What's New

In recent years, export bans on staple crops have become more and more common as countries attempt to safeguard their domestic food supplies and protect their populations from international food price spikes. Research has shown, however, that such policies often do more harm than good, reducing the prices that local producers receive for their goods and increasing uncertainty in the market for both farmers and traders.

As drought continues throughout southern Africa, the latest FEWS.net alert estimates that 2.5 million people are currently in Crisis food insecurity levels and in need of urgent humanitarian aid across Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Lesotho. The organization is also anticipating that the region’s food-insecure population in 2016-2017 will be at least two times higher than current levels.

Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has become one of the fastest growing economies in the world ( 2015 African Economic Outlook ). Rapidly rising income levels, combined with increasing urbanization, have led to important changes in many Ethiopians’ diets. In a new project paper , IFPRI’s Ethiopia Strategy Support Program examines the causes and implications of this dietary transformation.

This blog was originally posted on IFPRI.org . Written by Shahidur Rashid of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division and Paul Dorosh of the Development Strategy and Governance Division .

This press release was originally posted on FAO.org .

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the CGIAR research program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) today launched a new initiative to enhance global cooperation on measuring and reducing food loss and waste. The G20 agriculture ministers requested FAO and IFPRI to launch this initiative in Istanbul, Turkey, this past May.