET) of agrifood systems is a multidimensional process involving diverse stakeholders. Participatory innovation and co-creation of knowledge are also at the heart of agroecology. Deliberately designed Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) are collaborative spaces conducive to driving this type of collaboration and change. However, how these processes are operationalized is poorly documented. This study contributes to filling this gap by highlighting how MSPs can be important vehicles for enabling AETs. As part of the CGIAR Initiative on Agroecology, Agroecological Living Landscapes (ALLs) were set up as MSPs specifically focusing on co-creation of agroecological innovations. By examining different ALL configurations in seven countries, we analyze MSP attributes that can enable and shape AETs at different stages or “levels” of the transition pathway. We find that MSPs can advance different levels of the transition pathway simultaneously by working on multiple innovations involving various stakeholder coalitions. MSPs navigate complex environments, with diverse stakeholders playing multiple policy and non-policy roles to support AETs. The results also illustrate the intersection between MSP configuration and AET objectives, such as policy change, agroecology market support, and scaling adoption. Finally, we discuss the non-linear nature of AET pathways and political economy considerations for stakeholder engagement in MSPs.

Leveraging social protection to strengthen women’s and girls’ climate-resilience in agrifood systems

Women and girls (WGs) have important roles in making agrifood systems more climate resilient. However, systemic inequalities in access to resources, technologies, information, services, and networks, alongside limited agency and restrictive gender norms, reduce their capacity to adapt to and mitigate climate change. WGs’ constraints on adaptation bear implications on the wellbeing of WGs, their households, and the sustainability of agrifood systems. With growing recognition that social protection helps promote WGs’ resilience in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at large scale, stakeholders are interested in developing social protection programs that are responsive to both climate change and gender inequality. However, little is known about effective approaches. We develop a conceptual framework on how social assistance – the most prevalent type of social protection programming in many LMICs – affects WGs’ coping, adaptive, and mitigative responses to climate hazards. We reflect on the emerging evidence and propose recommendations on program design features that may more effectively promote WGs’ climate resilience in agrifood systems. We additionally highlight important directions for future research to guide practice.

Repairing the mosaic: The political economy of landscape-level agroecological transitions in India

Saving lives through technology: Mobile phones and infant mortality

Asking the right question: Toward a research agenda for responsible GAI in agricultural extension

This study explores how generative AI (GAI) tools for agricultural extension can be designed and evaluated more responsibly. While current GAI systems offer scalable, personalized advice, they often ignore the lived realities of smallholder farmers—especially women—by relying on generic datasets and rigid evaluation metrics. We investigate three complementary methods: adversarial testing to expose gendered and contextual blind spots in model outputs; deliberative stakeholder engagement using the C-H-A-T framework, which focused on Collective knowledge, Human insight, Augmentation, and Trust, to surface value tensions and design trade-offs; and field-level insights from extension officers to uncover trust-building, diagnostic reasoning, and social intelligence absent from static GAI interactions. Together, these approaches reveal that responsible GAI requires more than technical accuracy. It demands participatory design processes that foreground user realities, surface stakeholder assumptions, and account for social and institutional context. We recommend developing gender-responsive benchmarks, embedding reflexive, participatory design methods, and modeling advisory reasoning based on real-world extension practice. The findings contribute to a growing agenda for responsible AI development—highlighting the importance of aligning GAI tools not only with technical goals, but with the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they operate.

Trade-offs and synergies in agroecosystem services with organic and integrated nutrient management in South Asian agri-food systems: Evidence from a meta-analysis

Absorption of zinc from mixed diets containing conventional Bangladeshi rice, zinc-biofortified Bangladeshi rice, or conventional Bangladeshi rice with added zinc among young children from a peri-urban community in Bangladesh

Background
Previous studies showed total absorbed zinc (TAZ) was comparable in diets containing a higher zinc rice variety or conventional rice variety (Lo-Zn CR). This study compared TAZ in a polished zinc-biofortified rice (Hi-Zn BfR) compared with Lo-Zn CR.

Objective
To measure the amount of TAZ by young Bangladeshi children from Hi-Zn BfR, Lo-Zn CR, or CR plus sufficient exogenous zinc fortificant (Lo-Zn CR+Zn) matching the zinc content of Hi-Zn BfR.

Methods
A total of 47 children 36–59-mo-old were enrolled in a crossover study. On the day 1, children received a Lo-Zn CR diet. On days 2 and 4, group A (n = 23) received 150 g of Lo-Zn CR and group B (n = 24) received 150g of Lo-Zn CR+Zn as part of a mixed diet. On days 3 and 5, both groups received 150 g of Hi-Zn BfR. Fractional zinc absorption (FZA) was measured in all diet periods using a triple-isotope tracer (oral 67-Zn and 70-Zn; intravenous 68-Zn) ratio technique; TAZ was calculated as product of zinc intake [total dietary zinc (TDZ)] and FZA.

Results
TDZ was 4.88, 6.14, and 6.70 mg/d when fed Lo-Zn CR-, Lo-Zn CR+Zn-, and Hi-Zn BfR-containing diets, respectively. Mean FZA: 0.23 ± 0.041, 0.169 ± 0.035, and 0.212 ± 0.048 for respective diets (Lo-Zn CR compared with Hi-Zn BfR: P = 0.26; Lo-Zn CR+Zn compared with Hi-Zn BfR: P < 0.001; and Lo-Zn CR compared with Lo-Zn CR+Zn: P < 0.001). Mean TAZ from respective diets were 1.13 ± 0.23, 1.04 ± 0.20, and 1.40 ± 0.33mg/d. TAZ was not significantly different between Lo-Zn CR and Lo-Zn CR+Zn diets (P = 0.52) but was significantly more in Hi-Zn BfR when compared with other 2 diets (P < 0.001 for both). Conclusions A single-day ration (150 g total) in 3 equally divided servings of Hi-Zn BfR could satisfy 47% of the recommended daily requirement of zinc (3 mg/d) for children 1–3-y old and 28% for children 4–8-y old (5 mg/d) compared with 37% and 23% from Lo-Zn CR for the same age groups, respectively. Hi-Zn BfR is a meaningful component of preventive option for childhood zinc deficiency where rice is staple.

Systematic risk profiling: Assessing compounding economic risks in developing countries

This paper presents a systematic risk profiling (SRP) framework to identify the most critical economic risks facing developing countries. Integrating computable general equilibrium (CGE) models with historical shock data and machine-learning tools, we examine how compound shocks affect development outcomes. We apply this method to Kenya, Rwanda, and Malawi, simulating thousands of plausible combinations of world price, capital flow, and productivity exogenous shocks and their impacts on countries' GDP, household consumption, poverty, and undernourishment. The results reveal distinct risk profiles driven by structural differences: Kenya’s primary vulnerability is the volatility in global beverage crop prices, whereas Rwanda and Malawi face the highest risks from domestic root crop and cereal yields, respectively. These findings underscore that vulnerability is not just a function of shock magnitude, but of the specific structure of each economy. Specifically, the high economic volatility in Malawi and Rwanda is driven by the larger role of subsistence agriculture and more volatile domestic yields, whereas Kenya’s agricultural sector is more export-oriented. Unlike standard ad hoc scenario analysis, SRP quantifies both the likelihood of compound events and the relative importance of their drivers. This transparent, scalable framework provides policymakers a new tool to move beyond reactive measures and design targeted, country-specific resilience strategies for an increasingly volatile world.

Nutrition, diet, and academic performance among school-age children in urban low-income settings: A case-control study in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Objective
To examine the effects of nutrition, dietary practices, and other related factors on academic performance and IQ among children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Methods
A case-control study was conducted among 309 children aged 6–14 years attending public and private schools in low-income districts of Addis Ababa from March to August 2023. Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were used to estimate crude (COR) and adjusted odds ratios (AOR) with 95% confidence intervals.

Results
Hand washing (AOR = 3.7; 95% CI: 1.4, 9.8), access to toilets (AOR = 3.37; 95% CI: 1.25, 9.09), and effective teaching (AOR = 2.94; 95% CI: 1.04, 8.33) good academic performance. Stunting (AOR = 0.16; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.59), underweight (AOR = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.09, 0.70), and overweight (AOR = 0.04; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.14) were associated with poor academic performance. Low meal frequency (AOR = 2.65; 95% CI: 1.06, 6.67) and teachers with BA/BSc degrees (AOR = 6.97; 95% CI: 1.14, 42.68) predicted lower IQ.

Conclusion
Many factors, especially nutrition and diet, strongly influence academic and cognitive performance; targeted school interventions improve outcomes.

When the fire ends: Straw burning, regulation, and pollution substitution

Environmental regulations can trigger unintended pollution externalities if they lack well-designed economic incentives or fail to account for the responses of polluters. This paper examines the effectiveness and unintended consequences of the Universal Prohibition on Straw Burning (UPSB) policy in China. By exploiting a generalized difference-in-differences design, we find that the UPSB policy significantly reduces agricultural fires and air pollution through top-down campaign-style enforcement. However, as straw burning is commonly used to kill pests and fertilize the soil, the UPSB policy also increases the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, leading to magnified water pollution. Cost-benefit analysis suggests that much of the health benefit from improved air quality is offset by the health cost from degraded water quality. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the potential responses of individuals subject to the regulation when conducting policy evaluation.

The effects of cash and group therapy in the context of conflict: Evidence from a randomized evaluation in Ethiopia

The prevalence of depression remains high in low-income contexts, particularly those affected by conflict. This paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted in rural Ethiopia assessing the effects of a psychological (group therapy) intervention delivered by non-specialist health staff, as well as a large one-time cash transfer delivered post-therapy. The trial includes three arms comparing group therapy, cash, and both jointly to a status quo control within a sample of individuals reporting some depressive symptoms or functional impairment at baseline. The study occurred between 2022 and 2024, during a period of active armed conflict. Findings show that sixteen months post-baseline, there are no persistent positive effects of group therapy alone; cash alone improves time use and economic outcomes. Group therapy and cash jointly improve psychosocial skills, time use, and economic outcomes, and in areas not affected by conflict, the joint intervention also improves mental health.

War and resilience: The multifaceted impacts of Sudan's conflict and pathways to recovery

The synopsis is being made available in advance of an anticipated 2026 launch of the full book.

Agriculture after independence

Shaken, but Not Deterred : Acute Stressors and the Formation of Hope and Aspirations among Tertiary-Educated Youth in Myanmar in the Aftermath of the 2025 Earthquake

Although hope and aspirations are increasingly considered to be both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, quantitative evidence on the formation of these factors is limited. Using data from a sample of educated youth in Myanmar, this paper documents the relationship between various sources of chronic (ongoing and long-term) and acute (brief and intense) stressors with measures of hope and aspirations. The findings indicate that hope and aspirations are tightly linked with chronic stressors (low relative income and labor market mismatch). However, exposure to an acute stressor (a large and destructive earthquake) does not meaningfully influence hope and aspirations. These results are relevant to both development and emergency relief efforts that consider incorporating mental health into policy design and implementation. The results suggest that policies that aim to address sources of chronic stress (such as poverty and employment outcomes) may have underappreciated psychological benefits that complement standard economic benefits measured in the form of higher wages and employment outcomes. This further emphasizes the need to continue efforts toward development objectives that can mitigate the effects of chronic stressors, even when more acute shocks occur. Additionally, policy responses to emergency and disaster situations may be most effective if they focus on immediate material needs so that an acute stressor does not become a chronic stressor.

Cooling technologies and long-term efficiency improvement of horticulture market agents: Panel data evidence from a solar-powered cold storage intervention in Nigeria

Modern cooling technologies that use renewable energy sources have been increasingly recognized as a promising tool to address a multitude of challenges emerging in progressively complex food systems in developing countries. When provided as cold storage inside horticulture markets, cooling technologies can contribute to improved quality of products and strengthened vertical linkages. Knowledge gaps about the medium- to long-term impacts of these technologies in developing countries remain, especially in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA). This study partly fills this knowledge gap by revisiting the 2021 short-term impact evaluation study (Takeshima et al. 2023) to assess the medium- to longer term impacts of interventions in northeast Nigeria in which 7 small solar-powered cold storages were installed across 7 horticulture markets. Combinations of difference-in-difference and variants of propensity score-based methods suggest that using cold storage significantly increased horticulture sales volumes and revenues of market agents. Using cold storage also reduced the share of food loss and lengthened the products’ shelf-life while raising prices received by both market agents and farmers, which were associated with improved product quality, expanded value-adding activities by market agents, and increased use of advance payments. We find no evidence of negative spillover effects inside horticulture markets. Observed effects are driven by the technical improvements that raise the efficiency of the use of purchased raw commodities, enabled by cold storage, based on modified efficiency analyses. At the same time, the efficiency of cold storage use remains low despite some improvement over time, and scopes exist to enhance this efficiency.

Essential commodities prices, availability, and market actors’ perceptions: January 2026

Figures on: Cereals and Flour, Lentils, Rice, and Pigeon Peas, Vegetables, Meat and Animal Products, Oilseeds, Cooking Oil, Sugar, and Fava Beans, Seeds, Fertilizers, Diesel and Petrol, Exchange Rates, Labor wages, and Market Actors’ Perceptions,

The state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar, 2021-2025: Findings from nine rounds of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey

Persistent Hunger: Extreme hunger continued to affect nearly 3.5 percent of households in late 2025. Poor Adult Diet Quality: Over a quarter of adults (27.1 percent) lack adequate dietary diversity. Women’s diet quality has worsened faster than men’s over the past three years. Deteriorating diets of young children: Over 36.5 percent of 6-23 months and 24.3 percent of 6-59 months old children are without an adequately diverse diet, significantly higher than in previous years. Multiple Factors Affecting Risk & Resilience: Low assets, conflict, and high food prices drive insecurity; remittances reduce food-related risks.

This working paper explores the state of food security and nutrition in Myanmar using nine rounds of nationally representative household panel data collected from December 2021 to October 2025. Overall, the state of food security and nutrition has deteriorated in Myanmar from 2021-2025.

Nearly 3.5 percent of households were in moderate to severe hunger in July-October 2025, with low asset households disproportionately affected. Households with a low Food Consumption Score increased from 9.4 percent in December 2021-February 2022 to 14.2 percent in August-November 2023 and remained high at 16.2 percent in July-October 2025.

Inadequate diet diversity among adults rose from 20.5 percent to 27.1 percent between December 2021-February 2022 and July-October 2025. Women saw a faster decline in diet quality during this time (8.7 percentage points increase in poor diet quality compared to 3.9 percentage points for men). Decreases in diet quality among adults were driven by lower consumption of animal sourced food.

In the latest round of survey, children with poor diet quality increased compared to previous rounds – currently in 2025, 36.5 percent of 6-23 months and 24.3 percent of 6-59 months children are without an adequately diverse diet compared to 30.7 percent and 21.3 percent, respectively, in 2024. Similarly, 42.9 percent of children aged 6-23 months in Myanmar do not meet the Minimum Acceptable Diet (MAD), a composite indicator of meal frequency and dietary diversity, indicating widespread inadequacy in infant and young child feeding.

Regression analysis reveals low income and limited assets to be important risk factors for food security and adequate diet quality. Wage workers and low wage communities were particularly vulnerable. Rising food prices, conflict and physical insecurity also increase the likelihood of poor diet quality. Receiving remittances was a source of resilience; remittance-receiving households were less likely to experience hunger or poor dietary diversity at the household, adult, and child level.

To avert a full-blown nutrition crisis in Myanmar, effective multisectoral steps are required to protect nutritionally vulnerable populations. Expanded implementation of nutrition- and gender-sensitive social protection programs, including maternal and child cash transfers, particularly to vulnerable groups, is needed. Further, given the importance of remittances as an effective coping mechanism, supporting migration and the flow of remittances would help to improve the welfare of the Myanmar population.

Evidence-Led Solutions for Ethiopia’s Rural Transformation Challenges - Ethiopia Policy Innovation Hub – Launch and Policy Dialogue

Conceptualizing and measuring dimensions of tenure security: Gendered analysis from Malawi, Bangladesh, and Nepal

Women’s property rights and tenure security are recognized as critical for development policy and practice. Yet there is no consensus on how to conceptualize or measure these concepts. In this paper, we explore the relationships between perceived tenure security, as reported by survey respondents, with documentation and the bundle of rights that are often used to define property ownership. We use data from the pilot of the Women’s Empowerment Metrics for National Statistics (WEMNS) in Malawi, Nepal, and Bangladesh on both agricultural land and housing. The land rights module was designed to match indicators being collected to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Similar questions were asked regarding the dwelling. Regression results find few associations between perceived tenure security and property rights (holding individual or sole land rights, having your name on a document, and holding rights to sell and bequeath). We thus use Sankey diagrams to visualize these relationships. In Malawi, two-thirds of those without documents, both men and women, are tenure secure. In Bangladesh, over half of the respondents are landless and thus do not have tenure security. Two-thirds of Bangladeshi women respondents in landed households report that they are tenure secure, in spite of not having their own names on the documents. In Nepal, we find a high level of both property ownership (90 percent) and tenure security (80 percent). The patterns differ across contexts and between land and housing. The results confirm that the documentation of rights and having sole or joint rights are important but should not be conflated with tenure security.

IFPRI Malawi maize market report, February 2026

Average retail prices of maize recovered from a January slump before returning to a longer-term trend of marginal decline.

Retail price changes were driven by changes in the cost of imported maize.

Imports dominated cross-border trade in maize despite some strong but localized informal exports to Zambia and Tanzania.

Crop diversification and nutritional resilience amid conflicts: Evidence from farmers in Myanmar

Resilient food and nutrition systems that support dietary diversity are central to improving welfare outcomes and fostering the formation of human capital, with lasting implications for socioeconomic development. Historically, while smallholders in developing countries have accessed food both from diversified farms or kitchen gardens, markets have increasingly become the more dominant source of diet diversity as agrifood systems continue their transformation. Yet little is known regarding how intensifying conflicts and social instability affect these linkages between agrifood systems and households’ dietary diversity. Addressing this knowledge gap is particularly relevant for countries like Myanmar, which is characterized not only by escalating conflicts in recent years but also by relatively lower levels of overall crop diversification and dietary diversity at the national level compared to many other countries in East and Southeast Asia. By using unique panel datasets from Myanmar that cover significant spatiotemporal variation in conflict intensity and addressing the potential endogeneity of crop diversification, we provide new evidence on the resilience of household dietary diversity in conflict-affected settings. We find that increased incidence of violent events at township levels (a proxy for conflict intensity) significantly lowers household dietary diversity during the post-monsoon season, particularly the diversity derived from purchased food items. These adverse effects are relatively more pronounced for healthier food items, such as pulses/legumes/nuts and vegetables/leaves. However, the negative impacts of conflicts on dietary diversity in the post-monsoon season are significantly mitigated by greater diversity in food crop production for farm households during the preceding monsoon season. Results are robust across different measurements of crop diversification and violent events. These findings suggest that in conflict-prone developing countries like Myanmar, household-level crop diversification remains an important strategy for farmers to safeguard household dietary diversity.

Building resilient farmer producer organizations: Driving inclusive and sustainable rural transformation through collective strength

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) are increasingly recognized as engines of inclusive agricultural growth. By enabling small and marginal farmers to aggregate produce, access inputs, and improve bargaining power, FPOs hold the promise of transforming rural economies. Yet, many continue to struggle with weak governance structures, limited managerial capacity, and challenges in accessing markets and finance. To unlock their true potential, FPOs need systematic capacity-building.

Recognizing this, the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment (DA&FE), Government of Odisha, in collaboration with IFPRI, organized state-level trainings to strengthen FPOs across the state. Over three days, 130 representatives, including board members, chief executive officers (CEOs), and staff from 38 FPOs covering all districts, participated in three batches. The training was designed not only to impart technical knowledge but also to create a platform for peer learning, reflection, and problem-solving. The overarching goal was clear: move FPOs from scheme-driven entities to self-sustaining, market-ready businesses.

The making of a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI)

Households in low- and middle-income countries increasingly face overlapping economic, climatic, health, and conflict-related shocks that jointly erode welfare and food security. Yet many empirical and operational tools still measure shocks one at a time or aggregate them using ad hoc rules that assume equal severity and linear effects. This paper proposes a non-parametric multi-shock index (MSI) that summarizes household exposure to multiple shocks using an assumption-light, data-driven approach. The MSI construction proceeds in two steps: (i) shocks are empirically filtered based on their observed negative association with food security outcomes (anchored to the Food Consumption Score), and (ii) retained shocks are aggregated using alternative weighting schemes, including unweighted, population-weighted, and prevalence-weighted variants. We validate the MSI using multiple food security measures—Food Consumption Score (FCS), Reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI), Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS). An application using FAO’s Data in Emergencies (DIEM) household survey for Nigeria illustrates the approach and shows that cumulative exposure—especially systemic and compound exposure—is strongly associated with deteriorating food security outcomes. Among tested variants, the prevalence-weighted MSI provides the clearest discriminatory power and distributional sensitivity, supporting its use for targeting, monitoring, and shock-responsive programming (FAO, 2016; Maxwell et al., 2014; World Bank, 2018).

A systematic scoping review of urban food environment research, interventions and measurement approaches in eight low- and middle-income countries

Background
Food environments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are undergoing rapid transformation, particularly in urban and peri-urban settings. These shifts—characterized by changes in food retail landscapes, consumer purchasing behaviors, and the availability and affordability of nutritious foods—have significant implications for nutrition. Yet, the key characteristics of these environments, such as food desirability, convenience, accessibility, and marketing influences, remain underexplored. This systematic scoping review synthesizes evidence published between 2001 and 2023 across eight LMICs (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Peru) to examine how urban and peri-urban food environments shape dietary behaviors and nutrition outcomes.

Methods
Guided by a conceptual framework encompassing nine key food environment dimensions—availability, prices, marketing and regulation, vendor and product properties, accessibility, affordability, desirability, convenience, and sustainability—we analyzed descriptive, associative, and intervention studies. We searched Scopus and Web of Science, identified 1,609 records, and included 251 studies in the review.

Results
As might be expected in a growing body of evidence, most research is descriptive, with limited causal or intervention-based evidence. Studies frequently focus on characteristics of informal vendors, sociocultural factors influencing shifts in dietary choice toward unhealthier options, and the proliferation of ultra-processed foods, especially near schools and in informal markets. Associations between food environment and nutrition outcomes, such as elevated BMI and overweight, are often linked to supermarket and fast-food access, though these relationships are frequently confounded by socioeconomic variables. Methodological inconsistencies in defining and measuring food environment dimensions limit cross-context comparability. Only seven intervention studies were identified, with few demonstrating significant improvements in diet or nutrition.

Conclusions
This review highlights critical evidence gaps in urban food environments in LMICs and underscores the need for standardized measurement and robust evaluations of diet-related interventions. Strengthening this evidence base is essential to inform food policy, urban planning, and public health strategies that promote healthier diets for populations in rapidly urbanizing settings.

Evidence of the multifunctional performance of the Akole Landscape in Maharashtra, India

This report presents evidence on the multifunctional performance of the Akole landscape in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, India, located in the ecologically significant Western Ghats. Drawing on assessments conducted between 2022 and 2024, the study evaluates agronomic, economic, environmental, and social dimensions to understand landscape-level sustainability and resilience.

Akole, situated in the Sahyadri ranges, is predominantly inhabited by tribal and rural communities dependent on agriculture and forest resources. Despite its rich biodiversity and traditional knowledge systems, the landscape faces mounting pressures from soil erosion, declining water retention, deforestation, monocropping, excessive tillage, and high fertilizer use. Increasing climatic variability—marked by erratic rainfall, droughts, and pest outbreaks—further exacerbates vulnerability. Limited livelihood diversification, high poverty levels, and malnutrition intensify socio-economic risks, while critical data gaps persist, particularly in assessing human health and well-being.

The report identifies key bottlenecks and synthesizes available data to evaluate early outcomes of targeted nature-positive and agroecological interventions. It advocates a transition from production-centric agriculture to a Multifunctional Landscape approach that integrates diversified livelihoods, sustainable resource management, and equity. Such a shift is essential to enhance long-term resilience, ecological integrity, and economic sustainability under changing climatic conditions.

Barriers and opportunities for youth in northern Nigeria’s agrifood value chains: Findings from qualitative research

In Africa, the population of youth ages 15–35 is expected to exceed 100 million by 2030, underscoring the need for the inclusion of youth in the design of programs and policies that promote sustainable livelihoods (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2017). Moreover, half of the youth population will be young women, emphasizing the need for gender-sensitive approaches. While many rural African youth are involved in various nodes of agricultural value chains (AVCs), far fewer—particularly young women—have access to dignified and fulfilling work. Many of the barriers that youth face in fully participating in the agricultural sector are reinforced by gender norms. Addressing the barriers to dignified and fulfilling work can help transform AVCs to be more inclusive of youth and ensure both young women and young men have access to improved livelihood opportunities. Considering the great potential of African youth for inclusive growth, in 2018, the Mastercard Foundation launched its Young Africa Works Strategy in nine countries, including Nigeria. The objective of the strategy is to increase access to dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for African youth, particularly young women (Mastercard Foundation, 2025b; Wallace, Lindsay, 2020).

This report presents findings from a qualitative research study on the barriers and opportunities experienced by young women and young men who participate in key AVCs in northern Nigeria. This study is especially important given that many who reside in the region are somehow involved in agriculture and that youths’ livelihood experiences may be influenced by religious and gender norms, as well as the ongoing conflict. We investigate youth participation in key AVCs, their perceptions of dignified and fulfilling work, facilitators and constraints to their participation in AVCs, with an emphasis on gender norms, and their experiences with financial services.

To investigate these topics, we conducted semi-structured interviews (SSIs) and sex-segregated focus group discussions (FGDs) with young women and young men. We also interviewed non-youth adults (those ages 35 and older), including value chain actors, financial service providers, and frontline program staff using key informant interviews (KIIs), and conducted community profiles (group interviews with community leaders) to gain a holistic perspective on the experiences of youth in AVCs. While our study emphasizes the opportunities and challenges faced by youth, it relies on perspectives from a diverse range of youth and non-youth adults to provide comprehensive insights into the context in which youth live and work. All participants were recruited by liaising with local community leaders, except for program staff, who were recruited with support from project partners, and financial service providers, who were recruited by field team members scouting banks in the study area.

The qualitative methods used for this study do not allow for generalizable, population-level results; rather, they provide rich insights into the “how” and “why” behind various experiences, perspectives, and opinions underpinning youths’ livelihood opportunities. In other words, the findings presented in this report offer insights into the processes that underlie youths’ experiences with dignified and fulfilling work, particularly regarding their participation in AVCs.

Unsurprisingly, young women and young men participate in processing and marketing in different ways, which is often reinforced by gender and religious norms. For instance, young women are discouraged from working outside the home and are largely confined to home-based processing, where they can be monitored and remain separated from unrelated men. Such concerns may limit the ability of young women to participate in AVCs in more public roles, such as selling goods in the town market. Moreover, young women’s family members, either her husband or parents, are often responsible for enforcing these norms. Women of all ages are responsible for housework and childcare, which limits them from pursuing income-generating activities. However, some young women are able to circumvent these restrictive norms. Non-Muslim women are not subject to the same religious gender norms, internally displaced young women are able to engage in a wider range of economic activities, some young women violate gender norms despite criticism, and others participate in AVC activities through others, such as by using hired labor.

Young men may also participate in some aspects of processing, particularly when it involves mechanization, as using equipment is considered a man’s domain. As for marketing, young men predominantly sell raw agricultural products in bulk. Young women typically purchase raw goods from men and process them into various food products for home-based sale.

Importantly, the findings presented in this report inform potential solutions to mitigate the constraints faced by youth participating in AVCs, including but not limited to the specific constraints imposed by gender norms. We discuss gender-transformative approaches, such as household and community dialogues, to challenge norms that restrict the ability of young women to pursue livelihood opportunities. We also highlight several promising approaches that can be paired with gender-transformative approaches. The development of systematized cottage industries may facilitate young women’s entrance into AVCs in a gender-responsive way (meaning in a way that works with existing gender norms). Stronger mentorship programs and financial services that are responsive to youth needs may also bolster young women’s and men’s participation in AVCs in northern Nigeria.

Mechanizing agriculture in Bangladesh: Trends, challenges, and policy priorities

Agricultural mechanization has become a cornerstone of rural transformation in Bangladesh (Zhang et al. 2014). Since the 1980s, the country has made significant strides in mechanizing various stages of agricultural production, from land preparation to harvesting (Mottaleb, Krupnik, and Erenstein 2016; Rahman et al. 2021). As in India and other neighboring countries, both informal custom-hiring businesses and government support have enabled the widespread use of agricultural machinery in Bangladesh (Biggs and Justice 2015). Mechanization has helped address growing labor shortages, increase labor productivity and input-use efficiency, and raise farmers’ incomes (Islam 2021; Mandal 2017).

What determines a farmer’s adoption of agricultural machinery: Assessing demographic factors and asset ownership of smallholder farmers in Bangladesh

Agricultural mechanization provides a pathway to support farmers by reducing labor dependency, increasing efficiency, and improving the timeliness of agricultural operations. This enables smallholder farming communities to apply multiple cropping patterns between seasons, thereby improving their overall livelihoods (Amponsah et al. 2025; Gathala et al. 2022 Paudel et al. 2019; Chaudhary et al. 2023). In South Asian countries, especially Bangladesh, mechanization has historically been lower than in other regional nations. However, over the past 2 decades, there has been a notable increase in mechanization, as demonstrated by the substantial growth in the use of mechanical power for farming activities (Bakhtiar et al. 2025; Brown et al. 2025; Hossen et al. 2020). Understanding this trend and its implications is essential due to the complexities of mechanization adoption in Bangladesh. As the country’s population grows, expanding agricultural mechanization will be crucial to efficiently meet rising food demand.

Impact of climate change on cost and cost efficiency of solar irrigation in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Irrigation is widely recognized as a promising strategy for enhancing agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. To support its expansion, solar-powered irrigation systems are increasingly promoted as a sustainable alternative. However, unlike fossil fuel-based systems, the performance of solar irrigation is more sensitive to climate variability and change. This study assesses the impact of climate change on the cost and cost efficiency of stand-alone solar irrigation systems across Sub-Saharan Africa, using 15 CMIP6 climate scenarios. Our findings indicate that climate change is likely to increase investment costs and reduce the cost efficiency of solar irrigation systems compared to diesel-powered alternatives in most countries and agricultural areas of the region. Nevertheless, the expected decline in cost performance of solar irrigation systems is moderate and is likely to be offset by continued reductions in solar panel prices.

Addressing conflict and weather shocks in agrifood value chains: Policy preferences of Nigerian maize wholesalers

Resilient futures: Acknowledging the shared challenges of early career food system researchers in uncertain times

Transforming food systems to deliver sustainable, equitable, and nutritious outcomes requires confronting profound global challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss to widening inequities and persistent malnutrition. Early career researchers (ECRs), who make up a large proportion of the research workforce, hold unique potential to drive this transformation through fresh perspectives, systems thinking, and transdisciplinary collaboration. Yet they also face distinct barriers: precarious employment, limited funding, and institutional structures that privilege dominant knowledge systems, while undervaluing Indigenous and community-centred approaches. For many, particularly in resource-constrained or Indigenous contexts, these professional pressures are compounded by structural inequities, colonial legacies, and personal responsibilities, amplifying the emotional burden of engaging with such complex challenges. This paper explores strategies to empower ECRs to navigate food systems research without becoming overwhelmed. We highlight the importance of adaptability, mentorship, and building supportive networks, alongside recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems and the contextual realities shaping food systems across geographies. Collaboration and co-production emerge as critical pathways for innovation, trust-building, and collective action, while diverse outputs beyond peer-reviewed publications are essential to translate research into meaningful policy and practice. By embracing persistence, equity, and shared responsibility, ECRs can position themselves not as isolated individuals but as key actors in a global movement for resilient and just food systems. Balancing realism with optimism, we reaffirm the transformative potential of ECRs, and call on institutions, funders, and senior researchers to establish structures that enable them to thrive as changemakers in pursuit of a sustainable food future.

Estimating the number of people eating biofortified foods on-farm and from markets: A detailed methodology and tool

Background
Biofortification is a cost-effective and scalable approach to reduce micronutrient deficiencies. Currently there is scant data detailing the number (reach) and proportion (coverage) of individuals consuming biofortified foods, which is a key limitation for policymakers.

Objective
Develop a method to estimate the reach and coverage of biofortified foods using primary and secondary data sources.

Methods
We used data from 2023 to estimate the reach and coverage of zinc biofortified rice in Bangladesh and wheat in Pakistan, and vitamin A maize and cassava in Nigeria. Our calculation is divided into 5 phases: 1) seed availability, 2) agricultural production, 3) on-farm consumption, 4) off-farm consumption, and 5) overall national level reach and coverage. Phase 4 includes two consumption scenarios: full replacement and half replacement, where biofortified foods respectively account for 100% or 50% of the per capita consumption.

Results
In 2023, approximately 13 to 16 million people (8-9% of the population) consumed biofortified rice in Bangladesh. In Pakistan, between 97 to 173 million people consumed biofortified wheat (39-70% of the population). In Nigeria, biofortified maize was consumed by 42 to 66 million people (18-29% of the population) and biofortified cassava by 25 to 38 million people (11-17% of the population).

Conclusions
Our method estimates on-farm and off-farm reach and the reach/coverage of biofortified foods with visible and invisible traits. Because there is insufficient primary or secondary data describing the intake of biofortified foods, we estimated a range for off-farm reach. We estimate that in 2023, between 177 and 293 million people consumed the four biofortified crops explored in this analysis. This approach can be used to estimate the reach and coverage of other biofortified crops in other countries. More information about the consumption of these foods is needed to improve the accuracy of national reach and coverage estimates.

The rapid global rise of agricultural drones: Evidence, drivers, impacts and an agenda for future research

Implications of food trade policy for domestic and international food price volatility

This article investigates the impact of food trade policies on domestic and international price volatility, focusing on rice and wheat markets. It posits that policymakers aim to minimize the political costs associated with changing domestic prices and those associated with deviating from political-economy equilibria. The study uses price data, adjusted to reflect trade costs, to estimate an Error Correction Model that identifies key policy response parameters. The findings suggest that systematic, short-run protection changes designed to insulate against changes in world prices reduce shocks to domestic prices but exacerbate world price volatility. However, idiosyncratic, national shocks to protection rates—such as those due to national weather shocks—increase domestic price volatility relative to the amplified volatility of world prices. Our findings challenge the conventional view of price insulation as a zero-sum game, suggesting it is a negative-sum game that increases domestic price volatility for almost all countries, creating opportunities for policy reforms to lower costs and reduce price volatility.

Diets, fruit and vegetable intake, and nutritional status in Sri Lanka: A scoping review

Suboptimal diets, including low fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake, are major contributors to malnutrition and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Sri Lanka. Understanding dietary patterns is essential for addressing these challenges. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on diet, F&V intake, and nutritional status across different population groups in Sri Lanka. Searches were conducted in PubMed in October 2023. In total, 30 publications on diet, 13 on F&V intake, and 26 on nutritional status met the inclusion criteria. Sri Lankan diets were found to be rice-dominant with limited variety of nutrient-dense foods such as animal-source foods (ASF) and F&V. Trends in nutritional status varied across life stages. Among children < 5, undernutrition was prevalent, with stunting affecting 14%–21%, wasting 10%–15%, and underweight 17%–21%. Anemia was found in 8%–15% of children < 5 and 25%–30% of pregnant women. Micronutrient deficiencies, particularly vitamin D, iron, and zinc, affected more than one-third of pregnant women. In adults, over one-third were overweight/obese, 8%–12% had diabetes, and 20%–25% had hypertension. Diet, F&V intake and nutrition outcomes also differed by socioeconomic, demographic, and geographic characteristics, with estate sector residents, Indian Tamil populations, and low-income groups disproportionately affected by poor diet quality, low F&V intake, insufficient nutrient intake and malnutrition, while women (vs. men) and urban (vs. rural/estate) residents exhibited higher prevalence of overweight/obesity and NCDs. This review revealed evidence gaps such as the lack of recent dietary intake data based on individual quantitative dietary assessments that limit understanding of current diet adequacy. Additionally, only one impact evaluation designed to improve diet was identified. More research is needed to understand how to effectively improve diet including increasing intake of F&V and ASF in Sri Lanka.

Climate change‐driven shifts in staple crop structure: Evidence from northern China

Spatially explicit global assessment of cropland greenhouse gas emissions circa 2020

Spatially explicit cropland greenhouse gas emission data are essential for identifying emission hotspots and guiding sustainable mitigation strategies. Here we develop high-resolution (5 arcmin) global maps of cropland emissions across 46 crop classes in 2020 by integrating sectoral datasets on synthetic fertilizer, manure, crop residue, in-field burning, rice cultivation and cultivated drained peatlands. Global croplands emitted 2.5 (95% CI 2.4–2.7) GtCO2e yr−1, with drained peatlands (35%), rice paddies (35%) and synthetic fertilizer (23%) as the primary contributors. Four crops—rice, maize, oil palm and wheat—accounted for 67% of total emissions. Emission areal intensities averaged 2 MgCO2e ha−1 globally, with higher intensities in Asia and Europe, where croplands also achieved high caloric productivity. Spatial correlations between emission intensity and production efficiency reveal geographic trade-offs between mitigation potential and food production. The resulting dataset establishes a unified global framework for a spatially explicit assessment of agricultural emissions and efficiency.

Sustainable water management and agriculture: Challenges and opportunities for Mexico

Time is money: Spatially explicit system analysis for rice-wheat cropping systems of Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains, India

CONTEXT: Late sowing of wheat is a major reason for poor yields in eastern India (Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh) due to a shorter growing period, and risk of terminal heat stress. Despite big losses and widespread awareness, late sowing of wheat is widely prevalent in the region. Why? Most wheat is sown after harvesting monsoon rice from the same plot. Later rice harvests interfere with timely wheat sowing. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study is to analyse the interdependence between the rice and wheat to optimize crop establishment dates at the cropping systems level for increasing yields, revenues and mitigating risks. METHODS: We collected production practices data from 5021 plots sequentially cultivated with rice and wheat in the State of Bihar and the eastern districts of Uttar Pradesh. We use this unique data to implement a multivariate Bayesian geo-additive model and risk-return optimization framework to determine rice and wheat sowing dates that give the highest risk-adjusted economic gains to farmers. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Early transplanting of rice and early sowing of wheat have spatially differentiated yield, revenue, and risk (minimal variance) benefits. We find that early transplanting of rice (between June 20 and July 20) and wheat (between November 1 and November 15) leads to a revenue gain of 5000–10,000 Rs ha−1 (∼62.5–125 US$ ha−1) at minimal risk and no revenue trade-offs (non-negative correlation). Conversely, late transplanting of rice has negative effects on correlation of rice and wheat yields therefore leading to a yield and revenue tradeoff. Evidence of spatially differentiated dependence between rice and wheat yield systems implies that analysing these crops separately may be suboptimal. SIGNIFICANCE: Spatial intelligence on cropping system inter-dependence can help farmers select the appropriate crop management practices (e.g., variety duration, irrigation, fertilizer application) and adjust their sowing dates based on local conditions and constraints, thereby optimizing yields and incomes in the rice-wheat system. It can also help policy makers in implementing spatially differentiated entry points for increasing yields and farm incomes at minimum risks.

When the wind blows: Agricultural fire exposure, parental investment, and long-term outcomes

Armed conflict, community-based cash transfers, and social cohesion: Evidence from a randomized intervention in Ethiopia

Gender attitudes in agriculture and positivity bias: A survey experiment in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa

Climate change can generate enemy‐free space for crop‐feeding herbivores

Crop-feeding herbivores reduce the world's food output by approximately 20% and climate change (CC) is bound to deepen those losses. Endemic or introduced consumer organisms (i.e., biological control agents) naturally regulate herbivore populations and secure a quarter of crop yields, but are exceptionally susceptible to CC-related disturbances. Here, we use niche modeling for 14 globally-important herbivores (or pests) to forecast how richness of the associated biological control agents of each pest—as a proxy of service strength—may alter under a CC-driven range expansion. Results show that 57%–100% of pests are bound to lose parasitoid and predator associates. The cassava mealybug Phenacoccus manihoti may experience a 27% decline in parasitoid pressure, whereas cosmopolitan pests of cereal and horticultural crops benefit from 6% to 7% drops in predator pressure. Such ‘enemy release’ can possibly exacerbate pest-induced yield losses and threaten future harvests. Ant-pest associations change in both directions, implying that pests may either face strengthened or weakened biological control. For pests spreading towards or within food-deficit regions in the equatorial belt, parasitoid declines and increases in ant pressure are most pronounced. By exposing the fragility of biodiversity-based ecological safeguards in farmland, our work calls for urgent, integrative, and nature-friendly solutions to uphold food security under environmental change.

Community-driven development, infrastructure, and public services: Overview of the evidence

Community-driven development (CDD) reliably delivers locally prioritized public infrastructure and services, often at a lower cost and with less leakage than traditional government-managed projects, and it has proven particularly effective in challenging contexts affected by institutional fragility, conflict, and violence.

CDD effectively supports communities in prioritizing projects, producing a wide range of positive local outcomes. Yet, the diversity of choices makes generalizing the efficacy of CDD across settings difficult, highlighting the need for more research and better approaches to generating evidence and identifying impact.

Emerging evidence suggests that infrastructure built by communities through CDD programs often endures longer than development projects that employ more traditional “top-down” approaches, with positive effects persisting for a decade or more.

Community-driven development, governance, and collective action: Overview of the evidence

As foreign aid declines, which interventions should we prioritize? Advocates of community-driven development (CDD) have long argued that we should ask this question of the communities and people whom aid is meant to serve.

CDD provides village-level grants and facilitation that support communities in choosing and implementing the projects they consider local priorities, including basic health and education services, local infrastructure, income-generating activities, or other community priorities. In recent years, a growing body of evidence has begun to document and assess the effects of this approach. This brief and a companion brief1 synthesize findings from a range of rigorous evaluations to describe what we know about the multidimensional impacts of CDD in low- and middle-income contexts and highlight gaps that should be addressed in future research. Here, we focus on the effects of CDD on governance and collective action.

Ghana: Cost effective options for inclusive and sustainable development

In this policy brief, we present findings of a systematic evaluation and ranking of investment options for Ghana’s agrifood system based on their cost-effectiveness in achieving multiple development outcomes, including agrifood gross domestic product (GDP) growth, agrifood job creation, poverty reduction, declining undernourishment, and lowering diet deprivation. Additionally, the study assesses their environmental footprints, focusing on water consumption, land use, and emissions. In Ghana, extension in agronomy and post-harvest food loss reduction are the most cost-effective ways to improve social outcomes, including notably reducing poverty and undernourishment levels. Meanwhile, advisory services in livestock and support to small and medium enterprise (SME) processors are highly ranked in accelerating agrifood GDP and employment. Moreover, extension services for agronomy and climate, and investments in mechanization are also highly ranked. However, many of these cost-effective investments come with relatively high environmental footprints, which highlights potential tradeoffs. The study further reveals shifts in the cost-effectiveness ranking of investment options over time and moderately so in the presence of extreme production shocks.

The Cash Transfer & Intimate Partner Violence Research Collaborative: Expertise, impact, and future directions

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has severe long-term consequences for women’s health and well-being, imposes significant economic costs through lost productivity, and has intergenerational impacts on children. Although evidence exists on effective approaches to reduce VAWG, many interventions are resource-intensive and difficult to scale. Stakeholders increasingly recognize that accelerated progress requires embedding VAWG prevention and response approaches within diverse sectors, including in existing systems and large-scale sectoral programming. Sectors focused on reducing poverty and economic insecurity offer a particularly high-potential but underleveraged opportunity. Despite their extensive reach and influence over the structural drivers of VAWG, these sectors have not traditionally focused on VAWG reduction. The field lacks actionable evidence on how to leverage these large-scale systems to reduce VAWG in ways that governments and other key actors can adopt, finance, and sustain, including approaches that reach women and girls in fragile and climate-vulnerable settings.

Does Malawi's exchange rate regime keep prices low? Evidence and policy implications

The current exchange rate regime in Malawi is untenable. It results in multiple effective parallel rates, which impose significant costs on the economy and the daily lives of citizens. A key concern underpinning the existence of the regime is that its removal would trigger rampant inflation and worsen livelihoods. However, the widespread importation of both food and nonfood products at informal exchange rates means that the average citizen derives little real benefit from the maintenance of the official rate. After two major fuel price hikes in recent months, pump prices have nearly converged with the cost that would prevail at market-determined exchange rates.

Drawing on a combination of price multiplier and food demand simulations, this policy note shows that an exchange rate regime rationalization – through devaluing the official exchange rate to eliminate the informal premium and allowing the Malawi kwacha to trade at market-clearing levels – would not lead to runaway inflation or harm household welfare. Recent fuel price increases – in October 2025 and January this year – have pre-emptively absorbed much of the inflationary impact that would have been associated with exchange rate reform.

Our analysis documents the direct, short-run effects of exchange rate unification on domestic prices and finds them to be relatively modest. Longer-term economic growth and sustained price stability will hinge on the effective execution of a coherent set of complementary reforms. Exchange rate unification is a necessary component of this package, but it is not sufficient. Implemented in isolation or treated as a one-off devaluation followed by business as usual, it will bring little relief. It must be accompanied by sound fiscal and monetary policy and sustained export growth to restore macroeconomic stability. We do not discuss the trade-offs inherent to these accompanying measures, as they have been addressed at length in AfDB et al. (2025) and Engel et al. (2025).

Critically, there must be a credible and durable switch toward a more flexible and transparent exchange rate regime. It will take time for exports and growth to pick up after a devaluation, and whether they do will depend on economic actors believing that macroeconomic conditions will remain stable over the lifetime of their investments. It will require careful preparation to get the cocktail right. Politically, the current administration might just have one shot at this: failure will make future reform attempts much harder.

Myanmar monthly food price report – January 2026

In January 2026, rice prices declined sharply year-on-year and stabilized month-on-month after several months of continuous decline, driven largely by lower international prices and monsoon-season supply. While these trends have eased pressure on consumers, they raise concerns for paddy producers facing rising input costs. Pulse markets showed mixed dynamics. Black gram, chickpea, and pigeon pea remained below last year’s levels reflecting continued weak demand from India, though modest month-on-month gains were observed following weather-related production concerns. Green gram prices remained higher year-on-year but softened slightly month-on-month due to delayed winter planting. Maize prices stabilized month-on-month, supported by improved export expectations and regional feed demand. Vegetable prices were generally lower year-on-year, while animal-sourced foods continued to record substantial year-on-year increases, particularly mutton and fish, reflecting supply constraints and export demand. Overall, food markets remain influenced by international price movements, export policy adjustments, and ongoing regional disruptions.

Agricultural trade in Africa: Current trends and challenges

Agricultural trade can play a central role in meeting people's food needs, both by increasing available supply and by boosting stakeholders' incomes, given that 60% of the labor force works in this sector (Bonuedi et al., 2020; Wonyra and Gnedeka 2023). However, an analysis of African agricultural trade performance over the past twenty years highlights some key issues to watch. First, African agricultural trade is the lowest in the world, not helped by high costs of trading and non-tariff measures. Second, a trade deficit that has been steadily widening since 2006 as Africa has become heavily dependent on imports of basic agricultural products such as cereals. The continent currently meets more than 40% of its cereal demand on world markets. This deficit in African agricultural trade is fueled by low productivity, linked to declining yields and a lack of sufficient investment in production, storage, processing, and marketing infrastructure, and rapid population growth and urbanization in Africa which has increased demand for imported food. Third, over the past two decades, the structure of African agricultural exports has remained largely undiversified, with unprocessed cash crops continuing to be the dominant export commodity. To better understand the dynamics of agricultural trade in Africa, this brief analyzes its performance, over the 2003-2023 period, by highlighting the most dynamic countries and regional economic communities, the most exported and imported products, and the continent's revealed comparative advantages.

Livelihoods and welfare: Findings from the ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (July – October 2025)

The ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey, a nationally and regionally representative phone survey, was implemented in July-October 2025 (Q2–Q3) with a recall period covering the previous 3 months. It follows eight earlier rounds of surveys that have been carried out since December 2021. This report documents recent livelihood and welfare dynamics over this survey period.

Overall, household welfare conditions remain highly fragile. In terms of income sources, own farming, farm wages, and non-farm businesses continue to be the most important livelihoods in rural areas, while non-farm businesses and non-farm salaried employment remain most important in urban areas. Non-farm wage and non-farm salaried employment each account for around 20 percent of households nationally.

Production-related constraints in rural areas such as weather, pests, and input costs have remained broadly similar to previous rounds, but a growing share of households reported low selling prices as their main challenge. Among crop farmers, low selling prices became the most frequently cited challenge in Q2–Q3 2025. Livestock producers faced fewer price-related pressures and were more affected by high input costs, while fishing households reported both access constraints, a quarter of fishers could not reach their ponds, and low selling prices. Non-farm businesses continued to report weak demand, with many households indicating that fewer customers are purchasing their products.

In rural areas, nominal income growth was far more modest, rising by just 3 percent in real terms between Q3-Q4 2024 and Q2-Q3 2025. Although agricultural wage rates increased significantly, falling prices for most crops compressed farm revenues. Given that a large share of rural households depended directly on agriculture and farm-linked non-farm businesses, lower commodity prices offset wage gains and limited overall income growth. As a result, rural real incomes remained more than 30 percent below Q2 2022 levels.

In Q2-Q3 2025, income poverty declined by 2 percentage points. This reduction was driven entirely by urban areas, where poverty fell by 6 percentage points, reflecting the strong rebound in urban real incomes. Rural poverty, by contrast, remained unchanged. The recovery was uneven across socioeconomic groups. Asset-rich households experienced the largest gains, while poverty among asset-poor households remained persistently high. Poverty rates increased among farmers, when compared to the entire year of 2024. Conflict-affected households also continued to face very high poverty rates, with no meaningful improvement. In contrast, households receiving remittances maintained substantially lower poverty rates than those without remittance income.

The Russia-Ukraine War and global food security: Impacts four years later

The immediate impacts of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Ukraine’s agriculture sector were abrupt and widespread. Though Ukrainian producers have demonstrated remarkable resilience in wartime, evidence of long-term reductions in Ukraine’s grain exports has emerged. Russia’s grain exports surged early in the war, but today, weather and labor shortages are threatening Russia’s agricultural output—and its ability to utilize its food exports for global influence. Russia’s fertilizer exports confer additional economic and political advantage for Moscow, with fertilizer exports variably affected since 2022. How are the dynamics of war affecting global agriculture markets and global food security? How can Ukraine’s allies best support its agricultural recovery and long-term growth?

Does commercial small-scale vegetable farming production enhance farmer welfare?

This project note analyzes links between agricultural commercialization and producer welfare by comparing vegetable farmers with non-vegetable farmers, who mainly grow rice. The following key findings stand out.

Vegetable farming is an engine of smallholder commercialization in Odisha. Vegetable producers sell 74 percent of the vegetables they produce, about double the market surplus for rice.

Vegetable farming households are of modestly higher average socioeconomic status than non-vegetable farmers. They are significantly better educated, more likely to belong to a general caste and less likely to belong to a scheduled tribe, but the size of differences in the characteristics of the two groups is not large.

Access to land, irrigation, and midland plots are strongly associated with the adoption of commercial vegetable farming. Vegetable farmers operate slightly more land, lease in land more frequently, cultivate more midland plots, and are nearly twice as likely to have irrigated land.

Vegetable farming is associated with higher agricultural income, but not total household income. Vegetable farmers earn 24 percent higher agricultural incomes on average, but total household incomes do not differ significantly from those of non-vegetable farmers, likely due to lower participation in non-farm employment.

Vegetable commercialization is associated with better diet quality. Vegetable farming households consume a greater diversity of vegetables more frequently and have significantly higher household diet diversity scores than non-vegetable farmers.

Income inequality is not higher among vegetable adopters. Gini coefficients for agricultural and household income are similar between vegetable and non-vegetable farmers, and similar across blocks with higher an lower concentrations of commercial vegetable cultivation, suggesting that smallholder commercialization has not exacerbated inequality.

Spatial clustering of vegetable production is associated with higher agricultural incomes. Vegetable and non-vegetable farmers in blocks with high concentrations of vegetable farms have higher average agricultural incomes than those in blocks with less vegetable farming. This pattern suggests that links exist between initial conditions such as infrastructure, irrigation, and market access that foster the formation of spontaneous clusters, while intra-cluster features such as MSME density and knowledge spillovers may play a role in deepening agricultural commercialization and raising farm productivity.

Urban Food Environments and Diets (UFED) online tool: Urban considerations

Specific considerations for planning and conducting assessments in urban contexts are detailed in this Urban Considerations resource, a supplement to other guidance available through the Urban Food Environments and Diets (UFED) web tool. The document covers topics such as sampling of urban communities, participatory mapping of food environments, data collection in slums and informal settlements, and identification and classification of ultra-processed foods and food consumed away from home. The Urban Considerations resource also provides a set of recommendations for improving linkages between dietary and food environment assessments, starting at the planning and design stages.

Are the relationships between actors in Odisha’s vegetable value chains parasitic or symbiotic?

This project note identifies the following key findings in answer to the question of whether the relationships between off-farm micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and commercial small-scale vegetable farmers in Odisha’s vegetable value chains are parasitic or symbiotic:

Relationships between MSMEs and farms in vegetable value chains in Odisha are predominantly symbiotic, not exploitative. Contrary to common assumptions, we find little evidence for the existence of parasitic credit relations between traders, input suppliers and smallholder vegetable farmers.

Relationships between MSMEs and farms in vegetable value chains in Odisha are predominantly symbiotic, not exploitative. Contrary to common assumptions, we find little evidence for the existence of parasitic credit relations between traders, input suppliers and smallholder vegetable farmers.

Value chain credit is relatively uncommon. More than 90 percent of input suppliers and retailers provide no credit of any kind, and fewer than 2 percent of surveyed enterprises impose exclusive tied-credit obligations on buyers or sellers.

Trade credit functions primarily as short-term working capital, not a means of control. Wholesalers allowed buyers to delay payments for vegetables for several days in almost 40 percent of their most recent sales transactions.

Farmers are not heavily credit constrained. Half of vegetable farmers borrowed money to fund agriculture within the past year, and only 5 percent of non-borrowing vegetable farmers reported that they wished to access agricultural credit but were unable to. Most farmers borrowed from family and friends or self-help groups. Less than 2 percent of loans originated from wholesalers or input suppliers.

Input suppliers are an important source of advisory services for farmers. Nearly half of farmers sought advice from input suppliers during their most recent purchase, and over half received it, largely free of charge.

Wholesalers and retailers often provide transport services when sourcing or supplying vegetables. These services are usually costed into the price of goods received or sold, but are convenient for time- or mobility-constrained farmers and other trading partners. Much of the transport organized by traders is supplied by third-party service providers (transport businesses).

Provision of other types of service by wholesalers, retailers, and input suppliers to their suppliers and customers are quite limited, indicative of an intermediate level of value chain transformation.

Farmers undertake more product upgrading and value addition activities than wholesalers or retailers. Many farmers grade, wash, and remove damaged produce prior to sale, enhancing value capture and simultaneously reducing transaction costs for buyers.

Market “thickness” and competition moderate exploitative behavior. Improvements in infrastructure, mobility, communications, and the spatial clustering of farms and MSMEs may limit the ability of marketing intermediaries to create dependencies among farmers, and improve access to information and markets, lowering barriers to entry and giving rise to outcomes that are more symbiotic than exploitative.

Who is included in Odisha’s vegetable value chains, and on what terms?

This project note explores inclusion in Odisha’s vegetable value chains by asking: (1) Who – in terms of gender, caste, and community – participates in input supply, farming, wholesale, and retail, and; (2) What are the terms of their participation into the value chain —looking at the entry requirements, business characteristics, and the nature of benefits derived. The second half examines retailing, which is the most inclusive off-farm node. It looks at how participation varies by gender, caste, and community across several factors: entry requirements, invested capital, scale of operation, business practices, and incomes earned. This reveals how accessible retailing is to new entrants and how benefits differ across groups.

Women’s voice and agency in “organized” vegetable clusters: The Agriculture Production Cluster (APC) program in Odisha, India

A key policy tool for inclusive agrifood system transformation has been organizing women farmers into collectives. This is especially important for diversifying production into high-value sectors such as horticulture and livestock. Empirical evidence from around the world shows that some of these efforts can be transformative, but the impact is mixed and can involve tradeoffs (Malhotra et al. 2024; Quisumbing et al. 2021; Twyman et al. 2022). The extent to which programmatic interventions can enable inclusive and sustainable value chain participation thus depends on specific design principles. These includes the selection of commodities, bundling of interventions that tackle multiple constraints simultaneously, the presence of committed staff and champions for effective implementation, and a pathway to institutionalize these interventions (Narayanan et al. 2024, for example). In contrast to clusters that develop spontaneously, where incentives and supportive institutions may be present already and may have spawned these clusters to start with, the viability of organized clusters depends crucially on these inputs.

In this note, we bring together qualitative and quantitative data from a larger research effort (See Project Note 1) to spotlight the experiences of women farmers in organized clusters in the Indian state of Odisha. We focus on the Agriculture Production Cluster Program (APC). The goals of our research are to understand how organized clusters can foster and support diversification into vegetable cultivation. A second goal is to understand women’s experience in vegetable production within these clusters. A third goal is to reflect on the broader design and implementation of the APC program and its sustainability in a context where many cluster interventions are known to implode or fade after the program ends (Belton et al. 2025; Narayanan et al. 2025).

Mindset or economics: What explains the dominance of maize in Malawi

Malawi’s policy ambitions increasingly emphasize the need for greater crop and diet diversity. De-spite these stated goals, the country’s food system continues to revolve around maize, both in pro-duction and consumption. This brief discusses the economic imperatives that drive low-income, land-constrained Malawians to prioritize maize. Only by addressing these underlying incentives can policy effectively reduce maize dominance and support the diversification agenda it seeks to advance.

Spontaneous vegetable production clusters: How do they form, and how inclusive are they?

A prominent but understudied aspect of Odisha’s recent agricultural transformation has been the emergence of spontaneous vegetable clusters. We summarize preliminary findings from three case studies of clusters that emerged organically – eggplant in Nayagarh district, pointed gourd and cauliflower in Cuttack district. The aims of this research effort are four-fold: How did these clusters emerge? How do these production clusters link with mid-stream actors and how do they co-evolve? What are the social dynamics of inclusion – across caste, class, gender and generation? What roles do these different groups perform in these production clusters and on what terms?

Facilitating fresh produce market flows through the Market for Village Farmers project

Commercial small scale vegetable producers and inclusive agricultural transformation in Odisha: An introduction to the methods and hypotheses of the INCATA project

The research project “Tracking commercial small-scale producers for inclusive agricultural transformation” (INCATA) studied the relationships between commercial small-scale producers (farmers) and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in horticulture value chains in Odisha, India. The goal was to understand whether and how these relationships could contribute to inclusive agricultural trans-formation.

The project was designed to address several questions. This was based on the assumption that im-proved understanding of these dynamics will inform more effective policy design and implementation in support of inclusive agricultural transformation:
1)What factors kickstart agricultural commercialization? How do small-scale producers become commercial, how do MSMEs upstream and downstream of the farm get started, and how do these two sets of actors co-develop together?
2)To what degree does the co-development of commercial small-scale farms and supporting MSMEs translate into poverty reduction and women’s economic empowerment? Who is included, and who is excluded, or gets stuck at low levels of inclusion, or slips backward? What are the economic opportunities available for youth in the transformation process?
3)What policies and investments have the potential to accelerate the symbiotic co-development of commercial small-scale producers and MSMEs, and the inclusive effects of their co-development?

To address these questions, INCATA focused on the value chain associated with commercial small-scale horticulture (vegetable cultivation) in Odisha. The vegetable value chain was selected because of the high level of participation and commercial orientation among small-scale vegetable producers, the high value of vegetable crops relative to staples, and the importance of vegetables for nutrition.

Papua New Guinea food price bulletin: February 2026

This bulletin reports on food price trends from major markets in Papua New Guinea, for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025 based on data collected by Fresh Produce Development Authority (FPDA). Consistent data collection continues to be a challenge during the fourth quarter: no data was collected for the month of October (except for one round in Goroka and Kokopo, respectively). To provide up-to-date analysis, this bulletin incorporates all available data from October 2025 - January 2026 data. For Port Moresby, food price data were collected only for December and one round in January.

This report compares Q4 2025 (November & December) prices with the same period in 2024 and 2023. Prices are reported in PGK per kilogram and represent real prices adjusted for inflation using the FAO Consumer Food Price Index (PCI) and price gaps (July 2025 to January 2026) filled using a growth rate calculated from the PNG National Statistical Office - June quarterly PCI data. This bulletin focuses on selected important staples (sweet potato, taro, cassava, cooking banana and rice), vegetables (aibika, English cabbage, capsicum, carrot, and choko-tips) and fruits (lemon, orange, pawpaw and pineapple). For longer time series data and interactive tools, visit the IFPRI website and download food price data here.

Insights from a fresh produce value chain scoping study

Seasonal farm advisory services in EHP

Women’s empowerment and child nutrition in the Asia – Pacific region: Evidence from Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste

Modelled impacts of taro yields under different climate scenarios

Regional implications of public investments and shocks

Economic impacts of the 2025 US tariff increases: Evaluating possible responses for PNG

The gendered effects of rainfall on early childhood nutrition: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

How are vegetable markets in Odisha transforming?

Odisha’s market environment for vegetables is a complex mosaic of diverse institutions – including marketplaces regulated by the Odisha State Agricultural Marketing Board (OSAMB), those under local governments and those that private and unregulated. Since the 2000s, the State’s agricultural marketing policy has been progressively reformed to allow contract farming, establish private markets, free vegetable trade from regulatory purview and abolish fees associated with transacting in the regulated markets. This note presents results from a survey of 158 vegetable markets in six districts: Anugul, Bolangir, Cuttack, Ganjam, Keonjhar, and Koraput. It also covers four terminal markets in Bhubaneshwar, Puri, Rourkela, and Sambalpur. Contrary to popular belief about restrictive regulation and an overbearing state, over 90% of estimated vegetable deliveries in the study area arrive at unregulated markets. We estimate that each trader serves about 258-552 people and 4.1-8.39 operational holdings in the study area, depending on the season. There are approximately 18 retailers for every wholesaler. Vegetable markets have seen rapid transformation in recent years. Markets, especially private markets, have proliferated. More of them have become daily markets operating more days per week and hours per day. In 2025, they have a greater proportion and number of permanent stalls than in 2015. Both wholesalers and retailers have grown significantly in the past decade—wholesalers by 65% and retailers by 20%. Average quantities traded by both groups have increased, along with overall produce deliveries and transactions. Growth of volumes traded has been accompanied by market diffusion. The Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) for volumes delivered and traded declined to 7/10th and 3/5th of 2015 levels, respectively. An overwhelming 89% of the markets registered a growth in arrivals over the decade. This transformation is reflected in the villages as well, based on data from a survey of 154 villages in the study area. Two groups – retailers who purchase from farmers and sell within the village and farmers who retail their own produce – have a significant presence and have maintain their presence over the decade. More villages (about 38%) have transporters today who serve as market intermediaries compared to about less than 13% a decade ago. Today, a majority of villages have traders visiting the village during high season to collect produce just as village traders often collect vegetables from farmers to sell to traders outside even though on average there are just 1-2 per village. Collectively, these findings suggest that most villages have local marketing options available. A key finding, however, is that vegetable markets—where much of the trade occurs—have limited or poor infrastructure. Further, it may be useful to revisit the process of tendering the functions of market maintenance and operations for a system with greater accountability.

Does commercial small-scale aquaculture drive inclusive agricultural transformation in Odisha?

This mixed methods analysis of the status of small-scale aquaculture in Odisha and its potential to induce inclusive agricultural transformation yields the following key findings:

Most of Odisha’s population eat fish, but widely observed religious customs limit fish consumption to three days per week for most people. This means that aggregate demand for fish is about 60 percent lower than it might be in a fish-eating state with a similar population and no dietary restrictions, resulting in low derived demand for aquaculture development to serve local markets.

Odisha faces a “second mover” disadvantage in farming fish. Most of the farmed fish in Odisha’s markets is ‘imported’ from neighboring Andhra Pradesh, which has a long-established, highly productive medium- and large-scale commercial freshwater aquaculture sector that can outcompete farms in Odisha on price, even after accounting for transport costs.

Aquaculture growth in Odisha is concentrated along the coast, in capital-intensive shrimp farming clusters linked to global export markets. Intensive shrimp farming is difficult for small-scale producers to enter or participate in successfully and has been linked to a variety of exclusionary outcomes including soil salinization, and conflicts over land.

There is very little commercial small-scale freshwater aquaculture in Odisha. We found no evidence of major spontaneous clusters of inland aquaculture farms comparable to those found in neighboring West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, suggesting that aquaculture plays a limited role in driving agricultural transformation in Odisha at present.

Government schemes have doubled the number of community tanks and small private fishponds in some areas of Odisha over the past decade, but the spatial pattern of development atomized, and fish farming is mainly oriented toward subsistence production. Only 0.5 percent of farm households in six surveyed districts had a fishpond.

Small-scale inland aquaculture in Odisha makes localized contributions to food and nutrition security. Households in rural areas with more ponds are more likely to have eaten fish recently. This is valuable for those households who benefit directly.

Climate stress poses significant and growing challenges to aquaculture in Odisha’s semi-arid and cyclone-prone environment. These challenges are likely to intensify over time.

How are the production practices of vegetable farmers in Odisha transforming?

Agricultural transformation and smallholder commercialization are accompanied and driven by deepening integration of farmers into input markets and associated technological change. This project note examines two related questions: (1) How do households enter commercial vegetable cultivation? (2) How have technologies used to produce vegetables changed over time? The following key findings stand out:

Vegetable farming in Odisha is a long-standing activity. Most farmers entered vegetable cultivation over 20 years ago, with expansion accelerating 20–30 years back as markets deepened. Fewer than one in five respondents are first-generation vegetable farmers.

Entry into vegetable farming is primarily self-financed. Over 80% of farmers required startup capital to purchase inputs or make plot modifications such as land levelling. These investments were funded mainly through agricultural earnings, migration income, or non-farm earnings. Self-help groups are also an important source of finance for these investments.

Subsistence coexists with commercialization. Most farmers were partly motivated to start producing vegetables for home consumption, but virtually all sell some of what they produce. Marketed surpluses of vegetables have risen gradually, to reach over 70% by 2025, without displacing household self-provisioning, and own production accounts for around half of farmers’ vegetable consumption.

Crop portfolios are both concentrated and diverse. Production is dominated by a small set of “commodity vegetables” (most importantly tomato and brinjal), alongside a wide array of niche crops grown by smaller numbers of farmers.

Recent contraction in crop diversity and off-season production signals rising climate stress. The share of household growing vegetables in multiple seasons, and the number of crops produced per farm has fallen slightly, consistent with increasing climate stress and perhaps reflecting competitive pressures from out of state vegetable producers.

Adoption of productivity enhancing agricultural technologies is at a transitional stage. Hybrid vegetable seed, inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanized land preparation are widely adopted, but adoption of more advanced technologies that could give rise to greater commoditization (e.g. seed trays, seedlings purchased from nurseries, plastic mulch, drip irrigation, drones) remains low. Adoption of environmentally friendly inputs such as vermicompost, organic pesticides, and insect traps is limited.

Technology adoption is shaped by clustering and scale. Uptake of inputs, mechanization, and post-harvest handling tends to be greater in areas with high concentrations of vegetable production and among larger farms, reflecting agglomeration effects and access to service markets.

Expansion of irrigation access has been a critical catalyst for smallholder vegetable commercialization. The number of irrigated parcels of land operated by surveyed households has grown 74 percent since 1980, with irrigation accelerating sharply after 2010. Improving access to irrigation post-2010 has spurred entry into vegetable cultivation and simultaneous adoption of a complementary bundle of productivity enhancing technologies.

Vegetable cultivation relies heavily on private investments in irrigation, particularly open wells and borewells. Government irrigation schemes have been targeted primarily toward rice. Although more than half of irrigated parcels of land are served by government irrigation and the number of parcels with access to government irrigation has grown 35 percent in the past 15 years, the expansion of private irrigation provision has been almost twice as fast, growing 67 percent in the same period.

Who grows vegetables? Smallholder commercialization in Odisha, India

We analyze data from a house listing exercise, conducted as part of the INCATA project, covering 35,913 households across 154 villages in 24 blocks in six districts in Odisha, to assess the extent, patterns, and growth of vegetable farming. We successfully listed 27,189 of the 35,913 households; 69% of those we successfully listed reported being engaged in cultivation in the past year. Of these, 95% grew paddy, the most important staple grain in the state, while only 22% grew vegetables (this is equal to 15% of all those listed). A larger share of listed households (34%), however, had a kitchen garden; 24% of listed households had both a vegetable farm and a kitchen garden. Only 14% of those with kitchen garden also sell from the kitchen garden. Although only 15% of all those listed grew vegetables themselves, thrice as many had worked on others' vegetables vegetable fields, highlighting the wider implications of vegetable cultivation for employment. Vegetable cultivation has a non-linear relationship with landholding size, with those owning around 2-5 acres (small farmers) or 10-12 acres (medium farmers) having a higher proportion of vegetable cultivators than others. This suggests that vegetable cultivation is both inclusive while also permitting larger - scale commercialization. Land leasing is widespread. Over 85% of those who began growing vegetables after 1950 started selling vegetables that same year, underlining the commercial orientation from the start. At the same time, growing for own consumption is an important driver for vegetable farming. The recent spurt in the numbers of vegetable farmers has been disproportionately in high “intensity” blocks, i.e. where there are more vegetable farmers, implying a clustering effect. Regionally, the recent growth is relatively greater in the coastal districts (Ganjam, Cuttack) and in what we refer to as the central spine (Anugul, Keonjhar and Koraput). Irrigation appears to be by far the most important correlate of vegetable cultivation. Contrary to popular perception that marketing constraints deter diversification into vegetables, water and land constraints prevent uptake; further, the most frequent reasons for those who give up vegetable production are water constraints and animal conflict. Further analysis will investigate in detail the enablers of and barriers to commercial vegetable cultivation.

Insights from the PNG low skill urban wage survey (PLUWS 2025)

Economic returns to R&D investment in galip nut commercialization: A cost–benefit analysis (Work in progress)

How inclusive is transformation in Odisha’s vegetable value chains?

The research project “Tracking commercial small-scale producers for inclusive agricultural transformation” (INCATA) studied the relationships between commercial small-scale producers (farmers) and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), to understand whether and how these relationships could contribute to inclusive agricultural transformation.

Sudan: How warring factions gained influence in the country’s food system – and what it means for the current conflict

Militaries play a major role in the politics of many countries. They determine whether elections can occur and who can compete. From Egypt to Pakistan and Myanmar to Uganda, the military is often the most important powerholder. In parallel, violent non-state actors – including criminal networks, terrorist groups and paramilitaries – have proliferated over the last two decades. To maintain their influence and finance their operations, militaries and violent non-state actors often become heavily involved in both legal and illicit business activities. Studies of their economic activities often focus on their role in extracting natural resources like gold, oil and timber.

Papua New Guinea low-skill urban wage survey (2025) report

The Papua New Guinea Low-Skill Urban Wage Survey (PLUWS 2025) was designed to fill an information gap on low-skill wage employment and dietary purchasing power in select urban areas across Papua New Guinea. Telephone interviews were conducted from June 2nd through November 10th of 2025, that purposefully interviewed urban wage earners in low- or low-medium1 skill occupations in cities where the Fresh Produce Development Agency (FPDA) is also collecting monthly fresh food prices. In doing so, the survey collected information from individuals based in Port Moresby, Kokopo, Lae, Mount Hagen, Banz, Goroka, and Daru, with a focus of achieving a total survey sample that supported gender disaggregated analysis of wage rates, payment preferences, purchasing power, and household and individual characteristics of low- and medium-low skill wage earners. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) partnered with a large PNG mobile phone company, Digicel, who randomly selected mobile phone clients from comprehensive lists of users geographically mapped to each of the urban cities identified for survey implementation. Two sampling strategies were implemented (described in more detail below) which resulted in a lower-bound (e.g., greater share of informal employment, less training or education, and lower wage rates) and upper-bound sample of low-wage earners. The final survey sample consists of 590 low- and medium-low skilled wage workers. Of which, approximately 2/3 of survey respondents are men (69% men and 31% women). The survey asked questions about individual characteristics (gender, age, marital status, education, etc.) of the respondent and the respondent’s household (assets, household composition, decision-making regarding earned incomes, etc.); characteristics of respondents’ employment; preferences for wage payment in money or in-kind; and the respondents’ diet quality. This report provides results tables and a discussion of the descriptive statistics by gender and sample approach (lower-bound and upper-bound) of low-skill wage workers.

Synopsis: Implications of increased urbanization and consumer awareness on future food supplies in Tanzania

This research quantifies how demographic change, urbanization, and healthy diet requirements will reshape Tanzania’s food supply. Using contextualized healthy diet benchmarks, it identifies the scale, composition, and policy implications of food system transformation needed to ensure healthy diets in Tanzania by 2050.

Tanzania’s population is projected to more than double by 2050, with rapid urbanization increasing the share of urban residents from one-third to more than half and intensifying pressure on food supply systems and rural–urban linkages.

To align with this growth, annual food supplies also need to increase by more than double—from about 24 million tons in 2020/21 to 52–62 million tons by 2050—but must do so with fewer food producers.

Current diets are dominated by cereals and sugar, while fruits, vegetables, dairy, eggs, and animalsource foods are substantially under-consumed across all four geographic population strata.

Future food system transformation should primarily focus on increasing supplies of dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables, and, for diets focused on micronutrients, meat and fish.

For most priority foods, required productivity gains fall within current global technological frontiers, but environmental constraints—particularly for livestock—necessitate climate-smart intensification and protein source substitution.

High postharvest losses, misalignment between nutrition priorities and agricultural policy—specifically Tanzania’s Agriculture Master Plan—and weak rural–urban food system integration are critical bottlenecks and policy entry points for achieving healthy diets sustainably.

Towards inclusive and sustainable vegetable value chains in Odisha: Some policy recommendations

Odisha grows about 10.9 million tons of vegetables in 2023-24 from 0.77 million hectares, representing about 8% of Gross Cropped Area. In recent years, it has witnessed a significant increase in vegetable production and is presently the 7th largest vegetable growing state in India accounting for over 5% of national vegetable production. At the same time, there is a perception that demand for vegetables far outstrips supply; consequently, the state depends on other states to make up the shortfall in supply. The Government of Odisha has focused on increasing vegetable production with a range of innovative policies and has recognized that vegetable farming as a key pathway to agricultural commercialization and doubling farmers’ incomes.

Against this backdrop, we undertook an ambitious research effort as part of a larger project titled INCATA to document the pace and nature of transformation of vegetable value chains in Odisha. The study comprised many components, including rapid reconnaissance visits to 19 districts in the state, secondary data analysis and qualitative case studies. Our research culminated a large-scale survey of 5640 value chain actors (farmers, inputs suppliers, wholesalers, commission agents and retailers). In addition, we documented the profile of 11,800 traders across 158 vegetable markets and 35,913 households in vegetable growing villages in 24 blocks and 6 districts as part of a listing exercise. We summarize the results of this study in a series of project notes and research briefs. This policy note aims to distill lessons from the study to identify a set of policy interventions.

Small-scale commercial vegetable farming in Odisha: Who is involved, how is it changing, and how inclusive is it?

The research project “Tracking commercial small-scale producers for inclusive agricultural transformation” (INCATA) studied the relationships between commercial small-scale producers (farmers) and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), to understand whether and how these relationships could contribute to inclusive agricultural transformation.

Ice use in the fisheries value chain in Hadramawt: Findings from a qualitative survey

A qualitative study of ice use in the fisheries value chain in Hadramawt, Yemen, reveals the following key findings.
• Ice is a widely used and essential input in the fishery value chain in Hadramawt. Almost all fish transported, traded, and retailed in surveyed markets relies on ice to maintain its quality.
• Ice production capacity has expanded in recent years, but many ice factories face serious operational challenges, including unreliable electricity supply, high fuel costs, aging equipment, and volatile demand.
• Ice use by fishers varies by type of vessel and target species. All large offshore vessels (abri) depend on ice. Small-scale houri sometime use ice when fishing for high-value demersal species, which deteriorate quickly without ice, but rarely when targeting pelagic fish.
• Traders use large quantities of ice for transporting fish inland and exporting it overland and would be unable to operate their businesses without access to ice.
• Retailers use ice strategically. Surveyed retailers displayed small quantities of un-iced fish to customers, in line with consumer preferences, but replenished their displays throughout the day with fish chilled in cool boxes out of sight.
• Rates of physical and economic loss and waste in all segments of the fisheries value chain in Hadramawt may be lower than generally thought.
• Energy and infrastructure are the most critical constraints to the performance of enterprises in most segments of the fisheries value chain in Hadramawt.

Risk aversion and credit access: Solving financial exclusion through contract innovation

Credit market failures may reflect voluntary withdrawal by risk-averse borrowers in addition to supply-side constraints. We conduct a randomized trial with 1,517 Bangladeshi households, offering cattle financing through conventional loans or profit-sharing contracts that spread risk between the farmer and the financial partner. Overall, interest in and take-up of the profit-sharing contracts were modestly higher than the conventional loans. However, conventional loan take-up was much lower among risk-averse farmers, and profit-sharing eliminated the take-up gap between risk-averse and non-risk-averse farmers. We find that it is male risk preferences that are associated with these decisions even when contracts explicitly target women. Livestock investment increases under both contracts with no evidence of moral hazard under profit-sharing.

Changes in work participation across genders in rural India: Evidence from 2019 and 2024 time use surveys

This study examines gendered patterns of time use in rural India using nationally representative time use surveys from 2019 and 2024, capturing shifts in labor force participation amid significant socioeconomic changes, including the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis reveals a notable rise in rural women’s labor force participation—from 32 percent to 35.9 percent in agriculture—with a 38 percent increase in their paid agricultural work time. However, this progress coexists alongside entrenched gender disparities in unpaid domestic work, where women continue to spend nearly five hours daily, limiting their engagement in nonagricultural employment, which remains male-dominated and stagnant for women. Using multivariate regression and Gelbach decomposition, the study identifies gender, landholding, education, income, and caste as significant determinants of time allocation. Yet, much of the increase in women’s work time is driven by unobserved factors, likely linked to post-pandemic livelihood adjustments and structural constraints. The findings underscore that recent gains in women’s participation reflect genuine shifts rather than statistical artefacts but caution that without addressing time poverty, gender norms, and access to diversified livelihoods, these gains may not translate into sustainable empowerment. The paper calls for integrated policy measures, including gender-responsive agricultural support, public care infrastructure, skill development, and behavioral interventions to rebalance domestic responsibilities and facilitate women’s transition to higher productivity sectors.

IFPRI Malawi maize market report, January 2026

Average retail prices of maize declined in all monitored markets in January by 16 percent on average. The price decline was driven by cheap imports of maize. Imports dominated cross-border trade in maize despite some strong but localized informal exports to Zambia.

Improving fruit and vegetable intake and production in Sri Lanka: An evaluation of the FRESH end-to-end approach

Inadequate diets are a major contributor to malnutrition and the leading risk factor for morbidity and mortality worldwide. Low fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake contributes significantly to these burdens.

F&Vs are essential sources of micronutrients, and their production has a lower environmental footprint compared to other nutrient-dense foods, making them critical for both health and sustainability. Despite these well-documented benefits, global F&V intake remains below the recommended 400 grams (about 5 servings) per person per day. This is particularly true in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where less than 20% of adults meet this target. This is likely due to a complex interplay of factors including availability, affordability, accessibility, and other context-specific barriers.

Narrowing F&V intake gaps requires a nuanced understanding of the interconnected factors influencing their consumption. The approach must be comprehensive and encompass addressing factors across the food system.

Generating high-quality, context-specific evidence on these factors is essential to designing effective strategies that enhance F&V desirability, affordability, accessibility, and availability, ultimately supporting healthier, more sustainable diets.

Myanmar Household Welfare Survey Round Nine: Sample Report

The ninth round of the Myanmar Household Welfare Survey (MHWS)–a nationwide phone panel consisting of 11,865 households–was implemented between July 15, 2025, and November 4, 2025. The main objectives of MHWS Round 9 are to:
1) Collect nationally and state/region-level representative data on household welfare across Myanmar.
2) Assess household income sources, employment conditions, food security, dietary diversity, coping strategies, and access to assistance.
3) Monitor changes in household welfare in the context of ongoing political, economic, and environmental shocks.
4) Provide timely evidence to inform stakeholders, development partners, international and national NGOs, and other relevant agencies.
The respondents interviewed in the MHWS were purposely selected from a large phone database aimed at being representative at the region/state level and urban/rural level in Myanmar. A novel sampling strategy in combination with the development of household and population weights allows for estimates that are nationally, regionally, and urban/rural representative.

Presentations for Promoting Resilience through Improved Varieties, Quality Seed, and Better Seed Systems

What “nexus”? Towards resource nexus standardization

Following the Dresden Nexus Conference in 2025, which also marked its 10th anniversary, a policy brief was developed by researchers from the Nexus community. The development of the Policy Brief was led by UNU-FLORES and PRIMA.

The policy brief is titled “What ‘Nexus’? Towards Resource Nexus Standardization.”

The Policy Brief:

1. Proposes a new definition of the Resource Nexus;
2. Identifies key steps for the operationalization and certification of the Resource Nexus;
3. Demonstrates how a Resource Nexus framework can enhance policy coherence, manage trade-offs, and unlock synergies across sectors and scales.

The brief recommends a standardization scheme for Resource Nexus projects to ensure consistency, transparency, and impact across initiatives supported by public and donor funding. Standardization of the Resource Nexus involves harmonizing core elements of project design, assessment, and implementation.

Can digital cash transfers serve those in active conflict zones?

Digital cash transfers can be delivered even in active conflict settings like Sudan and can significantly protect vulnerable households – especially in the most insecure areas – from worsening food insecurity, though their impacts vary by context and household characteristics.

The potential impact of wheat stem rust on global agricultural supply, demand, and food security, considering market interactions

Wheat stem rust, a fungal disease that can be highly devastating under the right environmental conditions, was reduced to non-economically damaging levels during the Green Revolution. However, it has reemerged as a global threat to wheat production due to the appearance of new virulent strains in Uganda in 1999 that have spread steadily to other geographic areas. Wheat experts warn that the disease could pose a catastrophic threat to the global wheat supply if not monitored. Considering the importance of wheat as a principal source of calories, nutrients, and farm income throughout the world, assessments of the potential impacts of the disease are urgently required in order to formulate an appropriate response. Published assessments so far vary widely in method and results, and generally focus on wheat production losses alone, without considering how markets may offset or aggravate impacts (spillover effects). Here we take an integrated assessment approach and examine a set of “what-if” scenarios to account for direct and indirect economic and food security impacts of wheat stem rust in various world regions over the years 2026–2050. The severity and frequency of epidemics is introduced into the modeling framework based on a survey of international wheat experts. The results suggest that global market incentives may offset the worst impacts of wheat stem rust in most affected areas via international trade. However, the market mechanism simultaneously precipitates considerable food insecurity in areas far from any epidemic, as farms in these areas reallocate resources from the domestic cereal market to the wheat export market, in response to price signals.