What's New

In 2019, as many as 135 million people across 55 countries required urgent food, nutrition, and livelihood assistance, according to the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises. This was the highest global number of acutely food-insecure people on record. The GRFC’s mid-year update, released last week, takes a look at recent data for 26 of those countries (plus Togo) and specifically examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This post originally appeared on IFPRI's Ethiopia Strategy Support Program (ESSP) blog.

The share of households consuming dairy products in Addis Ababa has dropped by 11 percentage points since the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly linked to perceived risks of consuming dairy products. All income groups declined their consumption, except for the richest quintile where the share of consuming households changed little.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI.org blog.

The organization of food supply chains (FSCs) is strongly affected by the level of economic development and factors such as urbanization and globalization. COVID-19 will thus have different impacts on FSCs in poor vs. in rich countries. Tom Reardon, Marc Bellemare and David Zilberman identify these structural differences and draw out the implications of widespread lockdowns and possible policy responses.—Johan Swinnen, series co-editor and IFPRI Director General.