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.

“If you want to have sex you can, if you don’t, you don’t have to”: A qualitative evaluation of the Unite for a Better Life couples program to prevent intimate partner violence in rural Ethiopia

Background
Gender-transformative programing targeting couples is an important strategy to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but questions around efficacy and safety remain. This qualitative study explores indications of change and unintended consequences of the gender-transformative Unite for a Better Life (UBL) intervention, using data from the couples’ and control arms of a cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) in Ethiopia. The cRCT found no impact on physical and psychological IPV and weak evidence of reductions in sexual IPV in the couples’ arm.

Methods
We analyzed 33 facilitator feedback questionnaires and 29 in-depth interviews (IDIs) among couples conducted approximately 30-months post intervention; 14 participated in UBL delivered to couples, and 15 were from the control arm. IDIs were conducted separately with each member of the couple and analyzed thematically in Dedoose to explore indications of change attributed to UBL.

Results
UBL couples attributed improved household task-sharing, communication, and joint decision-making to the program. Men and women developed more gender-equitable attitudes, leading to more fulfilling relationships. Additionally, most participants in violent relationships reported that UBL led to a reduction or cessation of physical and psychological IPV, and a complete cessation of sexual IPV. These effects were largely attributed to shifts at the individual level for men. Men developed better anger management skills, reduced their alcohol consumption, and increased their knowledge around the consequences of IPV. At the relational level, couples reported increased communication, particularly around sexual desire, and reduced conflict. Additionally, participants reported normative shifts, including decreased acceptance of IPV. There were no reports of changes in control participants nor of major unintended consequences.

Conclusions
When delivered to couples, UBL shows promise in shifting individual-level male factors and relational dynamics and reducing conflict and IPV. This suggests that engaging men in couples can be an effective and safe strategy for IPV prevention.

Assessing the role of food MSMEs in providing employment for women and youth in Ethiopia

Micro-, Small-, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are often important sources of employment in the food retail environment of Low- and Middle-Income Countries. As a result, policy makers might consider promoting job creation through MSMEs operating in the food environment. In this paper, we study a unique data set collected in two sites in Ethiopia to draw potential policy lessons for job creation based on the characteristics of MSMEs operating in the food environment. The data were collected from among 1,686 food vendors in a neighborhood of Addis Ababa and Butajira, Ethiopia, as part of an effort to better understand the relationship between consumers and the food environment in Ethiopia. Our descriptive analysis suggests that a large share of the enterprises in our sample do not employ anyone beyond the owner, and female-owned enterprises are less likely to hire workers than male-owned enterprises. Moreover, the profits per worker are lower than the cost of a healthy diet, suggesting that without an improvement in profitability it is unlikely that hiring labor would help improve nutritional status. So while the sampled MSMEs may have the potential to deliver food at lower cost, they have limited ability to generate additional employment.

A rapid tool for understanding how knowledge users engage with research findings in research-for-development contexts

Promoting the use of research findings in development projects is essential but often overlooked during study design. Existing frameworks for research use tend to focus on clinical settings and offer questionable applicability to development contexts, which are typically nonlinear, dynamic and cross-sectoral. As a result, there remains a gap in tools that can capture how evidence is intended to be applied by diverse knowledge users in real-world development settings. To address this gap, and drawing on over a decade of experience implementing research-to-action strategies, our objective is to develop a simple research uptake and use tool to better understand and support the use of evidence in research-for-development. We piloted the tool immediately after or 1 month following dissemination workshops, engaging 206 participants across nine sessions in five countries – Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Malawi, and Vietnam – to gather insights on which evidence was most relevant, how participants intended to apply it and why they valued it. Although conceptualized with a focus on agriculture and global health research, this framework is broadly applicable across the wider development sector in low- and middle-income countries.

Farmers’ preferences and willingness to accept incentives for adopting sustainable agricultural practices in India

Sustainable agricultural practices are increasingly promoted to mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture. However, adoption at the farm level remains limited, often due to trade-offs between tradable and non-tradable ecosystem services. This study examines farmers’ preferences for resource conservation practices and their willingness to accept incentive payments for their adoption in the Indian state of Punjab, where rice has become the most important crop despite its cultivation being unsupportive of its climatic conditions. Following the discrete choice experiment approach, the study included 500 farmers with the following attributes: ecosystem service benefits, income compensation, and carbon credit price. The findings reveal that farmers showed a strong preference for adopting improved farm practices. Saving water and avoiding residue burning are the two most preferred ecosystem benefits by the farmers. However, farmers’ preferences are strongly influenced by factors including carbon credit prices, income compensation, socioeconomic characteristics, and their risk aversion capacity. The estimation of extended random parameter logit (RPL) indicated that switching to direct rice seeding requires compensation of Rs. 29,223/ha and Rs. 29,178/ha for reallocating area from rice to legumes, ceteris paribus. These findings are crucial for policymakers in restructuring the existing incentive structure to accelerate the adoption of resource conservation practices in India.

Conflict, mental health, and labor productivity: Evidence from hired farm workers in Myanmar

Background
Violent conflict can affect worker’s mental health and labor productivity, with implications for agricultural production and food security. Hired farm workers are particularly vulnerable because they often rely on daily wages, have limited assets, and face insecure employment, yet evidence on how conflict affects their mental health and productivity remains limited. This study examines the associations between conflict exposure, mental health, and labor productivity among hired farm workers in Myanmar.

Methods
We conducted a cross-sectional phone survey of 1,504 hired farm workers across Myanmar. The survey collected information on workers’ demographic characteristics, work activities during the past 12 months, absenteeism, self-reported labor productivity (presenteeism), agricultural labor market conditions, job characteristics, job and life satisfaction, mental health, workplace harassment, and access to information. These primary survey data were matched with conflict event data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED). Mediation analysis was used to examine whether mental health mediates the relationship between conflict exposure and labor productivity outcomes.

Results
Overall, 39% of workers were exposed to conflict and 20% met the criteria for trauma. Compared with non-exposed workers, conflict-exposed workers were more likely to experience trauma (27% vs. 17%), more frequently absent from work (28% vs. 23%), and reported lower work performance (7.0 vs. 7.4). In multivariable mediation analyses, conflict exposure was associated with a 7-percentage-point higher likelihood of absenteeism and a 0.15-point lower work performance score. Trauma significantly mediated these associations, increasing the total association between conflict exposure and absenteeism by approximately 18%.

Conclusions
Our findings highlight the need for greater research and policy attention to the socio-psychological implications of conflict, which can erode labor productivity. They also reinforce the case for increased investment in mental health interventions, which have been severely reduced amid widespread budget cuts despite their potentially high cost-effectiveness.

Distance, prospects, and migration to towns and cities

The impact of spatial shifts of paddy fields on CH4 emissions in China, 1990–2020

The two sides of migration in Central America: Aggregate and distributional impacts in Guatemala

International migration affects labor supply, production patterns, and external income flows in origin countries, yet our understanding of its economy-wide and distributional consequences remains limited, particularly with regard to the role of return migration. This study integrates detailed microdata on migrant profiles into a general equilibrium model applied to Guatemala to examine how emigration and return migration affect macroeconomic performance, sectoral dynamics, and household welfare. We simulate three scenarios: a reference scenario reflecting recent-historical emigration patterns (MIG-0), a reduced-emigration scenario (MIG-1), and a net-return migration scenario (MIG-2), capturing recent shifts in emigration and return flows by skill level. Results reveal trade-offs between aggregate economic performance and distributional impacts across households. Compared to a baseline economy with no mobility, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rises modestly under the reference scenario (+0.2 percent) and by additional 0.3–0.5 percentage points under the reduced-emigration and net-return scenarios, driven by expanded labor supply from returnees and currency depreciation. Non-agro-processing manufacturing shows the largest expansion (up to 1.8 percent), reflecting its strong labor-absorption potential. Household welfare, especially among remittance-dependent households, is highly sensitive to these flows, with income and consumption declining under the two counterfactual migration scenarios. These findings underscore the need for policies that facilitate returnee reintegration and strengthen social protection for remittance-dependent households, ensuring that the macroeconomic gains from migration adjustments translate into equitable welfare improvements.

After quantification: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme

As the concept of soil health gains prominence, it becomes increasingly important to examine how states design and implement soil health policies. Does soil health offer a novel pathway to enact and legitimize institutional changes toward more sustainable farming systems, or does it risk becoming another neologism that preserves status quo, productivist agriculture? We explore these questions through an analysis of one of the most ambitious state-led initiatives organized around soil health: India’s Soil Health Card (SHC) scheme. The SHC scheme seeks to provide every farmer in the country with bi-annual soil test reports, based on the assumption that improved information will encourage more judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. The assumption reflects a broader emphasis within the agricultural sciences on the importance of quantifying soil health. Drawing on government documents and farmer perception studies (n = 38), we find that although farmers view the cards positively, they make few substantive changes to their farming practices. As an illustrative case, India’s grand SHC scheme shows that quantification alone is insufficient and could even dampen momentum for transformative policy reforms. Effective and durable change lies in pairing efforts to quantify soil health with (a) plural epistemic approaches to knowledge production, (b) participatory models for knowledge dissemination, and (c) structural reforms in the agri-food system that address issues around land tenure and subsidies.

Hcropland30: A hybrid 30-m global cropland map generated by leveraging global land cover products and Landsat data via deep learning

Integrated hydrological and economic assessment of hydropower and irrigation development in Sudan under climate change

Demands for water, energy, and food are rapidly increasing in many low- and middle-income countries, driving the development of large-scale hydropower and irrigation projects. As climate change poses major risks and uncertainties for large-scale infrastructure investments, it is essential to stress-test infrastructure development plans to address these challenges and strengthen resilience. The Nile is one of the world’s longest rivers, draining approximately 10% of Africa’s land surface; Sudan accounts for around 40% of the basin area, and several new large hydropower and irrigation infrastructure projects are planned. We develop an integrated analytical framework for the Nile River system, utilizing 16 climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) 6 and hydrological, river system, and Computable General Equilibrium models to evaluate the biophysical and economic impacts of hydropower and irrigation development in Sudan under climate change. The results indicate a projected increase in the naturalized streamflow of the Nile by 2050 due to climate change. A phased hydropower and irrigation development strategy in Sudan – targeting a total of 1,500 MW of hydropower capacity and approximately one million hectares of irrigated wheat – is projected to increase annual hydropower generation by up to 8.1 TWh and expand total wheat area by 283% by 2050. These developments increase the undiscounted national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during 2030–2050 by US$ 0.1 to 0.4 billion per year, with larger increases occurring under high economic growth pathways. This research highlights the interconnected nature of climate change, water resource development, and economic performance, underscoring the importance of integrated assessment in informing investment decisions.

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.

The gendered effects of rainfall shocks on stunting: Evidence from Papua New Guinea

Rainfall fluctuations significantly reduce welfare for poor rural households in low- and middle-income countries dependent on rainfed agriculture for consumption, and the effects of these shocks can be borne disproportionately by vulnerable household members, particularly children and girls. We present new evidence around the effects of rainfall fluctuations on child anthropometric status in Papua New Guinea, an understudied context characterized by some of the highest stunting rates in the world. We show that negative fluctuations in rainfall within the first 12 months of life lead to a reduction in height-for-age and weight-for-age (though not stunting), but this effect is observed only for girls.

Do ultra-poor graduation programs build women’s resilience to weather shocks? Evidence from rural Ethiopia

We assess whether layering an ultra-poor graduation program on Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) protects women and their households from localized weather shocks. Using panel data from a large cluster-randomized trial matched with detailed weather records, we identify community-level exposure to dryness shocks. Women who are exposed to dryness shocks experience deteriorating nutritional status (in conjunction with declining household food security and assets) and a significant increase in the risk of intimate partner violence. However, access to the graduation program fully buffers women from any increase in intimate partner violence, and partially buffers women and their households against other adverse effects. Further analysis suggests that improved household savings likely drives the program’s protective impact.

The impact of targeted transfer programs on labour supply: Evidence from rural China

Preservation of the IFPRI record: A case study of institutional repository mergers and migrations

At its core, a repository migration is the transfer of records from one system to another. In some cases, it is more of an unraveling, repair, relocation, and rebuilding of a historic property. In 2024, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) library undertook its second migration from an independent CONTENTdm repository to a shared DSpace repository. The institute set an ambitious goal to complete the migration within a single contract cycle with CONTENTdm. Since 2012, the repository has functioned as a bibliographic metadata layer serving the main corporate website, numerous project sites, and the global consortium (CGIAR) website, as well as a digital publishing platform and institutional metrics and reporting system. The team started working with a combination of tools, including: Microsoft Excel, OpenRefine, and custom scripts. Microsoft Excel allowed staff to easily see and manipulate large amounts of data across different metadata fields. OpenRefine (version 3.7) was instrumental in normalizing and cleaning name and keyword variations, as well as locating and editing a single repeated datapoint. The scripts, created by a member of the team and author of this paper, saved hours of time and allowed the team to meet ambitious goals. The team successfully migrated over 20,000 records within 13 months while simultaneously improving metadata quality. Prior to the migration, about half of journal articles lacked external links and several dozen PDFs had been lost over time. Additionally, from 2008–2017, IFPRI’s records experienced an average of 40% link rot. All of these issues were resolved during this process. Furthermore, the IFPRI record is now interoperable with the other CGIAR institutions and external search engines. While repository and metadata management remain ongoing tasks, this migration represents a significant step forward in preserving institutional knowledge, adopting established standards and best practices in knowledge management, supporting consortium activities, and enhancing the visibility of agricultural research outputs.

Collecting Holistic Evidence on Agroecology Performance to Accelerate Sustainable Food System Transitions

A growing body of research shows the potential of agroecology for enabling a shift to planet-friendly and socially just agrifood systems through context-specific transition pathways. We conduct a scoping review to identify and evaluate the potential of 42 existing agroecology adherence and/or agricultural performance assessment tools to generate credible, legitimate, salient and transferable evidence to inform these transitions. Results show that while multiple relevant tools exist, each of them can be strengthened in at least one area. While most tools are transferable (low time and resource requirements) and have legitimacy (open access with transparent methods), tools have variable saliency (holistic scope inclusive of local priorities) and credibility (use scientific design principles and quality assurance processes). For a subset of 11 tools collecting multidimensional performance data, analysis of 263 identified indicators showed there is a bias towards economic measures (notably income, yield, and resilience), while certain social (e.g. land tenure, traditional knowledge retention) and environmental (e.g. climate mitigation) aspects are regularly overlooked. Through a multidisciplinary process engaging experts across 8 countries, we develop a Holistic Localized Performance Assessment for agroecology (HOLPA) framework that integrates and builds on positive features of existing multidimensional agroecology performance assessments tools and overcomes key limitations. The HOLPA framework for analysis, agroecology indicators, key performance indicators, and low-cost localization process can be used to strengthen agroecology performance assessments, empowering landscape actors to identify evidence-based pathways towards agrifood systems where both people and nature can thrive.

Food on the go: How engagement with the food environment affects adolescent diets in northern Vietnam

As adolescents grow older, they increasingly engage with the food environment. Our study aimed to: 1) assess the contribution of prepared out of home (POH) foods to the healthiness of adolescent diets and 2) identify socio-demographic factors associated with POH foods intake in a rural, a peri-urban, and an urban area of Vietnam.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 11–19-year-old adolescents (n = 2,861) and collected socio-demographic and dietary intake data (24-hour recall). The healthiness and micronutrient adequacy of diets was assessed using the Global Diet Quality Score (GDQS) and the micronutrient adequacy ratio (MAR) respectively. We used regression analyses with robust standard errors (to account for school-level clustering) to assess the consequences and identify the drivers of POH food intake.

Over 80% of adolescents consumed foods POH on the previous day, contributing 22–26% of daily energy intake. Healthy food groups were underrepresented in POH foods, which were higher in fat, saturated fat, and sodium, but also had higher micronutrient density than foods prepared at home. POH intake was associated with higher energy intake and micronutrient adequacy, but lower diet healthiness. Socioeconomic status, female sex, pocket money, and smartphone ownership were associated with POH consumption, with site-specific differences.

Food environments should be made healthier through front-of-package warning labels, reformulation (e.g., reducing milk fat and sugar), and restrictions on the marketing and availability of unhealthy foods combined with the promotion of healthy foods, snacks and meals.

Associations between hygiene practices and carcass contamination by Escherichia coli and coliforms in bovine slaughter facilities in rural Kenya

Carcass contamination during slaughter poses a significant threat to meat safety and public health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This cross-sectional study, conducted in 25 bovine slaughter facilities in Busia County, Kenya, assessed contamination levels at four anatomical sites on cattle carcasses: rump, flank, brisket, and neck. The study also examined the association between slaughterhouse hygiene practices and microbial contamination by Escherichia coli and coliforms. A total of 193 carcasses were sampled after carcass dressing before sectioning, and E. coli and coliform loads were quantified using MC-Media Pad®. Statistical analyses revealed that contamination levels varied significantly across carcass sampling sites for both coliforms (p = 0.008) and E. coli (p = 0.026), with the brisket showing markedly higher contamination than the rump for coliforms (median 2.15 vs 1.61 log10 CFU/cm2, p = 0.004) and E. coli (median 1.04 vs 0 log10 CFU/cm2, p = 0.020). Key risk factors for increased contamination included carcass contact with the floor, splashing water from wet floors, and visible fecal matter on animal hides. These findings highlight the need for targeted hygiene interventions during slaughter, improved infrastructure, and stronger enforcement of meat safety regulations to reduce contamination and ensure safer meat products for consumers.

From farmer-centred design to algorithmic participation: Navigating technical demands and normative discourses in digital extension

Digital extension and farmer-centric design are increasingly presented as complementary strategies for transforming agricultural innovation systems: digital extension promises scale and efficiency, while farmer-centric design is expected to ensure relevance, inclusivity, and legitimacy. This paper challenges the assumption that these approaches are naturally aligned. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine how farmer-centricity is enacted within digital extension initiatives and how its normative commitments are reshaped as digital platforms evolve. Empirically, we analyse two digital extension platforms developed between 2014 and 2024, one in the Global North and one in the Global South. Drawing on public-facing media, organisational records, design documents, and technical walkthroughs of each platform, we trace how normative, technical, and interpretive frames interact across different phases of platform development. Our findings show that, in early phases, digital extension is framed as enabling farmer-centric design, supporting decentralised design practices, epistemic pluralism, and farmer sovereignty. Over time, however, farmer-centricity becomes instrumentalised to support the scaling of digital extension through data generation, peer diffusion, and environmental accountability, placing new forms of labour and responsibility onto farmers without a commensurate redistribution of authority. These tensions are not resolved but reconfigured through design practices, often obscured by the rhetoric of empowerment and responsiveness. We conceptualise this dynamic as algorithmic participation: a form of participation mediated through digital infrastructures that anticipate and steer farmer engagement in ways that stabilise existing innovation logics. The paper contributes to debates on farmer-centric design and digital extension by showing how even well-intentioned practices can reproduce structural inequalities.

Implications of ice use on consumers’ willingness to pay for fresh fish: Findings from experimental auctions in Hadramawt fish markets

An experimental auction conducted with 426 fresh fish consumers in Mukalla and Qusayir fish markets in Yemen reveals the following key findings:

- There is a modest price premium of 77 YER per fish for fish that is sold on ice compared with fish not sold on ice, across the sample.
- Compared with the sample average, the price premium in Mukalla is more than two times higher, with a difference of 162 YER per fish between fish sold on ice and not.
- There is no price premium for fish on ice in Qusayir.
- More than 60 percent of shoppers in both markets have positive perceptions about the use of ice to improve fish quality.
- The use of ice is not the most important consideration when shoppers are making their purchasing decisions, rather, the price of fish is deemed most important.
- The price premium appears to be too low to incentivize retailers to offer fish on ice to shoppers, considering high costs of ice.

Fish is highly perishable and requires an uninterrupted cold chain to maintain both observable, organoleptic quality characteristics and food safety, which is not directly observable. Yet the use of ice by artisanal fishers and fish retailers in coastal markets for fresh fish is limited in Hadramawt Governorate–the center of Yemen’s artisanal fisheries in the Gulf of Aden (Belton et al., 2026). While increased use of ice by fishers and retailers could improve fish quality and safety in consumer markets, rigorous evidence is lacking on consumers’ perceptions about the use of ice and their willingness to purchase fish placed on ice.

What is the current evidence on the effectiveness of climate finance interventions in improving climate resilience and socioeconomic outcomes among smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)?

Climate finance is central to climate-resilient development, yet evidence on its effects on smallholder farmers remains fragmented across financing instruments and outcome measures. This study conducts a systematic review, guided by PRISMA 2020, to assess how grants, concessional loans, insurance, carbon finance, public investment, and private capital influence the livelihoods and resilience of smallholder farmers in developing countries, with attention to women. The review will synthesize impacts on access to climate-smart technologies, irrigation, improved seeds, advisory services, markets, and livelihood diversification, as well as outcomes including productivity, income stability, food security, adaptive capacity, asset accumulation, and women’s economic empowerment. It will examine distributional effects, implementation conditions, and evidence gaps across regions and farmer groups. By linking finance mechanisms to intermediate and long-term outcomes, the study aims to identify which forms of climate finance work, for whom, and under what conditions, thereby informing inclusive and effective climate finance policy and programming.

Intersecting gender and youth financial inclusion in agrifood systems: Evidence from northern Nigeria

The agrifood system employs one-third of the global workforce, yet young women and men continue to face persistent constraints to joining this workforce, including financial exclusion. Financial exclusion constrains agricultural employment by limiting young people’s ability to engage in work and to scale operations. Yet the existing literature often overlooks how gender and youth intersect within these dynamics.

Using intersectionality theory and institutional analysis, this study examines barriers to financial access and adaptation strategies among young men and women (ages 18–30) in northern Nigeria’s agrifood systems. The analysis draws on 61 semi-structured interviews and 51 focus group discussions with young women and men, alongside key informant interviews with financial service providers and market actors, across five northern Nigerian states with large populations that are “unbanked,” meaning not engaged with formal financial institutions.

Drawing on these qualitative data, the study reveals that formal and informal financial institutions jointly reproduce patterns of unequal gendered access. While young men leverage wider mobility and networks to secure trading capital, young women’s restricted mobility and limited collateral confine them to smallscale processing with few growth prospects. Financial exclusion is further compounded by geography, insecurity, and the gendered structure of digital finance. Youth adapt to these institutional gaps through collective savings, trust-based credit, and in-kind payments. The study calls for gender-sensitive, digitally inclusive financial services that complement informal systems, offering an integrated institutional–intersectional framework for promoting inclusive agrifood systems transformation. Its central contribution is an institutional–intersectional analysis of financial exclusion in agrifood systems, showing how formal and informal institutions jointly, rather than separately, produce gendered patterns of access.

Count on me: Shocks and formal versus informal assistance in Somalia

Somali households face repeated drought, conflict, and price shocks, and rely on both formal and informal support to manage these shocks—but existing evidence only examines one channel at a time.

We find that informal support reaches twice as many households as formal support (64 versus 32 percent), with 29 percent of households receiving neither. IDP residence raises formal receipt by 36 percentage points; consumption poverty predicts neither channel.

Only informal support tracks local conditions: a one standard deviation rise in produced staple prices raises informal receipt by 6.5 percentage points. There is little evidence of pronounced gender heterogeneity in these patterns.

IFPRI Malawi maize market report, July 2026

Retail prices of maize increased on average by 8 percent in July.

Prices rose most sharply in the Southern region, increasing interregional differences.

Continued maize imports through all monitored border locations helped keep Malawian prices low.

Putting advocacy into practice at the Gen Z Food & Hunger Summit

Key takeaways

-Youth participation is essential for lasting food security progress. Gen Z leaders are helping shape policies and programs that address hunger and strengthen food systems.
-Successful advocacy blends evidence with personal experience. Data and real-world stories can make a stronger case for policy action.
-Hands-on engagement builds confidence and leadership skills. Direct conversations with policymakers helped participants turn advocacy training into action.

Reviving millets in India: Understanding consumption decline and demand-side constraints

Millets are increasingly promoted as climate-resilient and nutrient-dense crops in India’s food systems transformation. Yet, despite rising policy support, their consumption continues to decline. This paper analyzes long-term trends and demand-side determinants of millet consumption using nationally representative data from Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys (2011–2012, 2022–2023, 2023–2024). Results show a steep decline in per capita millet consumption of more than 80 percent in rural areas since the late 1980s and a sharp reduction in the share of millets in total cereal consumption. Using a double hurdle model, we find that millet consumption remains concentrated among rural, lower-income, and less-educated households, with limited uptake among urban and higher-income groups. Participation in the Public Distribution System (PDS) increases the likelihood of consumption but reduces consumption intensity, indicating substitution with subsidized rice and wheat. We document a large production–consumption gap of nearly 14 million tons, suggesting increasing diversion of millets toward feed and processing uses. The findings highlight the need to rebalance cereal policies and strengthen demand-side incentives to integrate millets into modern food systems.

Paving the way: The impact of road infrastructure on agricultural productivity in isolated African settings

Road infrastructure is a key driver of agricultural growth and transformation. Using three large nationally representative, randomly sampled survey datasets and group-time difference-in-difference estimation strategies, this study establishes the relationship between paved road access and crop productivity in Malawi. Results reveal significant positive effects of access to paved roads on crop productivity, as measured by the average value product of land. They further reveal a growing impact over time, with estimated productivity increases ranging from 35% to 57% over a span of 10 years. This confirms that road infrastructure is a key enabler of sustained agricultural productivity growth, thus providing a strong justification for the allocation of more public resources toward investments in rural road networks that can improve market access, reduce transport costs and postharvest losses, and create incentives for the adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies.

Understanding soil health in practice: Insights from India’s Soil Health Card scheme

Key takeaways

-India’s Soil Health Card scheme has reached hundreds of millions of farmers but simplified soil health into a limited set of standardized measurements, a study shows.
-Providing information alone was not enough to change farmer fertilizer practices or encourage widespread adoption of recommendations.
-Stronger farmer engagement and local input are needed to make government-led soil health programs more effective.

Limits of site-specific fertilizer recommendations: Evidence from a Malawi experiment

Key takeaways

-Fertilizer recommendations derived from soil tests of farmers’ plots, when provided on their own, produced no measurable change in fertilizer use or maize yields among Malawian smallholder farmers.
-The same recommendation paired with a $100 voucher raised fertilizer use on the soil-tested plot and lifted maize yields by about 20%.
-Yet voucher recipients generally did not follow the recommendations, spending the money on a mix of fertilizers closely resembling that offered by the standard subsidy program.

Measuring the state of global food insecurity: A mix of methods, and a mix of messages

Key takeaways

-Food insecurity measures often disagree. Different indicators can suggest very different trends and identify different countries as most vulnerable.
-Data gaps hinder accurate monitoring. Low-income and crisis-affected countries are the least likely to conduct the surveys needed to track food insecurity.
-Stronger country-led surveys are essential. More coordinated, high-frequency data collection could improve food security monitoring and policy responses.

Can digital financial services improve household coping capacity? Evidence from nationally representative cross-sectional data in Kenya

Digital financial services (DFS) have expanded financial access in Kenya, but their contribution to household coping capacity may differ substantially across product types. This paper examines trends and socioeconomic correlates of DFS adoption and the associations between DFS use and household coping capacity using nationally representative FinAccess surveys from 2019, 2021, and 2024. The analysis combines descriptive statistics and pooled logistic regressions with inverse-probability-weighted-regression adjustment and propensity score matching. We distinguish between mobile banking savings, mobile money savings, mobile banking loans, mobile provider loans, and app-based digital credit. Mobile phone ownership, internet access, education, income, and financial decision-making are important correlates of adoption, though significant gender and regional disparities remain. Digital savings show the broadest and most consistent positive associations with household coping capacity. Mobile banking savings are associated with an increase of 14 percentage points in emergency saving, an increase of 7.5 percentage points in access to emergency funds, and reductions of 4 and 2.7 percentage points in food insecurity and difficulty accessing medical care, respectively. Mobile banking loans provide narrower benefits, mainly for financial planning and emergency liquidity. In contrast, app-based loans are associated with reduced emergency savings and financial endurance. The findings show that the welfare implications of DFS depend critically on product type. Savings-led digital finance can strengthen household preparedness, while short-term app-based credit may increase financial vulnerability.

Unlocking climate finance for Kenya’s women dairy farmers

Key takeaways

-Women dairy farmers in Kenya face growing climate risks but often cannot access the finance needed to adapt and protect their livelihoods.
-A recent gathering brought together farmers, other stakeholders, and finance partners to explore ways to develop digital lending tools and gender-focused finance.
-A proposed climate finance consortium could connect farmers, lenders, cooperatives, and researchers to expand access to suitable climate investments.

Tensions in the Black Sea and regional droughts spark rising global wheat prices

Key takeaways

-Wheat prices have climbed sharply in recent weeks as drought and Black Sea shipping disruptions tighten global supplies.
-Global wheat production is expected to decline among major exporters, reducing available stocks and export volumes.
-Market volatility is increasing as weather risks, conflict, and trade disruptions create greater uncertainty for wheat markets.

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

This report monitors prices, availability, and market conditions for essential commodities across Sudan in June 2026, covering cereals, pulses, vegetables, animal products, agricultural inputs, fuel, exchange rates, labor markets, and trader perceptions. Commodity prices generally increased during the month, particularly for wheat flour, pulses, vegetables, meat products, cooking oil, sugar, and fuel, while perceived availability declined across most food and input categories, indicating tightening market conditions. Fuel price increases in parallel markets, depreciation of the Sudanese pound, and persistent regional disparities, especially in Darfur and Kordofan states, continued to place pressure on market access and affordability. Surveyed traders reported fewer supply chain, liquidity, and demand-related constraints than in previous months, although challenges remained concentrated in conflict-affected areas such as Khartoum and North Darfur. Despite rising prices and weaker availability, most merchants expected to maintain or expand trading activities over the following one to three months, suggesting cautious optimism about market continuity.
-Abstract generated by Copilot AI 2.2

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

This report provides an update on prices, availability, and market conditions for essential commodities across Sudan in July 2026, covering staple foods, vegetables, livestock products, agricultural inputs, fuel, exchange rates, labor markets, and trader perceptions. Prices increased across most commodity groups, including cereals, pulses, vegetables, meat products, sugar, cooking oil, fertilizers, and fuel, while trader-reported availability generally declined, indicating worsening market pressures and tighter supplies. Regional disparities remained pronounced, with Darfur and Kordofan states consistently recording some of the highest food and fuel prices and lower commodity availability. Market actors reported increased supply chain and demand-related challenges compared with June, although financial constraints remained relatively limited and most traders expected to maintain or expand their trading activities in the coming months. The report highlights the combined effects of rising parallel-market exchange rates, increasing input and fuel costs, and declining market availability on food affordability and market performance in Sudan.
-Abstract generated by Copilot AI 2.2

Agricultural recovery and resilience in Sudan: Findings from the THABAT Project baseline survey of farmers

This report presents the findings from a baseline survey of farmers conducted as part of IFPRI’s impact evaluation of a sub-component of the food security component of the THABAT project in Sudan. The report documents farmers’ pre-intervention conditions across agricultural production, input access, climate-smart practices, food security, market conditions, and institutional trust in the three states in which the project is being implemented—Kassala, Northern, and River Nile.

Sudan’s ongoing conflict has severely disrupted agricultural systems, markets, and rural livelihoods. The Sudan Enhancing Community Resilience Project (THABAT) provides resilience-oriented agricultural support that is critical for sustaining food production, protecting livelihoods, and supporting local economic recovery (‘thabat’ in Arabic means ‘stability’ or ‘firmness’). The project is a USD 130 million initiative financed through the Sudan Transition and Recovery Support Trust Fund (STARS) Multi-Donor Trust Fund. This report focuses on Component 2 of the project, which aims to enhance food security through directly providing agricultural production inputs, both goods and services, to farmers.

The baseline survey covered 1,308 beneficiary farmers from 115 farmer organizations across the three project states during the 2025/26 agricultural year. The main findings from the analysis of the survey data include:
• Beneficiary farmers demonstrate relatively strong agricultural production potential despite operating in a fragile and conflict-affected environment.
• Agricultural input support from the THABAT project reached most households, especially climate-adapted improved seeds for wheat, sorghum, and vegetables, and DAP and urea inorganic fertilizers.
• However, adoption of climate-smart and adaptive agricultural practices, beyond the use of climate‑adapted improved seeds and fertilizers, generally remains low.
• The food security indicators of beneficiary farmers are stronger than those seen in broader crisis-affected populations in Sudan. However, food insecurity levels vary substantially across the three project states.
• Farmers continue to face major structural constraints to their economic activities that are related to inflation and currency fluctuations. They also face significant barriers in accessing markets, financial services, and technology, and are subject to substantial conflict-related risks.

Familiar strangers: The role of diaspora networks in foreign investment and long-run development

Healthier diets: A global economic modelling study of income and employment impacts across regions

Interest has grown in how to achieve healthy, sustainable, and affordable human diets. The potential income and employment effects of a transition towards healthier diets have received much less attention. We simulate aggregate and sectoral income and employment for business-as-usual and healthier diets for all geographic regions up to 2050 using scenario-based modelling. These healthier diets can increase food’s share of household expenditure in some regions, for example from 18% to 25% in East and Central Africa in 2050. Our results suggest that a global shift towards healthier diets leads to a reallocation of primary factors of production, especially low-skilled labour and capital, from non-agricultural sectors to crop agriculture in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Notably, in 2050, with healthier diets, agriculture’s share of low-skilled labour increases by 3.2 percentage points in East and Central Africa and 1.5 percentage points in South Asia excluding India. Although Gross Domestic Product increases in these regions relative to business-as-usual, this reallocation raises agriculture’s share of Gross Domestic Product, consistent with a slower pace of long-run structural transformation. The reallocation leads to a mild increase in wages for low-skilled workers relative to high-skilled workers in most of these regions, compared to business-as-usual. However, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food price increases outweigh wage gains for low-skilled labour, reducing real purchasing power. Policies that encourage healthier diets may also alter income and employment and reduce economic welfare of poor populations in some regions, so care is needed in policy design to avoid adverse unintended consequences.

Food systems policy coherence: A ten-country assessment

Policy coherence is widely recognised as essential for achieving food systems transformation, but attempts to assess food systems policy coherence have been limited to date in terms of their scope of topics and geographies and lack of comparable methods. This paper introduces the Food Systems Policy Coherence (FSPC) Diagnostic Tool and uses it to analyse food systems policy coherence across 10 low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia through key informant interviews (n = 189) and review of policy documents (n = 808). The FSPC Diagnostic Tool considers two aspects of policy coherence: (1) the structures and mechanisms that may contribute to achieving stronger policy process coherence and (2) coherence between policies from six sectors and ten common food systems goals. Regarding the former, all countries analysed had strong framework documents for cross-sectoral food policy, backed by high-level political commitment, but they tended to be much weaker when it came to capacity for implementation and especially monitoring and accountability. Policy coherence across sectors was generally strong for the goals of climate change adaptation and social protection but weaker for goals of healthy diets for all, adequate wages for food system workers, and climate change mitigation through food systems. Trade policy was the policy area with the greatest incoherence with a diverse range of food systems goals. The results offer the most comprehensive analysis of food systems policy coherence to date. The tool makes a useful contribution to measuring policy coherence and can serve as both a foundation for future research and enhance accountability for achieving coherent policy outcomes.

Interpersonal communication and maternal behavioral practice: A case study of explanatory causal machine learning in Nepal

Background
There is increasing interest not only in whether a program produced impacts but also the mechanisms through which the impacts were produced. Studies of nutrition interventions have frequently highlighted the role of nutrition education interventions, but few studies have investigated the paths through which those interventions achieve impact.

Objectives
We assessed the total effect of maternal exposure to interpersonal communication with a frontline worker on behavioral practice and the degree to which that effect operated through 2 key pathways: improved awareness and knowledge. We also conducted a comparative case study examining the differences between machine learning (ML) and structural equation model (SEM) approaches.

Methods
We used data from the endline cross-sectional survey of the quasi-experimental Suaahara study of 2040 mothers with a child less than 2 years of age. We estimated the total effect of maternal exposure to interpersonal communication with a frontline worker on her nutrition-related practices and the indirect effects through improvements in awareness and knowledge using ML and conventional SEMs. Models were adjusted for household, child, and maternal factors as well as household location.

Results
Maternal exposure to interpersonal communication with a frontline worker translated into practicing more of the ideal, promoted nutrition-related practices. Both methods suggested a similar total effect—ML: 0.58 (95% CI: 0.37, 0.78) and SEM: 0.60 (95% CI: 0.49, 0.72). ML models, however, attributed a much larger proportion of that total effect to indirect effects operating through awareness and knowledge (ML: 0.24; 95% CI: 0.15, 0.33; SEMs: 0.16; 95% CI: 0.09, 0.21).

Conclusions
Interpersonal communication improved nutrition-related practices, in part due to increasing one’s awareness and knowledge. The disparities in results between ML and SEMs suggested that the production of effects is a more complex, nonlinear or interactive function of awareness, knowledge, treatment and covariates than what is captured by simple linear models.

How do migrants fare in Africa’s urban labour markets?

Absent to care? The effect of parental migration on children's nutrition, health, and cognition in rural Gansu Province of China

Enhancing farmers’ access to neglected crop seeds for healthy diets in a changing climate: six recommendations for policy action

Food insecurity and poor diets undermine human health, livelihoods, and aspirations. Climate change further exacerbates the problem of achieving zero hunger. Promoting the production of a diverse portfolio of nutrient-dense, climate-resilient crops enables food supply for healthy diets in the coming years and decades. Many are underutilized even though they are considered opportunity crops, with an unrealized potential to improve food security and dietary quality amid climate change. Limited access to quality seed for these crops is a major bottleneck in their supply, as the current policy environment does not support farmers in broadening their portfolio with these crops. This paper identifies three key challenges that should be addressed to enable farmers to access quality seed of opportunity crops at scale. These are to make the diversity of opportunity crops (i) a priority for policy (ii) available for evaluation and breeding, and (iii) accessible to farmers, especially women and other disadvantaged groups. Six policy actions are recommended to address these challenges, which, if implemented, are likely to have both short- and long-term impacts in increasing farmers’ access to quality seeds of opportunity crops. Adopting these policy actions will help mainstream opportunity crops into seed systems as part of a broader strategy to diversify food systems from seed to plate.

Trends, determinants, and anthropometric consequences of low birthweight in Indian children: A prospective analysis of national data

Background
Low birthweight (LBW) is a major concern for child survival and growth, and India accounts for the highest number of such cases globally. Studies have examined determinants of birthweight and child growth but little evidence exists on how birthweight influences growth outcomes during early childhood. This paper examines associations between maternal, household, and health-related factors, LBW, and growth faltering, and explores childhood growth trajectories across birthweight groups.

Methods
Data from three waves of India’s National Family Health Survey were used to examine heaping-adjusted trends and predictors of LBW. Regression-based decomposition was used to quantify the way in which changes in predictors could reduce future LBW prevalence. Trajectories of childhood anthropometry by LBW status and determinants were examined by using smoothing and regression methods.

Results
The LBW prevalence between 2000 and 2020 was 20% (unadjusted) and 40% (heaping-adjusted). Improvements in maternal stature, weight, household wealth, and antenatal care coverage could yield the largest future reductions in LBW. Children born with LBW had 1.5 times higher odds of being underweight and 1.3 times higher odds of stunting. Maternal short stature, underweight, and poverty were associated with higher odds of subsequent anthropometric faltering regardless of LBW.

Conclusion
Findings show the dominant role of maternal nutrition in birthweight and childhood growth outcomes. Once a child is born with LBW, there is limited potential to prevent subsequent anthropometric failure. To break the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition, programs must prioritize improved nutrition for girls beginning early in life and sustained through adolescence and preconception.

The state of global food insecurity measurement: A mix of methods, and a mix of messages

Robust food insecurity indicators are needed for monitoring development targets, emergency responses, and rationally allocating foreign aid. For decades, global food security monitoring relied on the FAO’s prevalence of undernourishment, but this indicator’s fundamental limitations led the FAO to develop the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) and adopt the unaffordability of the healthy diet. In parallel, The World Bank monitors monetary poverty, arguably a food insecurity indicator in its own right. In this study we assess whether this larger suite of indicators agrees on: (a) which countries are most food insecure; and (b) whether global food insecurity is really deteriorating. Unfortunately, this new mix of methods produces mixed messages. Longstanding criticisms of the prevalence of undernourishment still apply, while rising undernourishment in the past decade is driven by modelled increases in calorie inequality that are inconsistent with income inequality trends. The FIES fares no better: severe FIES food insecurity is higher in several Latin American and Caribbean countries than in extremely food-insecure African countries such as Niger. The World Bank’s poverty and healthy diet affordability monitoring efforts are significantly constrained by systematically fewer household surveys in poorer and more crisis-affected countries. How can this situation be improved? First, experience-based indicators need to be more rigorously evaluated for cross-cultural comparability, and alternatives need to be considered. Second, international agencies and national governments should pool resources to implement coordinated, high-frequency, multi-purpose surveys – focusing on poor and crisis-affected countries – to jointly monitor food insecurity, poverty and malnutrition, as well as their root causes.

Beyond infrastructure: Linking multiple-use water services and experiences with household water insecurity in rural Mali

Over the last decade, the international development community has recognized that rural and peri-urban households in lower- and middle-income countries use the same sources of water for both domestic and productive uses. To increase access to these water resources, governments and NGOs introduced the concept of multiple-use water services (MUS). As a proposed development strategy, MUS takes people’s multiple water needs as the starting point for planning and investing in new water services or upgrading existing domestic or productive systems traditionally designed for single uses. While studies have suggested benefits of MUS, such as improved water productivity and economic gains for subsistence farming communities, evidence remains context dependent. The research community has yet to examine the specific influence of MUS on household water insecurity, defined as the inadequate, unreliable, or unaffordable access to water necessary for a healthy life. That is, does MUS reduce experiences with water insecurity at the household scale? To address this critical question, the study examined the correlation between household water insecurity, measured by the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) scale, and household use of single water sources for both domestic and productive purposes using data from a survey of 1,082 households in Mali, West Africa. The study finds that households practicing year-round MUS report significantly lower water insecurity than seasonal MUS households. These findings indicate an association, rather than a causal relationship, between sustained MUS practice and lower household water insecurity and suggest that reliable, year-round water availability may underpin both. However, MUS is not a panacea for household water insecurity, and improving household water security will require attention to the reliability, availability, and seasonal stability of water services in addition to support for multiple water uses.

Rural labor supply and recall window sensitivity

Lack of availability of administrative records on informal and seasonal labor participation dictates reliance on self-reported measures in many rural settings in developing countries. A common survey approach relies on annual recall to capture labor activities. Using a panel of rural households in Malawi, this study conducts a survey experiment to test the effect of annual recall on reported labor supply relative to quarterly interviews using ninety-day recall windows. Annual recall reduces reported labor participation and months worked by 20 percent. These reductions are greater for activities further in the past and when labor supply is reported by proxy. The profile of households’ primary respondents, predominantly male and older, can induce meaningful biases against women and youth. The study additionally shows that recall window choice can significantly alter estimates of the relationship between labor supply and education. These findings are especially relevant for impact evaluations and studies with constrained sample sizes.

Power, policy, and practice: Political economy perspectives on agroecological transitions

A robust spectral-temporal index for cross-regional mapping of plastic-mulched farmland using decametric-resolution images

IFPRI’s insights on nutrition challenges and opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) face a unique set of dietary and nutritional challenges. The region’s nutrition transition—population-wide shifts from traditional diets to more processed, unhealthier foods—began decades ago, well before countries in Africa and Asia that are now undergoing similar changes. Compounding that problem, healthy diets in LAC are currently the most expensive globally and are unaffordable for over a quarter of the region’s population.

Strengthening land tenure security and women’s land rights in Kenya: Policy analysis, implementation gaps, and gender-transformative pathways

In Kenya, the legal foundation for land governance was transformed by the country’s 2010 Constitution and reinforced by several subsequent laws that provide important entry points to strengthen women’s land rights. However, gaps in implementation remain significant; titles held by women represent less than 2 percent of all titled land, and women are less likely than men to own agricultural land and be named on title documentation. Evidence shows that women’s tenure security improves when legal recognition is matched with accessible implementation. The community land agenda is equally urgent; community land covers a major share of Kenya’s land area, especially in arid and semi-arid lands, yet the transition from former group ranches to registered community land has been slow. Investments should focus on five mutually reinforcing pathways: 1) strengthening sex-disaggregated land administration data, 2) supporting community land registration and inclusive bylaws, 3) combining legal literacy with paralegal support and alternative justice systems that meet constitutional standards, 4) promoting gender-transformative household and community approaches that shift norms around inheritance, joint titling, and decision-making, and 5) integrating women’s land rights into agricultural productivity, climate resilience, and market systems interventions.

Strengthening land tenure security and women’s land rights in Ethiopia: Policy analysis, implementation gaps, and gender-transformative pathways

Ethiopia’s land rights regime has evolved from an unequal imperial system, through nationalization, to a contemporary federal framework that recognizes secure, inheritable, registrable, and transferable land-use rights for women and men farmers and pastoralists. Ethiopia has undertaken one of Africa’s largest rural land certification reforms over the past three decades, beginning with provision of household certificates and progressing to geospatial mapping of parcels and a digital registry of landholdings. By 2024, an estimated 23 million certificates had been produced. While the certification reforms are a huge achievement, key challenges to transforming recognized rights into usable rights remain, especially for women, pastoral communities, and peri-urban households.  Progress towards gender equality in land rights is real, but uneven. Women are still less likely to have documented ownership compared to men, and they face constraints in controlling farmland, accessing credit, and benefitting from climate finance. Future policies and investments should focus on keeping rights current through registry maintenance, enforceable, gender-equitable, and adaptable to pastoral, peri-urban, and climate-vulnerable contexts.

Strengthening land tenure security and women’s land rights in Nigeria: Policy analysis, implementation gaps, and gender-transformative pathways

Nigeria’s land governance system has not delivered secure, affordable, and inclusive land documentation for most citizens, which is needed for agricultural productivity, food security, housing, climate resilience, peacebuilding, and women’s economic empowerment. Despite wide consensus on the need for land reform, the pluralistic system and the constitutionally entrenched Land Use Act have limited advances. Formal land registration remains limited in Nigeria, with more than 90% of land estimated to be unregistered. Customary, Islamic, and informal institutions continue to govern many land relations, but women and pastoralists frequently face weaker or inadequately documented rights. The lack of systematic gender- and conflict-sensitive recognition and tracking of land and resource rights at the national level contributes to the gender gap and to violent farmer–herder conflicts. A significant opportunity for reform has been opened by national attention to Land4Growth, state-level digitization, experience with systematic land titling and registration (SLTR), Supreme Court rulings on women’s inheritance, and growing evidence on gender-transformative land programming. A high-impact land reform program in Nigeria should invest not only in surveying, digitization, and title issuance, but also address the legal overlap of statutory and customary tenure, the gendered effects of inheritance and marital property norms, practical barriers that reduce women’s land rights, and the rights of pastoral communities.

Understanding agrifood systems in flux: Johan Swinnen and Christopher Barrett on the award-winning 2025 Global Food Policy Report

IFPRI’s 2025 Global Food Policy Report—which received the American Agricultural Economics Association’s (AAEA) Quality of Communication Award on July 27—continues to spark discussion about the future of food systems and the role of evidence-based policymaking. Edited by IFPRI Director General Johan Swinnen and Cornell University economist Christopher B. Barrett, the report marked IFPRI’s 50th anniversary by taking stock of five decades of advances in food policy and considering the challenges that lie ahead for global agrifood systems. In this conversation, Swinnen and Barrett discuss the report’s key findings, emerging trends, the value of interdisciplinary research, and how evidence can help guide policymaking in an increasingly uncertain world.

WEAGov in practice: Lessons from early adopters in the AWARD/GRASP Fellowship

This note synthesizes lessons from a purposvie sample of early adopters of WEAGov: four recipients of the Gender Responsive Agriculture Systems Policy (GRASP) fellowship from the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) who applied WEAGov in active policy innovation project across diverse country and policy contexts. This approach of gathering structured practitioner feedback during the tool’s early diffusion phase is well-suited to identifying usability barriers, adaptation needs, and measurement gaps that can inform the next iteration of the methodology. Drawing on structured interviews conducted in 2025 and 2026, this note documents what worked, what proved challenging, and what changes the IFPRI development team should prioritize in the tool’s next iteration. While four cases cannot support generalizable claims, the consistency of findings across applications in Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi lends credibility to the lessons drawn here. This note is intended for researchers, program managers, and development practitioners considering the use of WEAGov.

The economics of agricultural carbon markets: Nepal’s opportunity and strategic options

Key takeaways

Agricultural carbon markets can boost farm incomes in Nepal. Carbon credits could create a new revenue stream for smallholder farmers while supporting climate-smart agriculture.

Methane reduction offers major potential. Improved rice and livestock practices could cut emissions and generate significant carbon credit revenues.

Success depends on strong institutions. Better monitoring, fair benefit-sharing, and cooperative-based farmer participation are essential for scaling agricultural carbon trading.

Bridging agronomic science and context specific farm-level advisory through generative AI for rice systems in India

Agriculture is increasingly characterized by a data paradox, while the sector generates massive volumes of genomic, climatic, remote sensing, and field data. Translating this information into actionable, farm-level insights remains a critical bottleneck. Traditional advisory mechanisms cannot operate at the spatial scales or provide the context-specificity needed for climate adaptation and food security. The work presents GenAI as a transformative interface that makes advanced agricultural science, including crop simulation models and remote sensing diagnostics, accessible to rice farmers in India through natural language, provided that challenges related to data sovereignty, infrastructure gaps, and the need for human oversight in advisory systems are effectively addressed. We trace the shift from static, rule-based expert systems to dynamic foundation models capable of complex reasoning and multimodal analysis. The paper critically reviewed the rise of crop-specific LLM agro-advisory model architectures, such as SeedLLM Rice and IPM-AgriGPT, which outperform general-purpose models by utilizing specialized scientific corpora to reduce hallucinations. Main attention is on the hybrid integration framework of LLMs with Knowledge Graphs (KGs) for factual grounding, and connecting with process-based simulators (e.g., DSSAT, APSIM) to make biophysical modelling more accessible through natural language. Furthermore, the manuscript examines the fusion of satellite, drone, and smart phone imagery with vision-language models, enabling real-time, context-aware diagnostics for smallholder farmers. The review concludes that while GenAI has the potential to support more equitable forms of precision agriculture, it can only do so under specific conditions. Its success depends on resolving infrastructure gaps, ensuring data sovereignty, and maintaining a “human-in-the-loop” architecture to guarantee scientific rigour and social inclusion.

What it takes to integrate women’s empowerment and nutrition in survey monitoring and policy at scale

Key takeaways:

Integrated data gives deeper insights. Collecting empowerment and nutrition data from the same individuals better reveals how women’s agency affects nutrition outcomes.

Scaling requires more than good metrics. Government buy-in, strong institutional support, and stakeholder engagement are essential for lasting adoption.

Simple, practical tools encourage use. Shorter survey modules and integration into existing surveys can reduce burden while improving monitoring and policy impact.

Applying foresight analysis in national agrifood system investment planning

National governments, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, face considerable complexity in long- and midrange agrifood system development planning. These processes must translate political priorities and commitments into credible investment strategies, while coordinating across ministries, engaging diverse stakeholders, and mobilizing domestic and external financing. At the same time, planners must contend with deep uncertainty around climate change, technological change, market dynamics, and demographic and nutrition transitions, often under conditions of constrained analytical capacity and limited resources.

Resilience of agricultural value-chains in Sudan: Findings from the THABAT Project Survey of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Sudan’s ongoing conflict has severely disrupted agricultural systems, markets, and rural livelihoods. In this context, resilience-oriented agricultural support remains critical for sustaining food production, protecting livelihoods, and supporting local economic recovery. The Sudan Enhancing Community Resilience Project (THABAT) provides resilience-oriented agricultural support that is critical for sustaining food production, protecting livelihoods, and supporting local economic recovery (‘thabat’ in Arabic means ‘stability’ or ‘firmness’). The project is a USD 130 million initiative financed through the Sudan Transition and Recovery Support Trust Fund (STARS) Multi-Donor Trust Fund. This report focuses on the small -and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sub-component of Component 2 of the project, which aims to improve food security through supporting farmers, SMEs, and consumer cooperatives to enhance value addition in agricultural value chains. This component of the THABAT project is being implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) through Mercy Corps.

Specifically, this report presents the initial findings from interviews with 100 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) active in the agrifood sector that have been shortlisted to receive support through a matching grant element of the THABAT project. The surveyed SMEs are quite diverse in the nature of their enterprises—crop production, agricultural input supply, agrifood processing and packaging, storage, transport, and a range of postharvest services. WFP and Mercy Corps identified the SMEs that were included in the survey sample, which comprises both selected and unselected SMEs for the THABAT matching grant. Baseline data from the sample SMEs were collected using computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI).

This baseline report serves as a description of the status quo for SMEs in the THABAT project zone at the start of the project. The findings indicate that SMEs there have relatively good access to basic infrastructure and digital technologies. More than 90 percent report access to electricity, water, and internet services, although electricity reliability remains limited. The operators of the SMEs generally demonstrate strong growth ambitions, with most expecting increases in capital investment, workforce size, and market expansion in the coming year.

This baseline report serves as a description of the status quo for SMEs in the THABAT project zone at the start of the project. The findings indicate that SMEs there have relatively good access to basic infrastructure and digital technologies. More than 90 percent report access to electricity, water, and internet services, although electricity reliability remains limited. The operators of the SMEs generally demonstrate strong growth ambitions, with most expecting increases in capital investment, workforce size, and market expansion in the coming year.

The SMEs operate in a challenging business environment characterized by inflation, market disruptions, supply chain constraints, and recurring shocks. More than 90 percent reported experiencing at least one shock during the previous year, while concerns regarding corruption, governance, and limited access to finance remain widespread. At the same time, these SMEs maintain strong linkages with other actors in the agricultural value chains in which they operate and demonstrate considerable resilience and willingness to invest and grow despite many challenges.

Overall, these initial SME baseline results show the critical roles SMEs are playing in creating value addition in agricultural value chains despite the challenging business environment and inefficiencies in markets in Sudan. These data, along with those to be collected through a planned endline survey of the same SMEs, will enable assessments to be made of the type of impacts the matching grants and associated business development support offered by the THABAT project had on SME performance and resilience.

Transforming Nigeria's livestock sector: Evidence and policy priorities for sustainable food systems

Nigeria has the largest livestock population in West Africa and the fourth-largest cattle herd in Africa, yet the sector remains, in the words of long-standing diagnoses, a “sleeping giant” (Jega 2025). The livestock sector contributes approximately USD 32 billion, or 5 percent of national GDP, and around 17 percent of agricultural GDP. The livelihoods of 30 million people are directly supported by livestock, including those of over 15 million pastoralists. Roughly 40 percent of the protein consumed by Nigerians is sourced from animals.

Nigeria has the largest livestock population in West Africa and the fourth-largest cattle herd in Africa, yet the sector remains, in the words of long-standing diagnoses, a “sleeping giant” (Jega 2025). The livestock sector contributes approximately USD 32 billion, or 5 percent of national GDP, and around 17 percent of agricultural GDP. The livelihoods of 30 million people are directly supported by livestock, including those of over 15 million pastoralists. Roughly 40 percent of the protein consumed by Nigerians is sourced from animals.

The binding constraints to accelerated growth in Nigeria’s livestock sector are feed systems failure, an endemic and underreported animal disease burden, structural herder–farmer conflict, low genetic potential, the near-absence of processing and cold chain infrastructure, and intensifying climate risk. These interact as reinforcing cycles rather than isolated problems. In this paper that has been prepared to inform the development of a strategic action plan for Nigeria’s livestock sector, we examine the prospects for removing these barriers in order to put the sector on a pathway of sustained growth.

Fortunately, the policy architecture for livestock sector development in Nigeria is now the strongest in the sector’s history. The Federal Ministry of Livestock Development, created in July 2024, anchors the Nigeria Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy for 2025 to 2035, the first-ever Nigeria Livestock Master Plan, and the Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support investment program. Major financing is being mobilized, including a USD 2.5 billion commitment to invest in livestock processing from JBS S.A., a Brazilian meat processing company, the creation of the Africa Pastoral Markets Development platform with a USD 3 billion private-investment target, and the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones project. Early progress under these initiatives is visible—by mid-2026, the Ministry had vaccinated 6.2 million livestock in a nationwide anthrax campaign, profiled over 600,000 livestock farmers using electronic tools, validated a National Dairy Policy Implementation Framework, and approved a veterinary reform roadmap to run through 2036.

The principal conclusion we draw from this study is that Nigeria’s livestock sector development challenges are primarily linked to ineffectual implementation rather than poor policy design. The Nigeria Livestock Growth Acceleration Strategy should therefore prioritize implementation architecture—binding federal–state compacts on livestock development actions, foundational data systems that include a completed baseline on Nigeria’s livestock resources and a National Livestock Identification and Traceability System, feed systems development, animal health recapitalization, and putting in place the mechanisms that will convert committed private capital into operational investments in Nigeria’s livestock sector.

Towards sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in Nigeria: Evidence, constraints, and investment priorities

Nigeria is Africa’s largest fish consumer by volume and a leading producer. Fisheries and aquaculture contribute between 3 and 4 percent of national GDP, provide around 40 percent of the animal-source protein consumed by Nigerians, and support the livelihoods of around 12 million artisanal fishers and fish farmers. Women constitute over 60 percent of the sector workforce. However, the sector is locked in a structural supply-demand crisis. Domestic fish production meets only about one-third of annual demand of between 3.2 million and 3.6 million mt. The domestic supply deficit of approximately 2.4 million mt is filled by imports that cost Nigeria over USD 1.0 billion annually.

Domestic fish production has begun to respond to the growing demand for fish in Nigeria. The Federal Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture reports output rising to 1.4 million mt in 2025 from 1.1 million mt in 2024. This increase in production was attributed to improved federal-state coordination, the use of better aquaculture technology, and establishing more sustainable marine farming systems with the support of Nigeria’s development partners.

Nonetheless, the structural deficit in fish supply for Nigerian markets remains large. The constraints hindering growth in Nigeria’s fisheries and aquaculture sector include: A fish-feed cost crisis—feed makes up 60 to 70 percent of aquaculture production costs, The near-absence of cold chains for storing, transporting, and marketing fish, resulting in postharvest losses of up to 40 percent, Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing costs of USD 450 million per year, Fragmented fish fingerling supply systems, Financial exclusion of artisanal fishers, and An outdated governance framework centered on the Sea Fisheries Act of 1992.

Moreover, climate change will acutely affect Nigeria’s fisheries and aquaculture sector. Under high-emission climate-change scenarios, its maximum marine catch potential will fall between 23 and 53 percent by 2050. This makes the scaling up of aquaculture not merely an economic growth option but a structural and nutritional necessity. However, aquaculture will also be adversely affected by a changing climate, with growth in aquaculture in Nigeria expected to decelerate from 11 percent per year between 2010 and 2015 to only 2 percent per year in the 2035 to 2050 period.

The National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy, 2025–2029, provides the operational framework for the growth of the fisheries and aquaculture sector. Its principal target is to achieve aquaculture output of 1.3 million mt by 2029 while cutting postharvest losses in half.

This paper concludes that any strategic action plan for Nigeria’s fisheries and aquaculture sector must be built around closing the supply deficit through accelerated sectoral growth that is anchored in improved domestic feed and fingerling supply systems, cold chain investment at 12 priority fish landing sites, reforms of the Sea Fisheries Act to address IUU fishing losses, and a dedicated fisheries investment facility to correct the structural financial exclusion of Nigeria’s fisheries and aquaculture sector.

Evidence and ideas converge at the 23rd International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy

The 23rd International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy brought together Ethiopia's leading economists, policymakers, researchers, development practitioners, and academics on July 17–18, 2026, at the Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA) Conference Hall in Addis Ababa. Co-organized by the Ethiopian Economics Association (EEA), CGIAR–IFPRI, and other partners, the annual conference served as a premier platform for exchanging evidence, ideas, and policy solutions to address Ethiopia's evolving economic challenges.

Strategic grain reserves and maize price stabilization in Malawi: What policies are feasible?

Maize price instability remains a major policy challenge in Malawi, where most households depend on maize for both production and consumption. Many farmers sell maize after harvest, when prices are low, only to buy it back during the lean season, when prices are high. This paper examines whether Malawi's Strategic Grain Reserve, managed by the National Food Reserve Agency, can meaningfully stabilize maize prices. It reviews the sources of maize price volatility, assesses past government interventions—including minimum farmgate prices, trade restrictions, and public grain purchases and sales—and develops a conceptual framework for buffer stock operations. The analysis shows that while a strategic grain reserve can help mitigate the most extreme seasonal price movements, its effectiveness is severely constrained by limited storage capacity, financing and timing challenges, and, in particular, the market-determined import and export parity prices that govern cross-border trade. The paper argues that Malawi should retain its strategic grain reserve but calibrate its price-stabilization mandate to what is operationally feasible, while preserving the reserve's emergency and safety-net functions.

Aligning the World Bank AgriConnect Initiative with the CAADP Kampala Declaration: A strategic imperative for transforming Africa’s agrifood systems

Over the past two decades, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) has become Africa’s primary, African-owned framework for agricultural transformation. CAADP provides a coherent framework for agrifood sector planning and implementation, guided by shared goals and anchored in core principles of African ownership, evidence-based planning, inclusive dialogue, and mutual accountability. It has elevated agriculture on the political agenda, guided national and regional investment plans, strengthened policy coordination and stakeholder participation, and established continental mutual accountability through the CAADP Biennial Review. Evidence also links CAADP implementation to improvements in agricultural productivity, agricultural trade, poverty reduction, and nutritional outcomes.

Scaling digital financial services for smallholder farmers in Kenya: A stakeholder consultation on challenges, opportunities, and action pathways

Key takeaways

• The new Tool for Agricultural Risk Assessment (TARA) helps expand access to credit and insurance in Kenya. The AI-based platform aids financial institutions in better assessing risk and serving smallholder farmers.

• A recent workshop focused on efforts to scale TARA. Partners aim to reach 50,000 farmers by 2028. The initiative sets strong inclusion targets for women, youth, and marginalized groups.

• Scaling will require coordinated action. Stakeholders prioritized credit guarantees, farmer awareness, financial literacy, and stronger partnerships.

From agreements to action: Practical tools for strengthening transboundary water cooperation

Key takeaways
Addressing small bottlenecks in managing transboundary water resources is key to realizing the broad goals elaborated in formal agreements.
Rapid assessments help identify realistic solutions. A case in Central Asia found strong day-to-day cooperation but outdated rules, unclear responsibilities, and limited stakeholder engagement.
Inclusive institutions make water governance more resilient. Multistakeholder platforms help build trust, improve decision-making, and support long-term cooperation.

Predicting agricultural productivity under climate change using crop yield emulator

This study develops a crop yield emulator as a computationally efficient alternative to the DSSAT process-based model, enabling fast, large-scale assessments of how temperature, rainfall, CO2, and nitrogen influence crop yields. Implemented using fixed-effects polynomial regression in R, the emulator was trained on DSSAT outputs and validated across seven globally important crops, maize, wheat (spring and winter), rice (indica and japonica), soybeans, sorghum, groundnuts, and potatoes. It showed high predictive accuracy (R2 > 0.90) for most crops, especially spring wheat, groundnut, and potato, and performed reliably under climate scenarios such as RCP7.0. The emulator captured key crop-specific responses, such as maize’s sensitivity to heat and nonlinear yield responses to nitrogen inputs. While its performance is slightly lower for maize and Indica rice compared to other crops, it remains a scalable and cost-effective tool for climate scenario analysis. This tool offers valuable support for agricultural decision-making and climate adaptation planning by enabling rapid, data-driven insights into yield outcomes under future conditions.

Myanmar monthly food price report - June 2026

Rice prices rose modestly in June 2026, up 5.2 percent year-on-year and 1.8 percent month-on-month. While national price movements were limited, substantial regional price disparities persisted, reflecting differences in production conditions, market access, and transport costs.

Most export crop prices showed limited month-on-month movements. Pulses prices remained broadly stable, while maize prices increased modestly, supported by continued export demand. In contrast, green gram prices declined as concerns over pesticide residues and grain quality reportedly led some Chinese buyers to reject shipments.

Vegetable prices showed mixed trends. Onion and chili prices increased, supported by stronger export demand, while garlic and potato prices declined as increased market supplies, including higher inflows of Chinese garlic and potatoes, placed downward pressure on prices.

Most animal-sourced food prices remained substantially above year-earlier levels, led by mutton, fish, and beef. Month-on-month price movements were generally modest, although mutton prices remained at record highs due to constrained goat supply, while fish prices continued to be supported by seasonal fishing restrictions through the end of June.

The conflict in Iran and partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz — through which more than a quarter of the world's oil and 20–30 percent of global fertilizer exports transit — continue to keep fuel and fertilizer prices in Myanmar well above year-earlier levels. Some farmers report cultivating smaller areas or reducing plowing in response. With paddy prices largely flat, thinner margins are likely to translate into lower fertilizer application rates and, ultimately, reduced monsoon-season production.

Flood warnings have been issued in recent weeks for parts of the country. Moreover, a new El Niño phase is expected to develop within the coming weeks, increasing the risks of drought in the country.

Half a day’s pay for a healthy household diet in Papua New Guinea

Key takeaways

• Healthy diets are too expensive for many in Papua New Guinea and can cost up to 45% of a low-skill urban worker’s daily wage.

• Diet quality falls short of healthy standards, with only about half of surveyed workers meeting minimum dietary diversity recommendations.

• Processed foods are driving health risks as high consumption of sugary drinks, instant noodles, and processed meats increases the risk of chronic diseases.

Productivity gains and work conditions in coercive labor markets: Experimental evidence from the Bangladesh brick sector

Productivity growth in competitive labor markets can improve worker welfare over time through higher wages or better conditions, but it is unclear if productivity gains benefit workers in coercive labor markets (where force or threats shape employment). We examine this issue in the Bangladesh brick sector using a randomized trial that introduced a more efficient production method. Despite large productivity improvements, we find no reduction in (high) rates of labor trafficking or child labor. These findings suggest that in the short-term, productivity growth alone may be insufficient to improve work conditions in coercive settings.

Gender, labor, and output allocation in Nigeria's aquacultural sector

Aquaculture is an important source of food and income in Nigeria, but evidence on gender differences in labor participation and output allocation remains limited. Using nationally representative microdata from the National Agricultural Sample Survey and weighted ordinary least squares (OLS) and fractional logit models, this study examines whether the gender of the aquacultural manager is associated with labor participation, production, and allocation of output to home consumption and sales. The results show that after controlling for observable characteristics, households managed by women are not less engaged in aquaculture and do not produce less than households managed by men. Instead, gender differences appear in how farms operate and distribute their output. Households managed by women employ a substantially higher share of women’s labor and allocate approximately 4 percentage points more of their output to home consumption, even after conditioning on production scale, a result that is robust across OLS and fractional logit specifications. Sales shares, however, do not differ significantly by the manager’s gender. The consumption share results may suggest that women’s management is associated with greater home retention of output, which could carry food security implications not captured by standard income-focused metrics, although the survey does not permit direct assessment of food security or nutritional outcomes. The findings suggest that policies aimed at strengthening women's participation in aquaculture should consider differences in how labor is organized and output allocation, alongside efforts to improve productivity and market participation.

Societal Challenges and Suitability Mapping of Resilient Nature-Based Water Solutions: Evidence from Case Studies in White Nile, El Gedaref, and Kassala, Sudan

This study focuses on three refugee-hosting areas in Sudan—Kassala, El Gedaref, and White Nile—with three main aims: to assess key societal and environmental challenges in each state; to identify Resilient Nature-based Water Solution (RNBWS) suited to local socio-ecological conditions; and to map areas most suitable for implementing these solutions to enhance environmental sustainability and livelihood resilience. The study combined a review of published and grey literature with multi-temporal satellite imagery and geographic information system (GIS)-based analysis. These methods were used to assess societal challenges, land-use and land-cover change, land degradation neutrality, and site characteristics such as slope and soil type. Spatial analysis, guided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Standards for Nature-based Solutions and the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM), was used to identify and prioritize suitable areas for RNBWS. Results show that economic hardship, conflict, weak governance, natural disasters, and climate change are key drivers of displacement and migration across the three states. Over the last two decades, forestlands, shrublands, grasslands, and water bodies have declined, while agricultural land, settlements, and degraded areas have expanded. Socio-economic and governance constraints—including insecure land tenure, dependence on rainfed agriculture, food insecurity, competition over land, water, grazing, and fuelwood, and weak institutional coordination—shape both vulnerability and implementation feasibility. At the same time, the analysis identified extensive areas suitable for multiple RNBWS, including tree-based solutions, rainwater harvesting, soil and water conservation, and ecological restoration. The findings provide spatially explicit evidence to guide humanitarian programming, state-level planning, climate adaptation, and investment decisions in Sudan’s displacement-affected landscapes.

Can rice policy reform help improve food security and diets in India?

India’s rice policies have played a crucial role in shaping the country’s agricultural sector and ensuring food security for its vast and diverse population. Since rice is a staple food for millions, policies governing its production, pricing, and distribution are vital to maintaining sufficient supplies, stabilizing prices, and making rice affordable and accessible to everyone. However, as dietary patterns change and there is increasing concern about nutrition and environmental sustainability, it is important to consider whether shifting existing rice support toward more targeted or diversified strategies could better promote food security and healthier diets in India. This paper explores this question by evaluating, in advance, the effects of different ways of allocating current support using model-based scenario analysis. The study shows that eliminating all current support would do little to improve the affordability of rice and other foods or to make production more sustainable in India. In contrast, redirecting just a portion of input subsidies—the main type of domestic agricultural support—toward increased investment in research and development for productivity-boosting and climate-resilient technologies could drive meaningful change. This shift could promote more sustainable agricultural practices, lower food prices and the cost of a healthy diet and, ultimately, enhance food security and nutrition across the country.

Urban living linked to slightly healthier diets but also higher overweight and obesity among adolescents in Viet Nam

Key takeaways

• Adolescents living in urban areas of Viet Nam face a complex mix of diet challenges , a recent study shows.

• Urban adolescents face higher overnutrition risks. Overweight and obesity were nearly three times more common in urban than rural areas.

• Adolescent diets were slightly healthier in urban than in rural areas. Urban adolescents ate more healthy foods but also consumed more unhealthy foods.

Links between school meal programs and regenerative agriculture: Scoping literature review

School meal programs (SMPs) are among the largest public investments in child well-being worldwide, and they have untapped potential to act as levers for sustainable food systems transformation. This discussion paper provides an overview of evidence on linkages between regenerative agriculture and SMPs, and also presents a framework to guide future analytical work on integrating regenerative agriculture and SMPs for food systems transformation. We conducted a scoping review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA). The reviewed literature reveals a geographically diverse but uneven distribution of research on how SMPs incentivize regenerative agriculture. The review reports emerging evidence on the ability of SMPs to generate positive outcomes for livelihoods and community development. That evidence, however, is limited in scope as it is dominated by studies on Brazil’s SMP. Beyond Brazil, our review found no evidence that conclusively establishes a causal relationship between SMPs and the uptake of regenerative agriculture. Much of the literature focuses on smallholder procurement, organic production, or agroecological practices more broadly, with relatively few studies explicitly measuring regenerative outcomes such as soil health restoration, biodiversity gains, or carbon sequestration.

Monitoring the impact of recent price volatility on food group consumption in Rwanda

This research uses high-frequency food price data from more than 60 Rwandan markets integrated with bi-weekly dietary consumption data collected during two periods in 2021/22 and 2023/24. During these periods considerable price fluctuations were observed, providing a unique opportunity to track consumption responses to large price instability created by global shocks.

Targeting fertilizer subsidies: Five lessons for sustainable and equitable policy reform

Key takeaways

• A systematic analysis of 39 national fertilizer subsidy programs suggests major data gaps exist , complicating reform efforts.

• While many fertilizer subsidies are designed to be universal, few meet that standard. Registration requirements, paperwork, and supply shortages often limit access.

• Subsidies are progressive, reaching more poorer households, but this is mainly because those households are more likely to rely on farming.

• Better data are essential for reform. Governments often lack reliable information on who receives subsidies and who benefits most.

Modernizing Bangladesh's social protection system: Priorities for more effective and inclusive social protection

Bangladesh has made considerable progress in reducing poverty, with social protection programs playing an important role in protecting poor and vulnerable households from economic shocks and promoting human development. Despite these achievements, the system faces persistent challenges, including fragmented programs, weak coordination, targeting errors, and inefficient allocation of public resources. A substantial share of social protection spending is directed toward programs that do not primarily benefit the poor, while many vulnerable households remain inadequately covered. Addressing these shortcomings has become increasingly important as Bangladesh confronts rising food prices, slower economic growth, and climate-related risks.

This policy note presents a roadmap for building a more efficient, equitable, and adaptive social protection system. It recommends scaling up successful programs while phasing out inefficient ones. By improving targeting and reducing benefit leakage, social protection coverage for poor households can be significantly expanded even within the current budget.

This policy note presents a roadmap for building a more efficient, equitable, and adaptive social protection system. It recommends scaling up successful programs while phasing out inefficient ones. By improving targeting and reducing benefit leakage, social protection coverage for poor households can be significantly expanded even within the current budget.

Assessing environmental and social burdens in agrifood systems: Insights from Colombia and Peru

Agrifood systems (AFS) in Colombia and Peru generate substantial economic value but also impose significant environmental and social externalities that remain unpriced and largely invisible in policy and market decisions. Using the Global Impact Database (GID) and a True Cost Accounting (TCA) framework, this paper quantifies the hidden costs embedded in 19 AFS sectors, with a focus on seven major crop sectors. As one of the first cross-country applications of GID data in Latin America, the analysis offers a harmonized and comprehensive assessment of the true costs of food production, processing, and distribution. Results show that externalities are equivalent to 12 percent of AFS output in Colombia and 13 percent in Peru—a substantial burden that is not captured by conventional economic indicators. Environmental externalities dominate in both countries, driven primarily by land occupation, climate change, air pollution, and use of scarce water. Social externalities—especially underpayment, child labor, and gender wage gaps—are smaller in aggregate but become markedly more significant within crop sectors, as labor intensity and informality characterize production systems. Livestock, dairy, and bovine meat products consistently emerge as the most externality‑intensive sectors, while cereals, rice, sugarcane, oilseeds, and fruits and vegetables exhibit comparatively lower externality costs. Value‑chain decomposition shows that most externalities originate at the production stage (at farm level). These findings highlight several clear leverage points for targeted policy and investment: reducing environmental pressures in livestock systems, improving labor conditions in crop sectors, and integrating TCA metrics into national planning and sustainability strategies. Making the hidden costs visible is essential for advancing more sustainable, equitable, inclusive, and resilient food systems in Colombia and Peru.

"Smart'' targeting of fertilizer subsidies in Kenya: Productivity, welfare, and soil health

Fertilizer subsidy programs in the Global South often juggle competing policy objectives of maximizing aggregate production and providing social protection for the poorest households. Using 2026 survey data from 3105 Kenyan households paired with parcel-level soil tests, this paper evaluates the targeting performance of Kenya’s National Fertilizer Subsidy Program (NFSP). Specifically, we analyze the extent to which the current “de facto” targeting—driven by digital registration and e-vouchers—aligns with these possibly conflicting policy goals. We find that the subsidy recipient populations who would maximize productivity do not tend to include the poorest and most vulnerable farmers. Furthermore, the current pool of NFSP beneficiaries shows limited overlap with the ideal beneficiaries for either policy objective. Among those who we would ideally target, we find that factors such as mobile phone ownership and knowledge of fertilizer recommendations may help predict which households actually receive benefits. We conclude that integrating soil testing into subsidy frameworks could significantly reduce these inefficiencies and improve the alignment between program delivery and national agricultural goals.

The early bird gets the cash: When should a scholarship for secondary school arrive? Evidence from Ethiopia

Key takeaways

• A study in Ethiopia found conditional cash transfers increased secondary school enrollment. Youth offered transfers were more likely to enroll and stay in school.

• Earlier notification delivered bigger impacts. Students informed more than a year in advance saw larger enrollment gains and higher exam pass rates.

• Benefits extended beyond schooling. The program reduced early marriage and improved household well-being, including increased school enrollment among younger siblings.

Agricultural inputs and harvest among vegetable producers in rural Sri Lanka: Insights from a baseline survey of the Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets (FRESH) end-to-end evaluation

Sri Lanka's agricultural sector plays a vital role in the food security and nutrition of its people. In recent years, overlapping crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, severe economic collapse, climate-related shocks, such as cyclone Ditwah and subsequent flooding, and global political unrest have disrupted food systems and exacerbated food insecurity for Sri Lankans. These challenges have constrained access to nutrient-rich foods, while increasing reliance on cheaper, less nutritious alternatives. At the same time, Sri Lanka has been undergoing a nutrition transition characterized by increased consumption of ultra-processed foods and a double burden of malnutrition including micronutrient deficiencies and rising rates of overweight and obesity.

Anticipatory action and early warning systems: A community engagement toolkit for the Sahel

A key finding from this work was that community leaders expressed strong demand for training and concrete guidance on how to act before disasters arrive. Leaders understood the value of early action and were eager for practical tools that could help their communities move from awareness to preparation. There was also significant appetite for understanding how anticipatory action programming could complement and strengthen the preventative efforts communities were already undertaking on their own. This motivated developing the following field-ready storyboard tool – designed to introduce anticipatory action to leaders and community members in concrete, accessible terms and to support community leaders in building the shared understanding and buy-in needed to put early action plans in place before the next crisis arrives.

When more migrants stay home: Evidence from Guatemala

Key takeaways

• When emigration declines and return migration increases in Guatemala, economic growth is projected to improve, a new study indicates. GDP rises faster, exports increase, and manufacturing and agriculture perform better.

• However, these economic gains do not reach everyone equally. Reduced migration lowers remittance inflows, slowing income and consumption growth among households that depend on them, especially in rural areas.

• Policies should support returnees and vulnerable households. Facilitating migrants’ economic reintegration while protecting remittance-dependent households can help spread the benefits of stronger growth.

Intake of aquatic and terrestrial animal source foods among women of reproductive age in northern Tanzania

Aquatic foods and terrestrial animal source foods (TASF) provide crucial nutrients that build and maintain muscle mass and function. These foods are particularly rich in essential micronutrients, including iron, zinc, vitamin A (as retinol), vitamin D, and vitamin B12, as well as essential fatty acids. Notably, vitamin B12 is found almost exclusively in TASF and some aquatic foods, underscoring their importance in diets. Compared with plant-sourced protein foods, aquatic foods and TASF generally provide micronutrients in more bioavailable forms, which is critical for populations at risk of micronutrient deficiencies. However, aquatic foods and TASF have a higher environmental footprint than plant-sourced protein foods, requiring diversified strategies to meet global dietary needs under increasing environmental pressures.

Boosting resilience of agrifood systems through synchronization of financial and fiscal instruments

This chapter defines the scope of fiscal and financial instruments deployed to enhance the resilience of agrifood systems. The analysis covers core fiscal tools, such as public investment, subsidies, and policy guarantees as methods of government resource allocation, alongside the key financial instruments, including credit, insurance, financial derivatives, and public–private partnership (PPP) investments.

Financial instruments are key to mobilizing funds and managing risks in building a resilient agrifood systems. Green finance plays a pivotal role in resource mobilization, and green insurance stands out for its ability to buffer shocks and safeguard stakeholders through risk management. Medium- and long-term loans (often development-oriented) provide essential funding for rural infrastructure, as well as food processing and storage equipment, all of which are critical to a resilient agrifood systems.

Public funds and national financial and monetary policies are major drivers of green finance. Amid increasingly stringent global trade rules, structural shifts are occurring in government support for the agrifood systems, with more public funds being allocated to promote green and resilient systems. National financial policies, central bank monetary tools, and regulatory frameworks have played a crucial role in strengthening the coordination between fiscal and financial support for agrifood systems resilience.

Blended finance is playing an increasingly important role in strengthening agrifood systems resilience. Public and philanthropic funds typically serve as seed capital to leverage private investment. On the one hand, blended finance amplifies the impact of public and philanthropic funding; on the other hand, it helps ensure efficient fund use in line with market principles. International organizations, philanthropic foundations, and specialized research institutions have emerged as key catalysts in this evolving ecosystem.

Qualitative research tools to study women’s voice, leadership, and the role of collectives and programs on household and community change

These guides are designed to support researchers and implementing organizations in conducting rigorous, in-depth qualitative research on women's voice, agency, and leadership and its impacts on households and communities.

This toolkit is intended for social scientists, research teams, and program staff who want a structured, validated approach to understanding how women experience and exercise voice and agency and how collectives, social movements, and programmatic interventions shape those experiences. It is designed to be used when the objective is to understand current conditions, to reconstruct the process of change that produced those conditions, and the consequences on communities and community groups of women’s leadership over time.

The toolkit takes a multi-level approach, comprising five instruments that together capture individual, household, collective, and organizational perspectives on women’s leadership. Community- and individual-level instruments capture individual and collective experience from the perspective of male and female group members and non-members, leaders, and household members. An organizational-level instrument captures the programmatic perspective — what conditions preceded program entry, how decisions were made about where to start programming, and how organizations understand their own contribution to change. Together the instruments enable a more complete account of how women's voice and leadership environments develop than any single data source could provide.

Development strategy under the permanent emergency: Building continuity amid crisis

Key takeaways

• The world has entered a period of permanent emergency defined by continual overlapping crises.

• Development strategy must be built to address persistent disruption , not temporary shocks.

• Continuity should be the key priority. Strong institutions, infrastructure, and productive sectors help countries keep progressing during crises.

El Niño preparedness and response

El Niño is a phase in an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the Pacific Ocean. It occurs on average every 2 to 7 years and typically lasts between 9 months and 2 years. El Niño affects global weather patterns, resulting in above-average precipitation in some places and droughts in others. Malawi and its neighbors typically experience drier than usual weather during El Niño, which often leads to poor growing conditions and below-average harvests (Anderson et al., 2023). In mid-June 2026, conditions in the Pacific Ocean have surpassed El Niño thresholds, and it is becoming increasingly probable that they will strengthen further (NOAA, 2026).

IFPRI Malawi maize market report, June 2026

Retail prices of maize stagnated in the Southern and Central Regions. The continued arrival of newly harvested maize drove price declines in the Northern Region, reflecting its later harvest season compared with the rest of the country. Continued maize imports of maize from Mozambique and Zambia also helped keep Malawian prices down.

Clarifying the debate over AI in qualitative research

Key takeaways

• The discussion on using AI in qualitative research often pits two unhelpful approaches against each other : a total ban vs. unfettered AI automation.

• AI tools add value in small, targeted ways. They can improve workflows, support better research design, and help explore and validate evidence.

• Ultimately, impact depends on how improvements in efficiency are used. AI can deepen research insights or just increase output, shaped by incentives and client demands.

How African economies are absorbing the 2026 oil price shock (so far)

Oil prices began climbing in January 2026 amid the escalating U.S. and Israeli confrontation with Iran, then spiked when war broke out on February 28 and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude rose by roughly 70% within weeks. By June, a fragile ceasefire had brought prices part of the way back down. Whether the calm holds depends on further diplomatic negotiations between the warring parties. Whatever the negotiators do next, this shock continues to stress economies and food systems around the world, though effects vary by region and country. Has it reached (or will it reach) Africa’s food systems, and where?

Iran war: From fertilizer to food crisis?

This post first appeared in Welternährung , the specialist journal of Welthungerhilfe. The article is also available in German .

Diets, fruit and vegetable intake, and nutritional status in Benin, Fiji, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania: Foreword

Improving diets can improve nutrition and health outcomes. In this supplement, evidence from five low-and-middle-income countries on the country specific dietary (including F&V) intake patterns, nutrition issues and evaluated solutions to improve diets across population groups is presented. Based on this evidence, the final paper offers perspectives and future priorities.

Perceived challenges and solutions to adopting healthy diets among women and children: A photovoice study in urban Ethiopia

Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of undernutrition among children under five (U5) and women of reproductive age (WRA) globally, alongside rising overweight/obesity, particularly in urban areas. Poor diet is a shared driver of multiple forms of malnutrition. We used a participatory photography (Photovoice) approach to explore the lived experiences of WRA and their children U5 in adopting healthy diets across lower- and higher- socio-economic status (SES) groups in Addis Ababa. Women took photographs illustrating challenges to healthy diets, and five focus groups (n = 31 women) were conducted to discuss challenges and solutions, with separate sessions held for different SES groups. A hybrid thematic analysis, combining deductive and inductive approaches, identified themes/subthemes, with comparisons across SES groups. Financial and physical barriers to accessing healthy foods, time constraints and perceived poor food safety were major contributors to poor diets. In lower SES groups, women also reported limited knowledge about healthy diets, inadequate family support and poor home food environments. In higher SES groups, unhealthy food preferences coupled with easy access to and aggressive promotion of unhealthy foods were key challenges. Proposed government-level solutions included job creation, nutrition education, affordable healthy food, investment in household infrastructure, expanded childcare and restrictions on unhealthy food availability and promotion. Societal-level solutions included gender equality, strengthened community-based loan schemes and support for urban agriculture. These findings highlight that women recognise their needs and who should support them, and emphasise the importance of including women's voices in decision-making processes. Findings also underscore the need for integrated interventions targeting individual, food environment and socio-economic drivers to improve diets among women and children in urban Ethiopia.

Changing demographics in Ghana’s agrifood systems and implications for future youth engagement

Agrifood systems (AFS) are central to employment, food security, and economic transformation across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As economies grow, urbanize, and experience changing food demand, AFS increasingly extend beyond farming to include processing and other downstream value chain activities. These transformations create new employment opportunities, particularly for youth and women, while reshaping labor markets and livelihoods. Understanding these changes is therefore essential for designing policies that promote inclusive growth, employment creation, and food system resilience.

This study examines the evolution of agrifood system employment in Ghana between 2000 and 2023. Using data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank, and other national and international sources, the analysis documents trends in economic growth, population dynamics, urbanization, labor market outcomes, and employment across agrifood system segments. Particular attention is given to gender and youth dimensions of employment and their implications for inclusive development. The study contributes to the growing literature on agrifood system transformation by documenting changes in the composition of employment and identifying opportunities and constraints for inclusive participation in emerging value chains.

This study examines the evolution of agrifood system employment in Ghana between 2000 and 2023. Using data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank, and other national and international sources, the analysis documents trends in economic growth, population dynamics, urbanization, labor market outcomes, and employment across agrifood system segments. Particular attention is given to gender and youth dimensions of employment and their implications for inclusive development. The study contributes to the growing literature on agrifood system transformation by documenting changes in the composition of employment and identifying opportunities and constraints for inclusive participation in emerging value chains.

The study finds that AFS remains the largest source of employment in Ghana, accounting for approximately two-thirds of total employment. Agriculture continues to employ a substantial share of workers, particularly men and youth, but its relative importance has declined steadily over time. At the same time, employment in nonfarm agrifood system activities – including food manufacturing, trade, transportation, and food services – expanded considerably. These findings suggest that Ghana’s labor market transformation is occurring not through a rapid exit from AFS but through diversification within them as value chains deepen and become more integrated.

The analysis also reveals important demographic patterns in AFS employment. Women are more concentrated in agrifood system employment than men and are particularly represented in nonfarm AFS activities such as trade and food-related services. However, women continue to face disadvantages in employment quality, financial inclusion, access to productive assets, and participation in formal employment. Similarly, youth remain highly dependent on AFS for their livelihoods. Although labor force participation among young people is lower and unemployment is higher than among mature workers, AFS – particularly farming – continues to provide employment for a large share of young people. These findings underscore the importance of AFS as a source of economic inclusion while highlighting the persistent barriers that women and youth continue to face.

Although the available data do not permit separate analysis of young women as a distinct population group, the combined evidence from this study and the broader literature suggests that they are likely to benefit substantially from the continued expansion of nonfarm agrifood activities. Food processing, marketing, food services, and other downstream value-chain segments are expanding in Ghana while already employing relatively large shares of women. Strengthening access to finance, productive assets, business development services, skills, and digital technologies can therefore help translate ongoing agrifood transformation into more dignified and fulfilling employment opportunities for young women.

Employment outside agrifood systems also expanded during the study period, with the share of non-AFS employment increasing by four percentage points to 34.6 percent in 2017, reflecting Ghana's gradual structural transformation. Growth in non-AFS employment was stronger among men and mature adults than among women and youth, indicating that opportunities outside agrifood systems have expanded unevenly across population groups.

Overall, Ghana exhibits a relatively advanced stage of agrifood system transformation, characterized by declining agricultural employment, expanding nonfarm AFS activities, and gradual growth in non-AFS employment. Continued investments in agrifood value chains, infrastructure, market connectivity, access to finance, and entrepreneurship support will be essential to ensure that this transformation generates productive, inclusive, and resilient employment, particularly for women and young people.