Books

× This publication-a joint effort by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)-is being released in the context of growing changes and fragmentation in global economic and trade relationships. Countries are increasingly adopting protectionist measures in response to recent crises and the decreased competitiveness of value chains, due to rising production, marketing and transportation costs. The complex multilateral trade system and the urgent need to implement concrete actions in this area are prompting countries to work towards the adoption of new standards that aim to protect and preserve the environment but could also become barriers to trade that impose a significant economic and social cost on other countries. The countries of the Americas must continue to support efforts to strengthen the multilateral trade system, ensuring that it is open, transparent and science-based, as well as to effectively participate in discussion forums such as the ministerial conferences of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Amidst this scenario, international trade plays a vital role in transforming food systems, by interconnecting them and contributing to creating a more sustainable global food system. In recent years, the growth of production and exports has converted Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) into the largest net food exporting region in the world. On average, agrifood exports from the region in 2021-2023 accounted for 17% of global agrifood exports, representing one fourth of total exports from the region. During that period, LAC agrifood exports grew by 7.6%. Yet, it bears mentioning that, despite its important role, the region has its share of challenges. During 2023, 85% of LAC agrifood exports were directed at external markets and 53% of the value of exported agrifood exports was concentrated among only 10 products. This demonstrates the region’s significant vulnerability and is undoubtedly a challenge that must be addressed. This document is an inter-institutional effort to share ideas and reflections on the main issues to be tackled building on the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference. We hope that it will serve as input in strengthening the participation of the countries of the Americas in WTO multilateral negotiations, while also highlighting the key role of agricultural trade in agrifood system transformation.

× In Chapter I, the introduction of this book, we present a succinct description of the many difficulties that the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its member countries have encountered over the last decade in their attempts to advance in negotiations toward agreements that could contribute to more open and transparent global trade and the discussions taking place as a result of these difficulties. Starting from this context, the rest of the book aims to contribute to three important themes that have emerged from recent discussions in the WTO. The selection of these themes and the authors’ proposals to solve these themes are influenced by the needs and perspectives of Latin America, specifically the region’s food-exporting countries.

× The 2024 AATM investigates critical issues related to African agricultural trade. As in previous editions of the report, we have developed a database that corrects discrepancies in trade flow values, as reported by importing and exporting countries, as the basis for analyzing Africa’s international, domestic, and regional economic community (REC) trade. Given the pressing need to address climate change and curb greenhouse gas emissions, this year’s AATM takes an in-depth look at the relationship between climate change, water use, and emissions and African agricultural trade.

× The literature on the complex relationship between trade and climate change is rich. While trade can affect climate change through dirty production techniques or carbon emissions due to transport (Brenton and Chemutai 2021), climate change can affect trade through its effect on agricultural productivity (Ben Zaied and Cheikh 2015; Chandio et al. 2020), production, and thus countries’ specialization (Gouel and Laborde 2021), primarily due to high temperatures and water stress (Hamududu and Ngoma 2020). As Africa is a net importer of agricultural products, the consequence is that climate change will likely affect food security in the medium and long term. Against this background, the objective of this chapter is twofold. First, we examine the extent to which African countries are exposed to climate change relative to other regions of the world. Second, we show how Africa’s comparative advantages can be altered with rising temperatures and water stress. Our main findings show that climate change effects in Africa are more pronounced than in other regions, reflected in the increase in extreme weather events associated with rising temperatures and greater variability in precipitation. These developments are likely to increase the number of food insecure people. Furthermore, we identify how climate change can affect African countries’ specialization based on products’ sensitivity to changes in temperature and their dependence on water. We show that several crops (such as leguminous vegetables, edible nuts and coconuts, groundnuts, oilseeds, and oleaginous fruits) will be affected by climate change. Other crops’ production may be less affected, but their future expansion may be limited by climate change–related factors.

× This publication-a joint effort by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)-is being released in the context of growing changes and fragmentation in global economic and trade relationships. Countries are increasingly adopting protectionist measures in response to recent crises and the decreased competitiveness of value chains, due to rising production, marketing and transportation costs. The complex multilateral trade system and the urgent need to implement concrete actions in this area are prompting countries to work towards the adoption of new standards that aim to protect and preserve the environment but could also become barriers to trade that impose a significant economic and social cost on other countries. The countries of the Americas must continue to support efforts to strengthen the multilateral trade system, ensuring that it is open, transparent and science-based, as well as to effectively participate in discussion forums such as the ministerial conferences of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Amidst this scenario, international trade plays a vital role in transforming food systems, by interconnecting them and contributing to creating a more sustainable global food system. In recent years, the growth of production and exports has converted Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) into the largest net food exporting region in the world. On average, agrifood exports from the region in 2021-2023 accounted for 17% of global agrifood exports, representing one fourth of total exports from the region. During that period, LAC agrifood exports grew by 7.6%. Yet, it bears mentioning that, despite its important role, the region has its share of challenges. During 2023, 85% of LAC agrifood exports were directed at external markets and 53% of the value of exported agrifood exports was concentrated among only 10 products. This demonstrates the region’s significant vulnerability and is undoubtedly a challenge that must be addressed. This document is an inter-institutional effort to share ideas and reflections on the main issues to be tackled building on the 13th WTO Ministerial Conference. We hope that it will serve as input in strengthening the participation of the countries of the Americas in WTO multilateral negotiations, while also highlighting the key role of agricultural trade in agrifood system transformation.

× Agriculture, deeply embedded within the cultural and economic fabric of African societies, is a linchpin for the continent’s socioeconomic advancement. With its diverse array of climatic conditions, Africa hosts a spectrum of agricultural practices, ranging from traditional subsistence farming to modern commercial enterprises. However, alongside agriculture’s pivotal role in livelihoods and economic growth, the sector poses a challenge as a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Against this backdrop, a nuanced understanding of the intricate relationship among agricultural activities, emissions, and international trade emerges as crucial for balancing sustainable development within Africa and global climate change mitigation efforts. In an era marked by the urgent imperative to address climate change and curb GHG emissions, the role of agriculture has come under intense scrutiny (Smith et al. 2014). The global agriculture sector, intricately interwoven with international trade, underscores the multifaceted environmental complexities inherent in agricultural production and distribution. Climate change significantly impacts global agrifood trade dynamics, influencing production patterns, market accessibility, and economic resilience (Bozzola, Lamonaca, and Santeramo 2023; Gouel and Laborde 2021; Lamonaca, Bozzola, and Santeramo 2024). These effects are compounded by climate-induced shifts in crop yields, water availability, and temperature regimes, altering both supply and demand dynamics across international markets. Notably, agricultural goods traded across borders “carry” the emissions generated during their production and transportation. This notion of emissions embodied in exports and imports has garnered increasing attention in contemporary literature (Davis and Caldeira 2010). Recent studies emphasize the significant interlinkages between climate change and emissions embedded in trade within the agrifood sector. For example, Santeramo, Ferrari, and Toteti (2024) explore the intricate balance required to achieve climate change and environmental goals without resorting to protectionist measures, emphasizing the complexities of international trade policies in mitigating emissions. Li et al. (2023) highlight that despite efficiency gains along global supply chains, changes in global food consumption patterns have contributed to increased GHG emissions, underscoring the need for sustainable trade practices to mitigate environmental impacts.

× Agrifood systems are a leading cause of climate change globally, as they are responsible for a third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the majority of which are tied to agricultural production (39 percent), followed by land use (32 percent) and supply chain activities (29 percent). Moreover, unsustainable agricultural practices continue to drive 80 percent of the loss of terrestrial biodiversity, soil degradation, and deforestation and are responsible for 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. GHG emissions are projected to increase by 60 to 90 percent through 2050 unless corrective action is taken (Apampa et al. 2021). Africa’s share of global GHG emissions is small (2 to 3 percent) but rising, with agriculture and land use change as major contributors (Adolph, Griffiths, and Hou-Jones 2023; FAO 2022).

× Agriculture is an extremely important sector for Africa, providing a large contribution to GDP in most countries and, more importantly, representing a key source of employment in most of the continent—including 52 percent in Africa south of the Sahara in 2022 (International Labour Organization 2024)—while also serving as a bulwark against household food insecurity. Agriculture, however, is the sector most exposed to climate risk, and in years when climate conditions are not favorable, the resulting lower-than-normal agricultural production contributes to increases in food insecurity in almost every country on the continent.

× In June 2014, the African heads of state and government adopted the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The declaration contains a set of concrete goals to be attained by 2025, known as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which in turn functions as the main policy framework for the African Union (AU) in the agricultural sector. The declaration thus provided a new direction for a more focused approach to achieving the continent’s vision for agricultural growth and transformation (AUC 2014). According to the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the CAADP was designed as a practical instrument and framework through which Africa was going to drive efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The importance of evidence to inform policy design and implementation, inclusive participation of multiple stakeholder groups at all stages of the policy process, and mutual accountability for actions and results are at the heart of the CAADP. These principles help formulate high-quality policies and ensure that successful policies are scaled up while unsuccessful ones are adjusted. Since the adoption of the Malabo Declaration, 10 years have elapsed, and considerable progress toward achieving some of its targets is visible across the continent. With the lifespan of the Malabo Declaration coming to an end, the AU proactively initiated the design of a new 10-year strategy, covering the period from 2026 to 2035. As Africa has embarked on designing this successor strategy, it faces multiple complex challenges compounded by the climate crisis. With the opportune timing of this Annual Trends and Outlook Report, this chapter explores how the convergence of the climate change agenda and the transition to a bioeconomy will shape future strategic political decisions across the continent, effecting an equitable and sustainable transformation of agrifood systems. Thus, the bioeconomy can be a solution to future challenges resulting from climate change (for example, climate adaption) vis-à-vis the challenges of avoiding the unsustainable use of natural resources (through climate mitigation, land use change, and the sustainable use of inputs). Simultaneously, the bioeconomy will generate opportunities for new markets—including markets for bioproducts, bioenergy or food based on insects or waste, and carbon engineering (markets that are discussed in Featured Issue 1).

× As in the rest of the world, the climate is changing in Africa, with data showing a slightly faster warming trend than the global average of around +0.2°C per decade for the 1991–2022 period. In Africa, the average rate of change of temperature was around +0.3°C per decade between 1991 and 2022, while it was estimated at +0.2°C per decade between 1961 and 1990. In addition, all six African subregions have experienced an increase in warming over the past 60 years compared with the period before 1960. Due to global warming, Africa is observing a change in precipitation patterns, a rise in sea level, and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, extreme heat, and cyclones (WMO 2023). For instance, the report on the State of the Climate in Africa in 2022 (WMO 2023) showed that precipitation anomalies were above the 1991–2020 average in northeastern Africa, large parts of West Africa, the eastern Sahel region, Sudan, and parts of South Africa. In addition, several regions experienced rainfall deficits including the western part of North Africa, the Horn of Africa, portions of southern Africa, and Madagascar. Sea level rise in Africa’s seven coastal regions has been similar to the global sea level average rate of increase of 3.4 millimeters (plus or minus 0.3 millimeters) per year between 1990 and 2020. In addition, extreme weather events are growing in frequency and intensity. With respect to extreme weather events including droughts, floods, extreme heat, and cyclones, data from the Emergency Event Database in Africa showed that 80 meteorological, hydrological, and climate-related hazards were reported in 2022 (WMO 2023).

× African agrifood systems face several challenges and threats, both emerging and existing, that require concerted action and targeted policymaking by African governments and their partners. The 2024 edition of the Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) explores the challenges posed by the climate crisis to agrifood systems and the opportunities offered by a transition to a bioeconomy to mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. This edition of the ATOR seeks to support the development and subsequent implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) through the renewed and updated post-Malabo CAADP agenda.

× Climate change poses a significant burden to African development and economic growth, impacting households at both national and regional levels. While accounting for only 3–4 percent of global emissions, Africa is most vulnerable to climate change due to low levels of socioeconomic growth (Kikstra et al. 2022). Africa’s vulnerability to climate change is exacerbated by its reliance on rain-fed agriculture, environmental degradation, inadequate infrastructure, widespread poverty, and increased frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters. These factors make Africa highly susceptible to climate-related disruptions such as droughts and floods and can amplify the impact of climate-related disasters on communities, economies, and ecosystems (UNECA 2013; WMO 2020). Effective adaptation strategies and risk financing mechanisms are crucial for building regional adaptive capacity and resilience.

× The concepts of the green economy, circular economy, blue economy, and bioeconomy started emerging in response to the multidimensional economic, socioecological, and climate change crises. These concepts are becoming popular in sustainability discussions in policy, scientific research, and business and are expected to promote sustainability through different pathways of transformation. Each of these frameworks offers a comprehensive package of solutions, yet all point toward renewable, bio-based processes and nature-based or nature-friendly solutions (Kirchherr, Reike, and Hekkert 2017; Geissdoerfer et al. 2017; D’Amato and Korhonen 2021). The bioeconomy, which is more focused on biological and nature-based/positive processes, is usually viewed as a more holistic concept that encompasses principles of the green economy, circular economy, and blue economy (Figure 12.1).

× I n an era when the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly pronounced, understanding and mitigating climate risk is paramount, especially for regions highly vulnerable to environmental change. Africa, with its rich biodiversity and varied climates, stands on the front line, facing unique challenges posed by climate change and climate variability. The continent’s susceptibility around climate change is not just a matter of environmental concern but a multifaceted issue affecting socioeconomic development, agricultural sustainability, and the overall well-being of its inhabitants. The imperative to assess, comprehend, and adapt to these risks is more critical now than ever, necessitating a detailed analysis of various climate-related parameters and their long-term implications.

× The 2024 edition of the Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) explores the challenges posed by the climate crisis to agrifood systems and the opportunities offered by a transition to a bioeconomy to mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. This ATOR seeks to support the ongoing development and the subsequent implementation of a new 10-year Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) strategy by the African Union through the renewed and updated post-Malabo CAADP agenda.

× Migration is a recurrent, complex, and multidimensional phenomenon driven by a broad set of factors. These include both “push” factors that encourage or force people to move from their current location and “pull” factors that attract people to a new location. Migration is also an important adaptation strategy and development pathway that can support livelihoods, build resilience, and protect against fragility and armed conflict. Natural barriers and policy restrictions to migration may similarly result in important welfare losses.

× The sanctions imposed by the European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries on Russia and Belarus following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine included restrictions on banking, trade, technology transfers, and specific individuals. These came on top of earlier sanctions on both countries — on Russia, in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea, and on Belarus, in response to human rights violations in 2020 and its forced grounding of Ryanair flight 4798 to seize a dissident journalist in 2021.
The current sanctions regime aims to spare the agriculture sector, including inputs, to avoid side effects on global food security. Russia is a major global supplier of key staples, including wheat, and both countries are important fertilizer producers and exporters. Shutting down trade in those items would have disastrous consequences for global markets and on agriculture and food supplies in countries reliant on them.

× On July 22, 2022, Ukraine and Russia reached an agreement to allow exports of grain and other agricultural products to resume from selected Ukraine Black Sea ports after months of Russian blockade. The agreement comes at a time when storage capacity is reaching its limits, with much of the 2022 wheat harvest and the approximately 20 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds harvested in 2021 remaining in storage — unable to ship because of the blockade.
The deal, brokered by Türkiye and the United Nations, has been widely praised; resuming Ukrainian trade should help ease market prices, consolidating the reductions seen in recent weeks and helping to bring prices back to the pre-COVID-19 levels of 2020. Indeed, wheat prices had already fallen to their pre-invasion level by July 1, while corn prices returned to pre-war levels by July 17. Still, prices for both cereals remain 50% higher than 30 months ago [July 2020].

× In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, several countries imposed export restrictions — including licensing requirements, taxes, and some outright bans — on a variety of feed and food products. These measures helped to fuel war-related disruptions in global markets and contributed to higher prices and increased price volatility. At the peak of the export restriction trend in late May, almost 17% of global food and feed exports (on a caloric basis) were affected (Figure 1) by measures implemented by 23 countries (numbers similar to those reached during the 2007/08 food price crisis: By the end of April 2008, 19 countries had imposed export restrictions, impacting 15.3% of global trade of calories). After May, many countries partially rolled back the measures: By mid-July, the amount of affected trade had fallen to 7.3%, and largely remained at that level over the rest of 2022, though the mix of affected products changed somewhat
over the second half of the year.
In this post, we examine the impacts of these restrictive trade measures on prices, supplies, and other indicators. While the pressures that led to the export restrictions have significantly eased and prices of key food commodities have mostly fallen to pre-war levels, the war continues and markets remain volatile, signaling continuing uncertainty and raising concerns that countries could impose restrictions in the future.

× Global turmoil and supply shocks can increase a country’s vulnerability to food shortages. In the past, countries have often resorted to restrictive trade policies to address food supply disruptions. The Ukraine-Russia crisis is no exception; a number of countries have imposed export restrictions in various forms.
With food prices already high due to COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions and drought-reduced yields in 2021, Russia’s invasion came at a bad time for global food markets. Russia and Ukraine alone account for 12% of total calories traded. As the war continues, there is a growing likelihood that food shortages, particularly of grains and vegetable oils, will become acute, leading more countries to turn to restrictions on trade.

× The Yemen conflict, underway since early 2015, has led to an ongoing, unprecedented humanitarian emergency. Food needs far exceed current consumption levels, with 3.5 million pregnant or breastfeeding women and children under age five suffering from acute malnutrition and up to 19 million people affected by food insecurity in 2022.
Since February 2022, meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine war has disrupted global supplies of grains and other key agricultural products and driven global food prices higher. Yemen depends heavily on grain imports to feed a population long teetering on the edge of famine. Maintaining wheat flowing into the country and wheat products reaching consumers through private sector importers, processors, and distributors is a critical puzzle piece for managing food security.

× The Russia-Ukraine war has caused significant price volatility in agricultural markets over the past year — for wheat, in particular, price levels and price volatility reached the highest levels since the 2007/08 marketing year. Both have fallen back to pre-war levels over the past six months, but volatility remains high relative to historical levels (Figure 1), indicating that significant market uncertainty remains, creating ongoing vulnerability for global food security.
Before 2022, volatility (measured by the implied volatility in the wheat futures market) spiked and remained high three times since 2006 — in 2007/08 and then again in 2010/11 and 2012/13 (as indicated in the gray bands in the figure). Markets then remained relatively quiet until the recent spike following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. High volatility persists due to market uncertainty over the war and the relative tightness in stock levels, which provide little cushion against unforeseen production shortfalls.

× After the sharp rise in international prices of wheat and other staple foods in the wake of Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, since May prices have fallen back to pre-war levels. Has the global food price crisis now come to an end? Unfortunately, such a conclusion is premature. Domestic food prices for consumers continue to rise in most countries. Meanwhile, ongoing uncertainties — not the least of which is the continuing war — au gur continued turmoil in global food markets. Global food security remains at high risk; hundreds of millions of people already face acute food insecurity and their numbers are rising, according to the Global Report on Food Crises. In this blog post, we try to disentangle the main factors in play.
Given the importance of both Russia and Ukraine as suppliers in global markets for wheat, maize, sunflower seeds and oil, and Russia’s importance in international fertilizer and energy markets, the war provoked a surge in food and energy prices worldwide. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s international food price index climbed to its all-time high in mid-May (Figure 1). At that point, wheat prices, for instance, were up 32% from their level at the start of the war. Then prices fell, with those of agricultural commodities, including wheat, returning to pre-war levels. However, prices remain high by historical standards, reflecting impacts of supply disruptions and the surge in global demand for commodities during the recovery from the COVID-19-induced recession in 2021.

× The war in Ukraine has pushed prices of agricultural products to historically high levels, and concerns about global food security occupy headlines and world leaders’ minds, as demonstrated by recent International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings. So far, much of the attention has focused on grains, particularly wheat — because of its importance in diets, and the predicament of countries where wheat accounts for a large share of calories consumed, is largely imported, and is dominated by supplies from the Black Sea.
Here, we focus on another important emerging food security issue: The war’s impact on vegetable oils. The Black Sea countries are large exporters of sunflower oil, and the crisis has pushed vegetable oil prices significantly higher, and also triggered trade policy responses around the world that further restrict supplies and raise prices. This post examines the unfolding impacts on the global market for vegetable oils, including additional factors affecting prices such as biofuel policies and export restrictions in the Black Sea and elsewhere.

× Almost a year after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, fears of a period of sustained high global food prices have subsided somewhat, but eight major concerns for food security remain.
First, prices for food commodities remain high by historical standards. As shown in Figure 1, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) index for internationally traded food commodities, after rising during the initial months of the war, is now back to its pre-war, end of 2021 level — but still remains well above levels of preceding years. This holds for all main components of the index (cereals, meat, dairy, vegetable oils, and sugar). Vegetable oil prices showed the strongest decline in the second half of 2022, falling by 33% between June and December, but still are one-third above pre-COVID levels.

× The unfolding crisis in Ukraine has roiled commodity markets and threatens global food security. Ongoing fall out from the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors have already driven up food prices. Poor harvests in South America, strong global demand, and supply chain issues have reduced grain and oilseed inventories and driven prices to their highest levels since 2011–2013. Vegetable oil prices have also been at record levels, reflecting the short South American soybean crop, reduced palm oil supplies due to harvest problems in Malaysia, and sharply increased use of palm and soybean oil for biodiesel production. Prices of key energy-intensive inputs like fuel, fertilizer, and pesticides have also been at near-record levels.

× Like people, plants need a multitude of nutrients to thrive. These are categorized into micronutrients, such as zinc and iron; secondary macronutrients, such as calcium and magnesium; and three primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). Mineral fertilizers provide higher and more plant-accessible nutrients, while organic minerals importantly also provide carbon, which contributes to healthy soils. While efforts to reduce nutrient losses to the environment must be continued and stepped up, it bears emphasizing that fertilizers play a crucial role in agricultural productivity.
World market prices for both food and fertilizer (here we focus only on N, P, and K) increased significantly over the past year and a half and have climbed to even higher levels following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, hitting their highest levels yet in March (see Figure 1, +125% from January 2021 to January 2022, +17% from January 2022 to March 2022).
While there is an immediate concern about the impact of high food prices on food security, especially in low and middle-income countries, fertilizer price spikes and concerns about availability cast a shadow on future harvests, and thus risk keeping food prices high for a longer period.
In this blog post — which draws on data from the new IFPRI fertilizer dashboard; IFASTAT, compiled by the International Fertilizer Association (IFA); and FAOSTAT — we discuss the underlying drivers of current high pric es, explain why the global fertilizer market is particularly susceptible to shocks, and examine which countries are most vulnerable to fertilizer market disruptions. A subsequent post will explore short- and medium-term solutions to address the serious affordability and availability concerns.

× The Russia-Ukraine war has focused global attention on the key economic roles those countries play as major exporters of agricultural commodities. Over the 2019–2021 period, they accounted for 12% of global agricultural trade on a kilocalorie basis, with a combined market share of 34% for wheat, 26% for barley, 17% for maize, and 75% for sunflower oil. The war has scrambled this picture, with Ukraine’s exports falling dramatically, and Russia’s falling, then recovering.
While the Black Sea region has historically been a major grain producer, its emergence as a major world exporting region is a relatively recent phenomenon. From the 1970s until the early 2000s — the decades imme diately before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union — Russia and Ukraine were net grain importers. This post examines how and why Russia and Ukraine became such important factors in 21st century global food markets — and thus why the war poses a continuing threat to global food security

× Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered global disruptions in markets for key food crops and fertilizers, threatening food security worldwide. With the war now entering its second year, high international food prices have moderated, though domestic price levels remain high in many low- and middle-income countries. Here, we turn to global fertilizer markets, examining how they weathered the past year, and the likely impacts going forward for agricultural production and food security.

× Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping up to be a very difficult year for the global food system.
Yet there were concerns that this system was creaking at the seams as far back as 2007. At that time, there were steeply rising food prices driven by rising oil prices, explosive demand for corn-based biofuels, high shipping costs, financial market speculation, low grain reserves, severe weather disruptions in some major grain produc ers, and a swath of nervy trade policies leading to further shocks that worsened the problem.
The World Food Program’s director general described it as a “perfect storm.” Prices spiked again in 2011/12 before gradually receding.
In retrospect, those storms might now appear temperate in comparison to that we face in 2022. Even before the current crisis unfolded, food, fertilizer, oil, and shipping costs were rising steeply.
The FAO cereal price index shows prices hit their 2008 level in 2021, and since the invasion they have explod ed. Between 2019 and March 2022, cereal prices increased by 48%, fuel prices by 86%, and fertilizer prices by 35% (Figure 1).
Here are three factors that we think make the situation in 2022 much worse, and three measures that could help prevent a global food supply system collapse

× When Russian troops invaded Ukraine one year ago, the war appeared to pose a grave threat to global food security. The conflict could hardly have come at a worse moment. Even prior to the war, global supplies of key staples were tight; ending stocks of wheat, maize, and soybeans were at their lowest levels for many years and prices were high compared to 2020 levels — lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak of war between two of the world’s key agricultural producers jeopardized more than a third of world wheat trade, 17% of world maize trade, and almost 75% of world sunflower oil trade. Within a week of the invasion, prices of wheat futures had jumped almost 60%, while corn and soybean prices were up over 15% (Figure 1). Ukraine found its Black Sea ports effectively blockaded, sharply limiting its ability to export its 2021 crops, and the planting and harvest of its 2022 crops disrupted. The world faced the possibility of another food price crisis with potentially devastating consequences, following on the heels of the pandemic’s global economic disruptions.

× The IFPRI Food Security Portal’s Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System is showing excessive levels of price volatility in the four major food commodities: wheat, maize, rice, and soybeans, as well as cotton. Markets for hard and soft wheat and soybeans had already been more volatile than normal since late 2021, well ahead of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022. That conflict, coming on top of the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, has already contributed to spiking food prices, with possible major consequences for global food security.
Rising price volatility poses a distinct threat, as it induces greater market uncertainty, which affects production decisions, and can spur speculative behavior. Both would fan further food price inflation. What is driving the current price volatility, and what are its implications for markets and food security?

× Russia’s October 29, 2022, announcement that it was suspending its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative — which allows shipments out of Ukrainian ports — was not a surprise; Russia had been skeptical of the deal from the start. But now the supply disruptions will begin again: the move will have a negative impact on Ukraine, its customers, and world market prices — and on global food security, particularly for countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Not only are those countries more dependent on Ukraine as a supplier of wheat and other grains, but they tend to buy more during the winter to supplement their own harvests, which are largely consumed by the end of the year. The renewed interruption in imports could increase food insecurity in these countries and potentially exacerbate political tensions.

× Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted agricultural production and trade from one of the world’s major food exporting regions. The war threatens to drive rising food prices still higher and create scarcity, especially for regions most dependent on wheat and other exports from Russia and Ukraine — particularly the Middle East and North Africa.
Sudan faces a uniquely difficult set of circumstances as these disruptions loom. As with other countries in the region, wheat is a key food item for Sudan, second only to sorghum as a source of calories and accounting for 530 calories/person/day — a fifth of the estimated 2,576 total calories consumed daily. Only about 15% of the wheat consumed is grown in Sudan — a share that might shrink due to rising fertilizer and energy prices; the rest is imported, with a majority sourced from Russia and Ukraine in recent years (Figure 1). Adding to these vulnerabilities, prices for wheat and fuel were already spiking before the war began, compounding the risk of rising food insecurity.

× The Group of Seven wealthy nations (G7), currently led by the German presidency, has put a welcome focus on the global food insecurity and nutrition crisis unleashed by the war in Ukraine, with the most severe impacts falling on vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Two G7 meetings in May pro duced four separate communiqués, each of them dozens of pages long (the development ministers’ commu niqué alone was 23 pages!), and a G7-led Global Alliance for Food Security was announced. The G7 meetings coincided with serious efforts on the same front by the United Nations, which has set up a Global Crisis Response Group and convened a UN Security Council meeting on Food Insecurity and Conflict.
The G7 effort can help to ensure a commensurate response to what is turning out to be the worst glob al hunger crisis in decades, and in so doing help to elevate the G7 itself, whose relevance as an exclusive group of rich and elite countries has been questioned. To realize this promise, however, G7 commitments must be backed up with action — particularly funding.

× As the Russia-Ukraine crisis continues to disrupt the global trade of key foods such as wheat and vegetable oils, along with fertilizers, impacts are falling heavily on countries such as Bangladesh. Dependent on imports of those items to feed its large population, many of whom are poor and vulnerable to shocks, the country faces the prospect of rising food insecurity.
The conflict threatens Bangladesh’s recent progress on this front. With a population of 165 million in 2021 — with 38% employed by the griculture and fisheries sector — and a growing economy, the country’s undernourished population declined from a high of 16% in 2000 to as low as 9.7% in 2019. While the COVID-19 pandemic increased food insecurity, by some measures the country proved relatively resilient: According to an IFPRI study, the proportion of rural households facing moderate or severe food insecurity rose from 15% in early 2020 to 45% in January 2021, then returned to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021.

× The Russia-Ukraine conflict has roiled agricultural markets, particularly the wheat market, which has seen prices rise by 30% since Russia invaded on February 24. This post focuses on the impacts of the crisis on Yemen, whose poverty, civil war, and dependence on wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine make it uniquely vulnerable to the current market and supply disruptions.
Yemen’s civil war has ravaged the country since 2015, and lately serious impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened its already precarious food security situation. The prevalence of undernourishment, as measured by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), exceeds 45%, and more than half of the population relies on some type of in-kind food assistance.

× The Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to have serious consequences for global food security. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that if there is a prolonged disruption in exports of wheat, fertilizer, and other items from Ukraine and Russia, the number of undernourished people worldwide could increase by 8 to 13 million people in 2022/23, with the most pronounced increases taking place in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.
Even before the crisis, agricultural commodity supplies were tight and market prices were at (nominal) record levels. Prices for most grains and oilseeds have risen sharply since the war began in late February (Figure 1). Russia and Ukraine together supply about 12% of global agricultural exports on a caloric basis, and over 30% of global wheat exports. The two countries command even higher shares in the wheat-dependent economies of the Middle East and North Africa, where wheat prices have risen over 30% compared to pre-war levels. Fertilizer and energy markets have seen rising prices and supply disruptions as well.

× As discussed in an earlier post, fertilizer prices have increased drastically, up 230% between May 2020 and May 2022. Now — driven upward by supply disruptions stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict — they are nearing the peak reached in August 2008 during the last major food price crisis.
Spiking fertilizer prices are likely to have major impacts on agriculture and food production — and thus, food security — around the world, as farmers struggle to pay for a key input and face potential supply disruptions, and governments look for ways to cushion the economic blow.

× Frequent food crises with spiking prices have become the new normal in the 21st century, bringing urgency to the task of understanding their nutritional impacts on poor and food insecure populations. In a new analysis of 1.27 million children in 44 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), we show that exposure to food inflation in the womb and first years of life is associated with greater risks of child wasting in the short run and stunting in the long run. Food inflation also poses larger wasting risks for children of poor and landless rural households,
exacerbating existing inequalities.
These results show the urgency of policies focused on improving maternal and young child nutrition, and the importance of broadening actions to reduce food price volatility and boost access to nutritious foods.

× Because of its dependence on food imports, Egypt is particularly vulnerable to the high world food prices and trade shocks triggered by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Imports account for more than 40% of Egypt’s calorie consumption, and the country is the world’s largest importer of wheat, with about 85% coming from Russia and Ukraine before the war began. Since then, supply disruptions, high global market prices, and other factors have led to sharp rises in domestic food inflation, which reached 31% in November. This in turn is a major driver of rising overall annual inflation, which soared from 6% to 19% between January and November 2022 — the highest rate in five years.
In this post, based on a recent survey, we assess how Egypt’s poor households are responding to these economic stresses, and how the Egyptian government’s social protection efforts have affected consumption since the conflict began. In general, the survey indicates that many poor households cut back on consumption of some unsubsidized nutritious foods while consumption of subsidized foods remained unaffected, suggesting the national food subsidy program plays an important role.

× Much of the early attention to the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s food security impacts has been concentrated on countries highly dependent on wheat imports from the Black Sea region. Given the important role that wheat products play in the diets of people in Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other countries, the interruption in Black Sea wheat trade and high prices have raised serious concerns about rising levels of food insecurity, poverty, and instability around the world.
But many countries are affected by price increases across a range of commodities (some predating the war), including in fertilizers, edible oils, and maize, as well as oil, natural gas, and other energy products. How are these sharp international price increases impacting countries and people, and how can countries respond? Our recent modeling study focusing on Kenya suggests higher prices, particularly for fertilizer, will reduce GDP growth and increase poverty rates in the country, putting an estimated 1.4 million additional people below the poverty line.

× Development agencies are pouring in billions of dollars to address the global food crisis exacerbated by Rus sia’s war on Ukraine. The World Bank, the G7, the European Union’s Team Europe, and the United States have collectively pledged more than $40 billion to avert food and humanitarian crises. Yet this much-needed assis tance carries its own risks. Without a gender lens, the proposed measures will fail to meet the specific needs of women and girls and might worsen existing gender inequalities. The current crisis presents an opportunity to design gender-responsive programs that buffer women and girls against hardships in the short term and tackle entrenched gender inequalities while building resilience to future shocks over the long term.
It is a perilous moment for women and girls around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic already pushed an estimated additional 47 million girls and women into extreme poverty, reversing decades of progress. And in 2021, at least 150 million more women than men were experiencing food insecurity — with the gender gap continuing to grow. Crises pose particular risks to girls, leading to them to drop out of school at higher rates, and increasing the incidence of gender-based violence, including early or forced marriage and economic or sexual exploitation.

× Food security in West Africa has been deteriorating since 2015: The proportion of the population affected by undernutrition rose from 11.5% in 2015 to 18.7% in 2020, a total of 75.2 million people. Now, like the rest of the world, the region faces rapidly growing impacts from Russia’s war in Ukraine, including spiking food prices and disruptions in markets for cereals and other commodities, including fertilizers and fuels. What are some of the war’s likely effects on West Africa?
Overall, the greatest risk is from rising global prices. The region imports relatively little food or fertilizer (with some exceptions) from Russia and Ukraine, insulating it from many of the current market disruptions, and has capacity to substitute some lost fertilizer imports.

× Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has imperiled global food security — creating suffering within Ukraine and displacing millions while disrupting agricultural production and trade from one of the world’s major exporting regions. The latter threatens to drive rising food prices still higher and create scarcity, especially for regions most dependent on exports from Russia and Ukraine — particularly the Middle East and North Africa.
In this post, we consider the impacts of the war on the wheat market, focusing on Egypt. Wheat is a key food item for this country, representing between 35% and 39% of caloric intake per person in the past few years. Wheat imports usually account for about 62% of total wheat use in the country. We conclude by listing a number of key policy actions aimed at diversifying imports in the short term and helping Egypt’s agrifood system transformation become fairer and more resilient. The latter is an absolute necessity in the context of looming threats from climate change and water scarcity.

× Food insecurity is endemic in Malawi, affecting up to 38% of the population every year in the run-up to the harvest in April. Although geographically distant, there are multiple channels through which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can make matters worse this year.
The conflict has disrupted global supplies of key cereals, vegetable oils, and fertilizers, pushing already-high prices higher, and putting particular pressure on low-income countries with vulnerable poor populations. In this post we discuss how rising wheat, maize, cooking oil, and fertilizer prices are likely to impact Malawi and how the government can respond.

× High food prices and supply disruptions triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war are hitting Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries like Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen hard, partly due their heavy dependence on wheat imports. But in the region, Lebanon — already in the midst of one of the world’s worst economic collapses since the 1850s — is uniquely vulnerable to food security impacts from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A recent World Bank report calls Lebanon’s current crisis “The Great Denial” — referring to an ongoing breakdown of government services, civil society, and the economy.

× The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference (WTO MC12) takes place June 12–15, 2022, in Geneva — two years after the pandemic forced members to postpone the meeting’s original schedule. In that time span, the world has changed and the need for multilateral approaches to tackling international trade issues has become even more acute. The Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted a variety of unresolved trade issues as poor countries struggle to meet food security needs amid tightening global supplies and high prices, exacerbated by a conflict whose two participants account for 12% of world agricultural exports (on a calorie basis) and threatening 20% of global fertilizer trade.
Two issues of particular concern amid the growing food crisis are export restrictions and public stockholding programs. Agricultural export restrictions have been a major topic in global trade negotiations since the food price crisis of 2007/08, when many countries imposed such measures, particularly on food grains like wheat and rice. Now it is happening again: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, 23 countries have imposed export restrictions affecting over 16% of global agricultural trade (on a calorie basis).

× The economies of the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay), major agricultural exporters still recovering from the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have benefited from the rise in international prices accompanying the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With the war disrupting global supplies, the net exporting countries of the region have the opportunity to increase their exports. If these countries, especially Mercosur members, can boost production enough to offset the loss of Ukraine exports, it would go a long way toward stabilizing markets and world food security.
However, like the rest of the world, these countries are operating in the difficult current environment of global economic slowdown, rising energy and fertilizer prices, and rising inflation. In this post, we examine responses of Southern Cone countries to the disruptions in agricultural markets caused by the war, and their prospects going forward.

× Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine has inflicted devastating impacts that continue to mount more than a year after the invasion. As of September 2022, even before Russia’s winter bombing campaign, the total damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure was an estimated US$127 billion, equal to 64% of the country’s 2021 GDP. More than 14 million Ukrainians have left their homes, including more than 8 million refugees.
These impacts have global economic effects as well — particularly on agricultural markets and food security. Damage to Ukrainian agriculture and production losses also continue to mount. This has created severe economic uncertainty, driving many Ukrainian farmers to the brink of bankruptcy and substantially depressing agricultural output — contributing to high prices and price volatility around the world. In this post, we outline the war’s impacts on Ukrainian production and exports of key crops and their continuing global reverberations.

× The current rise in global market prices for major food commodities almost mirrors that of the 2008 food crisis, presenting a worldwide threat to food security. The situation is particularly severe in Africa, where the COVID-19 pandemic and now the Russia-Ukraine crisis have exposed the vulnerability of food systems to major shocks, particularly in countries like Nigeria that rely heavily on imports of major staple foods such as rice and wheat.
With global food prices spiking and supplies of wheat, oils, and other items disrupted due to the Russia-Ukraine war, Nigeria faces a number of threats to its already precarious food security. Since over 50% of the foods consumed by Nigerian households come from purchased sources, food price inflation threatens to place many people in a worsening food insecurity situation. In particular, Nigeria’s dependence on wheat imports may lead to high prices and supply problems. At the same time, however, Nigeria’s capacity to produce other key items — in particular, fertilizer and natural gas — may allow it to take advantage of global market disruptions from the crisis.
In this post, we examine how wheat supply disruptions and spiking prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict may exacerbate food insecurity in Nigeria, and also explore the country’s potential opportunities in the emerging fertilizer sector and energy industries.

× When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking fears of a global food crisis, IFPRI responded rapidly to the need for information and policy advice to address the crisis. From the first moments of the conflict, a new IFPRI blog series provided critical information and insights into the impacts on food security, caused by rising food, fertilizer, and fuel prices and trade disruptions, for vulnerable countries and regions. This book is a compilation of those blog posts, which include analysis of trade flows, tracking of food prices and policy responses, and results of impact modeling. Together, they provide an overview of how the crisis has progressed, how the international community and individual countries responded with efforts to ensure food security, and what we are learning about the best ways to ensure food security in the aftermath of a major shock to global food systems.

× Cotton production and trade have a long history and important role in Africa, dating back centuries before the colonial period. While the sector saw several developments in the post colonial period, cotton trade remained primarily in unprocessed cotton because of several structural challenges affecting its production. Moreover, African exports of cotton have decreased in recent years from a total annual average of US$55 billion1 in the 2006–2010 period to $48 billion in the 2017–2021 period. At the same time, cotton imports increased by 37 percent, up from $37 billion to $51 billion, making Africa a net importer in the later period. At the value chain level, unprocessed cotton products have the lion’s share in the export market, accounting for about 12 percent of global exports of raw cotton during the 2017–2021 period. Africa’s semi-processed and processed cotton product exports account for 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively, for the same period. In addition, African imports of processed cotton increased as a share of world cotton trade (from 3 percent to 4 percent) over the two periods.

× This is the sixth Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM), an annual flagship publication of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and AKADEMIYA2063. The AATM provides an overview of trade in agriculture in Africa, including analysis of short- and long-term trends and drivers behind Africa’s global trade, intra-African trade, and trade within Africa’s regional economic communities. The AATM is supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The six chapters of this 2023 AATM report are as follows.

× Against the background of worldwide trade disruptions and climate change impacts, the 2023 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor explores recent trends and patterns in Africa’s global and regional agricultural trade. Like the preceding editions, the report uses a database that corrects for discrepancies in trade flow values as reported by importing and exporting countries. This section summarizes the key findings discussed in the report’s six chapters and related policy implications for successful implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement.

× Food systems incorporate many actors at different intersecting levels and spaces. Young people1 constitute one of the most significant groups of these actors and contribute significantly to food systems in a variety of ways, from agricultural production and processing to food-related retail services, through formal and informal employment, paid and unpaid labor, and self employment. In addition to engaging through work and livelihoods, young people are involved in research, conservation, and knowledge acquisition and transmission. They also participate in consumer pressure groups and social movements raising awareness on the need for food system transformation and demanding climate change action. Through all these contributions, young people support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal targets such as those on food security, economic growth, poverty reduction, and environ mental sustainability (HLPE 2021; FAO and AUC 2022)

× A national flour blending policy is about to be implemented in Kenya. This requires maize flour (the country’s main staple) to be blended with at least 10 percent of either one or a composite of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet.1 The blending ratio is expected to increase gradually, with the goal of ultimately reaching 30 percent. The policy envisages achieving several goals. The first is to improve the nutritional quality of maize flour: sorghum and millet (and other candidate blending crops) have micronutrient characteristics that are absent in maize. The second is to promote more climate-tolerant crops and technologies: sorghum and millet can be grown in less favorable arid and semiarid lands (ASALs), in the very conditions that many farmers face in Kenya. This is particularly important given that maize is more susceptible than other staple crops to climate change. The third is to reduce the country’s overreliance on imported maize and concerns about its food sovereignty.

× Climate change represents a major challenge to food systems. It is associated not only with rising average temperatures but also with less predictable weather and changes in humidity, with severe consequences for agricul tural production, input markets, aggregation, processing, distribution, and consumption. Negative impacts on food production can raise consumer prices, potentially leading to social unrest and conflict; increased temperatures and changes in humidity require stronger cold chains and improved storage facilities to avoid postharvest damage (de Brauw and Pacillo 2022).
This chapter highlights several innovations in climate insurance that were developed and tested in Kenya with the aim of improving smallholder farmers’ ability to manage the production risks associated with climate change.

× Throughout Africa, climate change is posing severe challenges to agricultural production and food security. Agricultural risks—particularly those associated with drought—are a major cause of low agricultural productivity in most African countries, including Kenya. According to the Government of Kenya, four consecutive years (2008–2011) of drought caused US$12.1 billion in losses, accounting for about 8 percent of GDP, including losses in assets and disruptions to the economy across sectors (Kenya, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries 2014). Currently, Kenya is in the middle of an acute drought following three consecutive poor rainy seasons. This has led to a drop in crop production nationally of about 70 percent, which has disproportionately exposed the communities of arid and semi-arid lands to hunger and malnutrition.

× Agri-food systems face multiple challenges. They must deal with prevailing structural weaknesses, partly deepened by the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, civil conflicts, and climate change. Addressing structural weaknesses – such as inequitable access to healthy and nutritious food for all, loss of livelihoods and incomes, and increasing environmental shocks – requires not only technological, but also institutional innovations, as well as economic and policy responses. While development interventions often focus on technological innovations, they lack attention to the enabling policy environment and the political economy drivers necessary to achieve policy, economic, and social impact at the national level. In addition, solutions often fail to analyze the broader enabling environment in which policies are designed and implemented at the national level. A comprehensive understanding of the policy environment coupled with appropriate technological and institutional solutions can influence the success or failure of development interventions. However, political economy and policy analysis considerations are inadequately explored in the quest to transform food systems. Identifying the right policies and overcoming barriers to the implementation of development interventions fundamentally requires an understanding of the political economy and policy processes that shape policymaking. Despite numerous emerging approaches and frameworks for conducting political economy and policy analysis, practitioners and researchers working across food, land, and water systems lack a consolidated knowledge base. This Political Economy and Policy Analysis (PEPA) sourcebook
aims to fill that knowledge gap.

× Today’s food production and consumption has large consequences for the environment and human health. With respect to climate change, our food system is now responsible for at least a third of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In particular, the production of red meat has become the largest source of methane, which is a powerful short-lived GHG. Livestock production is also the single largest driver of habitat loss, and a leading cause of soil erosion, water, and nutrient pollution across the world, which increasingly compound pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity. In addition, scientific evidence suggests strong associations between meat consumption and health risks including total mortality, cardiovascular diseases, colorectal cancer, and type 2 diabetes. This issue of overconsumption is particularly salient for developed countries and large emerging economies where meat consumption is high (i.e., >20–30kg per person per year). Recent systematic reviews suggest that domestic demand in countries with tropical rainforests cause a significant proportion of agriculturally driven tropical deforestation. Hence, rapid dietary changes toward more plant-based diets are a critical component of global food system transformation as they hold the promise to make important contributions to solving health, climate, and ecological crises. Without such changes, achieving the Paris Agreement targets and many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is unlikely, even if all other sectors were to achieve rapid transition toward sustainability.

× Climate change is a growing threat to our food systems, with grim implications for food and nutrition security, livelihoods, and overall well-being, especially for poor and vulnerable people around the world. The imperative for urgent action on climate change — both to achieve the major emissions reductions needed to limit global warming and to increase adaptive capacity and resilience of food systems — is drawing global attention.

× Food systems everywhere are facing major new challenges. Shocks caused by COVID-19 have currently seized our attention, but the pandemic has also accentuated persistent problems of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, population growth, and pressure on natural resources, notably land, water, and biodiversity. Adding to these challenges, climate change poses a serious threat to food security and livelihoods as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise. Changing temperatures, highly variable precipitation, shifting growing seasons, and extreme weather events are already making agricultural yields and prices more volatile, with rural areas across the world feeling the effects most profoundly. Yet, as the world’s population moves toward 9 or 10 billion by 2050, unprecedented increases in global food production — of at least 60 percent over 2005–2007 levels — will be needed to meet growing demand.

× One of the most significant challenges for food systems today is ensuring that every individual has access to — and consumes — sustainable healthy diets. These are defined as nutritious, healthy (meaning they help prevent disease), safe, affordable, and culturally acceptable diets that support optimal nutrition and health and cause low environmental pressure and impact. The food systems tasked with producing these healthy diets are under significant stress due to environmental and natural resource constraints, as well as climate change. Moreover, the types and amounts of foods we consume — and the way we produce, process, and move these foods — compromise the stability and resilience of natural resources and biodiverse ecosystems and contribute to climate change.

× As growing populations, changing diets, and climate change affect growing conditions for crops, our agriculture and food systems must increase production and productivity to ensure access to healthy and diverse diets for all. The expanding demands on agriculture and food systems must be met without increasing pressure on the environment, and while accomplishing other development goals and objectives. Addressing this complex problem requires the identification of game-changing interventions that can drive sustainable, equitable agriculture for food system transformation. “Bio-innovations” will be one key set of interventions. Bio-innovations encompass biotechnology-based tools and product innovations, as well as innovations in their governance, regulation, and social and business contexts. They hold potential to contribute to food system transformation by accelerating productivity growth and reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint, as well as contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

× Agricultural support policies provide enormous transfers of resources to farmers — about US$620 billion per year worldwide in 2018–2020 — and enjoy strong political support in both developed and developing countries. Some agricultural support policies, such as input subsidies, have boosted global food production, particularly of staple crops, thereby reducing hunger and poverty. Yet, there are serious concerns about their impacts on achieving sustainable, healthy, and inclusive food systems. Redirecting, or “repurposing,” agricultural subsidies toward investments that support both increased production and greater sustainability — such as agricultural research and development (R&D) and rural infrastructure — has the potential for win-win-win gains for people, planet, and prosperity.

× Climate change threatens our food systems and the multiple development goals linked to sustainable food system transformation. Action is urgently needed, both to increase adaptation and resilience and to achieve major emissions reductions. Current efforts must be stepped up and greatly expanded to ensure food security, nutrition, and well-being for all in the years to come. The 2022 Global Food Policy Report showcases opportunities for accelerating innovation, reforming policies, resetting market incentives, and increasing financing for sustainable food systems transformation, as well as promoting healthy diets and building resilience.

× Globally, the energy sector accounts for almost three-quarters of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is thus responsible for the majority of adverse climate change impacts on rural livelihoods, including growing water, energy, and food insecurity and environmental degradation. According to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, annual investments of US$2.4 trillion (2010 dollars) in energy systems are needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Such investments would support decarbonizing the largest polluters and improving energy efficiency. More and cheaper clean energy technologies and greater energy efficiency are equally critical for accelerating access to energy in underserved rural areas in ways that promote ecosystem health and inclusivity.

× Social protection programs are a central component of national strategies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to increase incomes for poor households and protect them from shocks to their livelihoods. Social protection programs currently reach more than 2 billion people worldwide and are found in every country in sub-Saharan Africa. Social protection systems comprise a wide variety of programs that include targeted cash and food transfers, food vouchers, school meals, public works, old age pensions, and public sector insurance, as well as the policy, administrative, and funding mechanisms to deliver these programs. Numerous studies that draw extensively on rigorous impact evaluations have documented substantial short-term impacts of social protection programs, especially cash and in-kind social assistance, on food security and asset formation, as well as on education, health, and dietary diversity. However, evidence on the impact of social protection systems designed to sustainably reduce poverty by responding to large-scale shocks is more limited. For example, many national social protection systems in the poorest and most vulnerable countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia dating to the 2000s started with targeted standing safety net programs and then later integrated measures to provide humanitarian assistance, scale up temporary transfers to better respond to shocks, and promote household and community resilience — the ability to avoid or escape from chronic poverty in the face of myriad stressors and shocks. The potential for social protection to help address the challenges of climate change has been recognized for more than a decade, but the expansion of social protection programs designed to address climate change is relatively recent.

× Climate change is a truly global threat, but its impacts differ around the world. Regions and countries urgently need to identify and implement policy responses that reflect local needs and opportunities. This section examines the effects of climate change on national and regional food systems in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. For each major region, promising innovations and policy directions to promote the resilience and sustainability of food systems are considered:
- Scaling up social protection programs in Africa south of the Sahara
- Strengthening the focus on climate adaptation in Africa
- Rethinking water use in the Middle East and North Africa
- Promoting climate-smart practices and crop diversification in Central Asia
- Reforming agricultural support policies in South Asia
- Improving financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation in East and Southeast Asia
- Supporting global food security and sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean

× Climate change poses a major threat to the ambitious global commitments to ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030, set out in the Agenda for Sustainable Development. Climate change is projected to cause significant regional shifts in agricultural production, potentially reduce productivity, and increase the volatility of crop and livestock production. Reducing malnutrition and hunger in this context will require a concerted effort to help producers adapt to adverse climate outcomes, adopt climate-smart agricultural practices, and mitigate the substantial contribution of agriculture to climate change.

× Confronting climate change requires action at all levels, from the individual to the global. While there are campaigns to change individuals’ behavior and calls for global and national government action, more attention is needed to governance at the landscape level. The natural resources and ecosystem services that meet the material and nonmaterial needs of communities and form the basis of our agrifood systems, as well as the various types of land users and stakeholders with different land ownership and use rights, are intertwined in landscapes. Much of the debate and policymaking around the interconnected challenges to agrifood systems — climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and food insecurity — happen at the global and national scales. However, integrated landscape approaches offer great promise for helping countries to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions by managing resources to reap multiple benefits and balance economic, social, and environmental goals. In the case of climate change, decisions on how and where to reduce GHG emissions and how to adapt in ways that can address other critical goals, including food and livelihood security, must take place at the landscape level. The real outcomes will be determined by the cumulative actions of many local stakeholders within particular landscapes, with differing, but potentially complementary interests that can support sustainable use of resources within their specific environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. In this chapter we present a framework that highlights the importance of coordinated action and then look in more detail at approaches to strengthening this coordination for integrated landscape approaches, particularly polycentric governance systems and multistakeholder platforms.

× The transformation of food systems is crucial for achieving multiple global objectives, including the climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience goals established in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This international treaty committed signatories to “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” Major global initiatives in 2021, including COP26 and the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), have reiterated the Paris Agreement objective of reorienting finance flows and have focused international attention on the critical role of food systems transformation in meeting global climate goals.

× Climate change and associated extreme weather events directly impact the functioning and sustainability of food systems. The increasingly erratic onset of seasonal rainfall and prolonged heat stress during growing seasons are already causing crop losses. As of late 2021, for example, Madagascar’s three successive seasonal droughts had put 1.35 million people at risk of the world’s first climate-change-induced famine. In the United States, the number of days between billion-dollar weather-related disasters has fallen from more than 80 in the 1980s to just 18 in recent years. Without adequate preparation, these weather hazards disrupt food supply chains by interrupting production and cause problems farther along these chains by raising costs and prices of processing, storage, transport, retail, and consumption and reducing business revenues.

× Climate change will drive responses and adaptations throughout agrifood systems. Changes in growing conditions for many crops will alter agricultural production patterns. Along with these shifts in crop production, rising temperatures, changes in humidity levels, and increased extreme weather will also affect the value chains through which agricultural products are traded, aggregated, processed, and sold to consumers. This chapter illustrates how incentives for producers and other value chain actors will change as climate change reduces the effectiveness of inputs, such as herbicides and pesticides, increases the risks of spoilage faced by middlemen and retailers, and potentially leads to increases in transaction costs. Whole value chains may be affected from farmer to consumer; for example, if international shipping costs rise with increasing fuel costs, export-oriented chains for select products in some countries may become unprofitable and even disappear. Although research has largely neglected the impacts of climate change on value chains beyond the farm, one thing is clear — many value chain actors along with farmers will need to adapt to new realities, as they showed they were capable of in the face of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

× Policymakers, analysts, and civil society face increasing challenges to reducing hunger and sustainably improving food security. Modeling alternative future scenarios and assessing their outcomes can help inform policy choices. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s IMPACT model is an integrated system of linked economic, climate, water, and crop models that allows for the exploration of such scenarios. Projections for 2030 and 2050, with and without climate change, cover food production, per capita consumption, net trade, and number of people at risk of hunger.

× Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy. The book also covers most developing regions, providing a critical global perspective at a time when many pressing challenges extend beyond national borders. Tying all this together, Agricultural Development explores policy options and strategies for developing sustainable agriculture and reducing food insecurity and malnutrition.
The changing global landscape combined with new and better data, technologies, and understanding means that agriculture can and must contribute to a wider range of development outcomes than ever before, including reducing poverty, ensuring adequate nutrition, creating strong food value chains, improving environmental sustainability, and promoting gender equity and equality.
Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World, with its unprecedented breadth and scope, will be an indispensable resource for the next generation of policymakers, researchers, and students dedicated to improving agriculture for global wellbeing.

× Climate change will be a major driver of change in the agricultural sector in the coming decades, along with changes in population, income, urbanization, dietary preferences, and technology.1 Agriculture is unique among economic sectors in its dependence on temperature, precipitation, and other climate variables, and is thus unique in its sensitivity to changes in those variables. Farmers around the world have long been accustomed to dealing with the vagaries of weather, but climate change is now occurring on a larger scale and will bring bigger challenges in terms of what farmers produce, where and how they produce it, and what we eat.

× Despite significant reforms over the past 25 years, the agricultural sector remains highly subsidized. Agricultural producer support is projected to reach almost USD 1.8 trillion in 2030 (FAO/UNDP/UNEP 2021). About 73 percent of this (USD 1.3 trillion) is projected to be in the form of border measures, which affect trade and domestic market prices. The remaining 27 percent (USD 475 billion) is projected to be in the form of fiscal subsidies to agricultural producers. About two thirds of the total producer support (USD 1.2 trillion) is estimated to support crop production while one third (USD 595 billion) is expected to go to livestock producers.

× Chapter 4, “Climate Change Impacts on Crop Yields,” presents results of model simulations of crop yields in Ethiopia through 2085. The analysis draws on climate outcomes from 32 global climate models and an agronomic crop model to estimate effects of expected higher temperatures and, for most of Ethiopia, increased rainfall. The simulation results suggest that climate change will likely have only relatively small effects on average yields of maize, wheat, and sorghum in Ethiopia up to 2055, as agronomic conditions for cultivation of these crops may actually improve in large parts of the country. Nonetheless, crop yields will need to increase over time to enable cereal production to keep pace with expected demand growth due to increases in population and per capita incomes. Moreover, even if future changes in climate have only moderate impacts on average crop yields in Ethiopia, weather outcomes and consequent crop yields are likely to become more variable in the future.

× Ethiopia’s agricultural sector has grown rapidly since 2000 due to a doubling in the use of modern inputs (chemical fertilizers and improved seeds), significant land expansion, increased labor use, and a 2.3 percent per year growth in total factor productivity (TFP) (Bachewe et al. 2018). At the same time, there has been a substantial spatial and structural transformation of the economy. Ethiopia’s urban population has more than doubled in the past 20 years (from 7.3 million in 1994 to 17.5 million in 2015), and nonagricultural output has grown rapidly so that the share of nonagriculture in GDP has risen from less than half in 2000 to about two-thirds today. Moreover, household welfare indicators have improved dramatically as rural poverty fell from 45 percent in 1999–2000 to 23.5 percent in 2015–2016 (Figure 1.1). Measures of malnutrition of children also improved significantly. For example, from 2000 to 2016 the child stunting rate fell from 58 percent to 38 percent while the share of children that are underweight declined from 41 percent to 24 percent over the same period (Ethiopia, CSA and ICF 2016; NPC 2017) (Figure 1.2). However, wasting only declined by 2 percent.

× Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.

× Chapter 9, “Droughts, Cereal Prices, and Price Stabilization Options,” looks at price volatility, causes, and policy options. Increases in cereal prices in Ethiopia often raise concerns about adverse effects for poor net consumers. In particular, the frequent natural calamities—especially droughts—in Ethiopia can lead to important price hikes. But domestic prices of some cereals (especially maize) fluctuate every year with prices at harvest times substantially dropping, to the detriment of producers. Price stabilization efforts are therefore an important consideration for Ethiopian policymakers. This chapter sheds light on options for cereal price stabilization in Ethiopia drawing on experiences of other developing countries. The international experience in food price stabilization shows that while some countries have achieved success, the efforts of many others have actually destabilized market prices at great fiscal costs. When assessing the extent to which price stabilization efforts in Ethiopia were effective during the major El Niño–induced droughts of 2015 and 2016 (including food aid distributed through the PSNP), the authors find that an opportunity was missed to enhance food security and consumer welfare by allowing private-sector imports to minimize the rise in cereal prices as well as to reduce the fiscal costs to the government and donors.

× The global imperative is complex: to support stable, healthy dietary patterns that are environmentally friendly (particularly regarding GHGE) and are acceptable across a range of culturally diverse settings. Ultimately, the purpose of agriculture is to support human health and well-being. Translating available knowledge about the relationships of diet and health depends on developing evidence-informed guidelines and specific health targets. Following those guidelines and meeting those targets will depend on having sustainable food supplies. The challenge is to accomplish that goal in the face of CEC (Aleksandrowicz et al., 2016; Horgan et al., 2016; Péneau et al., 2017; Perignon et al., 2017; Ridoutt et al., 2017). CEC is exerting profound effects on current and potentially future efforts to feed and care for a hungry planet. Its impacts on land/marine food systems are clear and significant. The effects of CEC are not limited to food systems; they also threaten health. Nutrition serves as the biological variable of health that links these effects. We have laid out a conceptual framework for why and how the elements of the nutrition ecology must be integrated into efforts moving forward to sustain global food production and improve human health in the face of CEC. This approach will facilitate the development of effective responses to one of the most compelling challenges of our time.

× IFPRI’s flagship report reviews the major food policy issues, developments, and decisions of 2018, and considers challenges and opportunities for 2019. This year’s Global Food Policy Report highlights the urgency of rural revitalization to address a growing crisis in rural areas. Rural people around the world continue to struggle with food insecurity, persistent poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation. Policies, institutions, and investments that take advantage of new opportunities and technologies, increase access to basic services, create more and better rural jobs, foster gender equality, and restore the environment can make rural areas vibrant and healthy places to live and work. Drawing on recent findings, IFPRI researchers and other distinguished food policy experts consider critical aspects of rural revitalization.

× The world’s hundreds of millions of extremely poor people cannot escape from poverty without access to energy, notably electricity. The potential for new technologies to deliver electricity to poor and remote areas, most notably in Africa, is described in this chapter. The good news is that modern electrical systems, particularly solar power, are making it easier than ever to meet the energy needs of these populations. Costs of solar power systems have fallen dramatically and, given the high solar potential in many developing countries, these systems offer a host of rural livelihood, business, and development possibilities, as well as greater sustainability. With the right policies, real potential exists to ensure access to electricity for all by 2030.

× 2018 was a somber and unpredictable year, not only for food and nutrition security, but also for global political stability and international development. Many regions of the world faced rising rates of hunger and stagnation in tackling malnutrition, and rising trade protectionism and antiglobalism led to dramatic shifts in multilateral and bilateral relations. Amid these challenges, rural areas continued to find themselves in a state of crisis marked by a deepening cycle of hunger and malnutrition, persistent poverty, limited economic opportunities, and environmental degradation. However, the potential of rural revitalization and a focus on the role of food systems to address these challenges offer promise of meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The opening chapter of the 2019 Global Food Policy Report reviews these major policy developments of 2018 and looks ahead to 2019.

× Rural areas are critical to the provision of ecosystem services. This chapter explores how economic incentives, innovations, and appropriate institutions can help to address rural environmental degradation and contribute to the health of the planet. Key examples include payments for ecosystem services and removal of environmentally damaging subsidies for electricity, fuels, fertilizer, irrigation water, and other scarce inputs. Innovations such as water harvesting and precision farming can improve agricultural production while conserving scarce resources. Institutional changes that can help motivate and coordinate action for environmental improvement include legal recognition of the rights of rural men, women, and communities to land, water, forests, and fisheries.

× A range of interventions have been identified that, if implemented, could help mitigate the adverse effects of climate shocks, such as El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, on the Ethiopian economy and the food security of its population. As outlined in Chapter 2, these interventions include, among others, on-farm investments in technology and irrigation infrastructure, investments in roads and grain storage facilities to expand and stabilize food markets, and social transfers to provide households with a cushion against immediate crises and opportunities for longer-term recovery. However, resource constraints and competing interests mean that there are sometimes trade-offs associated with pursuing policies aimed at building resilience to climate shocks versus policies aimed at achieving other development objectives. Therefore, to motivate resilience-building policies, it is necessary to assess the costs of inaction; to measure policy effectiveness using recognized outcome indicators; and to identify synergies between, say, resilience and development interventions and objectives.

× A key element of the climate resilience Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) framework is understanding Ethiopia’s response options and the decision-making context. To reduce dependency on emergency aid and the vulnerability of communities and ecosystems to climatic shocks, a series of programs and projects were initiated by the Ethiopian government, multilateral agencies, and bilateral donors. These aimed to build resilience and simultaneously boost economic growth, create jobs and livelihoods, and strengthen access to health and education for all communities.

× This study, while focusing on climate resilience adopts the broader definition of resilience from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction which defines resilience as: “the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management” (UNISDR 2017). Resilience thinking helps link and integrate sectors such as infrastructure, social protection, health and reproductive health, and nutrition that have traditionally been somewhat disconnected. To ensure that appropriate connections are made, this report proposes that the government of Ethiopia and partners develop or use a resilience framework, according to which its many development programs can be structured and monitored for progress and outcomes.

× While policy makers, media, and the international community focus their attention on Pakistan’s ongoing security challenges, the potential of the rural economy, and particularly the agricultural sector, to improve Pakistanis’ well-being is being neglected. Agriculture is crucial to Pakistan’s economy. Almost half of the country’s labor force works in the agricultural sector, which produces food and inputs for industry (such as cotton for textiles) and accounts for over a third of Pakistan’s total export earnings. Equally important are nonfarm economic activities in rural areas, such as retail sales in small village shops, transportation services, and education and health services in local schools and clinics. Rural nonfarm activities account for between 40 and 57 percent of total rural household income. Their large share of income means that the agricultural sector and the rural nonfarm economy have vital roles to play in promoting growth and reducing poverty in Pakistan.

× Together these chapters provide an overview of what we know about urbanization, food security, and nutrition and point to some of the most urgent research and data needs. They also point to promising policy directions that could begin to strengthen linkages between rural and urban areas and contribute to food security and access to nutritious foods in the world’s expanding urban areas. Addressing the needs of growing ranks of urban dwellers and improving the livelihoods of smallholder producers while promoting agricultural productivity will be essential to global food security and nutrition and to moving ahead with the new sustainable development agenda.

× 2016 saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions for food security and nutrition in individual countries and regions. This section offers perspectives on food policy developments across the major regions: Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Urbanization trends and related impacts on food security and nutrition are presented for each region. The individual regional sections cover many other critical topics: Acceleration of cooperation and investment in Africa to improve food security in the face of climate challenges and low commodity prices; Continuing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, while some countries begin to face policy reform needs and realities of low oil prices; Central Asia’s promotion of agricultural diversification and regional integration to increase economic resilience; South Asia’s rapid growth and new investments and policies in the agriculture sector; Urbanization, changing diets, and regional growth in East Asia Recession in major economies of Latin America and the Caribbean along with El Niño’s effects on regional prospects.

× Chapter 3 shows the benefits of CSA adoption but also its limits when the approach is interpreted in a restrictive way and applied only to crop production.

× The ATOR concludes with Chapter 12, which highlights key policy recommendations for the CAADP/Malabo agenda. Finally, the report’s appendixes provide aggregate-level data on the CAADP indicators, organized by geographic regions, regional economic communities, economic characteristics, and CAADP groups, showing when a CAADP compact was signed or the level of CAADP implementation reached.

× Chapter 5 focuses on the role of CSA in the context of trade flows in three regional economic communities (RECs): the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Likely agroclimatic changes will not only impact agriculture but also countries’ ability to fully benefit from regional and international trade, especially when rainfed-based agricultural commodities dominate trade flow. The authors find that CSA practices have the potential to mitigate climate-induced risks in agricultural production and food security through increased and less volatile agricultural trade flows.

× Chapter 7 goes to the heart of the location specificity of CSA by investigating the potential benefits of using precision agriculture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, finding that this approach can boost sustainable productivity through increased efficiencies in the use of inputs. Even though the use of precision agriculture may still be many years away, we can extrapolate an important lesson that applies to many other African countries: increased use of fertilizers, coupled with increased efficiency in their use, can lead to an optimal response to the effects of climate change.

× Chapter 10 considers ecosystem-based adaptation and CSA as new paradigms that offer an integrated solution to maximizing the productivity of agriculture and food systems under changing climate regimes. The author posits that ecosystem-based adaptation and CSA offer an opportunity to break from traditional approaches and the silos that have limited the capacity for improving the food security condition of many.

× Chapter 6 provides important insights into the promises and limits of production risk management through financial mechanisms. In particular the authors investigate the role that weather index insurance can play in generating better adaptation pathways to weather shocks for smallholder farmers than existing ones. Evidence from several pilot insurance programs shows that although the potential for innovative insurance mechanisms is real, additional work to understand their effectiveness and substantial scale-up efforts will be needed to achieve a sustainable expansion of efficient agricultural insurance markets in Africa.

× Chapter 4, while providing an assessment of possible investments in CSA in SSA, proposes a framework to prioritize among CSA interventions. Both chapters reach the conclusion that although multiple wins are possible, “silver bullets” do not appear to exist in climate-smart systems.

× Chapter 8 uses information from several SSA countries to revisit the long-standing problem of practices that demonstrably show both on-farm and off-farm benefits that outweigh investment costs, yet scarcely get adopted. This is clearly a problem that affects CSA as well.

× Given its heavy reliance on rainfed agriculture and projected climatic and weather changes, SSA faces multidimensional challenges in ensuring food and nutrition security as well as preserving its ecosystems. In this regard, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) can play an important role in addressing the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.
CSA practices aim to achieve three closely related objectives: sustainably increase agricultural productivity, adapt to climate change, and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The CSA objectives directly contribute to achieving the 2014 Malabo Declaration goals, which include commitments to (1) end hunger in Africa by 2025, (2) halve poverty by 2025 through inclusive agricultural growth and transformation, and (3) enhance the resilience of livelihoods and production systems to climate variability and other related risks. These linkages underscore the importance of including CSA in country and regional plans to achieve overarching development objectives in Africa, in particular food security and poverty reduction.
The 2016 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) examines the contribution of CSA to meeting Malabo Declaration goals by taking stock of current knowledge on the effects of climate change, reviewing existing evidence of the effectiveness of various CSA strategies, and discussing examples of CSA-based practices and tools for developing evidence-based policies and programs.

× Chapter 9 tackles the nexus of CSA, gender, and nutrition, providing an integrated conceptual framework with entry points for action as well as information requirements to guide interventions in the context of climate change. The authors clearly argue that to go beyond incremental approaches to adaptation, these types of integrated approaches are essential in order to address the development challenges that the future climate creates.

× Climate change is a significant and growing threat to food security already affecting vulnerable populations in many developing countries and expected to affect more people, more areas, and more farmers in the future. Climate disruptions to agricultural production have increased over the past 40 years and are projected to become more frequent over the next 25 years (Hatfield et al. 2014, Hatfield and Pruege 2015). Farmers in many agricultural regions already appear to have experienced declines in crop and livestock production because of climate change–induced stress (Lobell and Field 2007; Lobell, Schlenker, and Costa-Roberts 2011). Although climate change is expected to produce both winners and losers, on balance, losses in productivity in many regions.

× Chapter 11 tracks progress on CAADP indicators outlined in the CAADP Results Framework for 2015–2025 in the areas of economic growth, food and nutrition security, employment, poverty, agricultural production and productivity, intra-African trade and market performance, and public agriculture-sector expenditure. It also reviews countries’ progress in the CAADP implementation process and in strengthening systemic capacity to deliver results.

× Chapter 2 describes the context in which policy and investment decisions will have to take place, finding that in the years leading up to 2050, African countries will continue to grow, and many will reach middle-income status. As the agricultural sector grows, it will need to become technologically more sophisticated to withstand the vagaries of climate and market conditions. Key to future growth will be regionally tailored, evidence-based efforts to address increased regional market integration and the regional shifts in agroecological conditions.

× Chapter 8 concludes, drawing lessons from the studies in the preceding chapters to provide policy suggestions for the way forward.

× India, a country with high concentrations of poor and malnourished people, long promoted a cereal-centric diet composed of subsidized staple commodities such as rice and wheat to feed its population of more than a billion. Today, however, dietary patterns are changing. Policy makers, researchers, and health activists are looking for ways to fight hunger and malnutrition in the country. As they shift their focus from calorie intake to nutrition, neglected foods such as pulses (the dried, edible seeds of legumes) are gaining attention. Pulses for Nutrition in India: Changing Patterns from Farm to Fork explores the numerous benefits of a diet that incorporates pulses. Pulses, including pigeonpeas, lentils, and chickpeas, are less expensive than meat and are excellent sources of protein. In India, people consume pulses and other legumes for protein intake. Pulses also benefit the ecosystem. Among protein-rich foods, pulses have the lowest carbon and water footprints. Pulses also improve soil health by naturally balancing atmospheric nitrogen in the soil; thus, growing pulses reduces the need for nitrogenous fertilizer. Pulses for Nutrition in India: Changing Patterns from Farm to Fork looks at the country’s pulses sector in light of agricultural systems, climate change, irrigation design, and how policies (including the Green Revolution) have evolved over time. To understand how pulses can help fulfill the objectives of India’s food policies, experts explore the role that pulse production plays in global trade; the changing demand for pulses in India since the 1960s; the possibility of improving pulse yields with better technology to compete with cereals; and the long-term health benefits of greater reliance on pulses. The analyses in Pulses for Nutrition in India: Changing Patterns from Farm to Fork contribute to the emerging literature on pulses and will aid policy makers in finding ways to feed and nourish a growing population.

× Chapter 3 gives a detailed description of pulse production dynamics across regions and over time. It divides the history since 1960 into four time periods: pre– and early Green Revolution; advanced and post– Green Revolution; postliberalization; and post– trade spike. To study the spatial movement in pulse cultivation, states are grouped into five geographic zones: north, east, south, west, and central. The chapter formally establishes that pulse production has shifted from traditional to nontraditional areas over time, moving from north to south and from east to west and central regions, with Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh becoming the hub of pulses production.

× During the past decade, because of the persistent deficit in India’s pulse sector, the sharp rise in pulse prices has coincided with significant changes in the nature and extent of the pulse trade. Surprisingly, no systematic study has been done on the evolution of this trade, despite the fact that the role of trade in the price formation of pulses is becoming increasingly important. This chapter attempts to fill this research gap. Since exports of pulses from India are comparatively small, we focus on imports.

× In this chapter we study the dynamics of consumption of pulses and assess pulses’ nutritional role with a focus on proteins. We note variations among different income strata, highlighting the higher protein deficiency among low-income groups and the higher price responsiveness of poorer consumers. We discuss the likely ineffectiveness of targeted consumer subsidies. Subsequently, using demand-system estimation, we make projections for the demand for pulses in India to 2030.

× In this chapter, we analyze the pulse processing sector’s growth and the relative roles of the organized and the unorganized sectors of the industry. We also identify the constraints facing pulse processing and suggest a way forward for the sector.

× The remainder of this chapter presents some facts that form the background motivation for this book: the production and consumption patterns of India’s pulse sector, the global context of trade in pulses and the position of India therein, the nutritional and environmental characteristics that make pulses a salient crop in meeting human needs, and the different initiatives for the pulses sector taken up by the government of India.

× Chapter 7 reviews the role of convergent innovation for the development of the pulses sector and discusses an evolving framework focused on the significant health and environmental benefits that could accrue from pulses. Case studies of convergent innovation have shown improved outcomes that this approach can make possible, and it seems that the use of this approach to study the prospects of India’s pulses sector could be useful.

× Chapter 4 looks at the technology, with special importance given the stagnation in pulses’ yield as compared with that of other crops. Yield improvement in pulses will be needed to overcome the position of advantage that now favors cereals and oilseeds. To date, the history of technology improvements in pulses has been mixed, with the pace of development and adoption picking up only in the past decade or so. With muted supply response in pulses driven by technology and agricultural policies, India has faced a persistent deficit in pulses that has led to significant imports.

× What will it take for India, with a burgeoning population of well over a billion, to meet its food needs in the coming years? If the country is to speed progress in reducing hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity, it must first revisit its food policy framework and level the playing field for nongrain crops. In Pulses for Nutrition in India: Changing Patterns from Farm to Fork, leading researchers consider the role that pulses can play in improving food security and nutrition as well as the changes necessary in production practices to accomplish these goals.

× The year 2015 saw a new global commitment to sustainable development that will require a reshaping of the world’s food system. The well-being of people and the planet will depend on creation of a food system that is more efficient, inclusive, climate-smart, sustainable, nutrition- and health-driven, and business-friendly.