In recent years, the world has faced continuing food security challenges. The food price spikes of 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 brought lasting impacts in the form of increasingly high food prices and price volatility, overwhelmingly harming the world's poorest producers and consumers. Guarding against price volatility to protect the world's most vulnerable populations will require restructuring global agricultural and financial markets, a need that global leaders are now beginning to recognize and address. (For more information regarding food price volatility, see the Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System .)
In addition to facing rising prices and price volatility, global food security is also challenged by the impacts of climate change and a growing world population. IFPRI's Climate, Agricultural, and Socio-Economic (CASE) Maps reveal that if farmers are not able to adapt to extreme weather events and increasing temperatures, and if governments to not take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, global food production will not be able to keep up with a population slated to reach 9 billion by 2050. (For more information on climate change and food security, see Climate Change In Focus .)
To discuss and address these, and other, challenges, IFPRI has released its 2011 Global Food Policy Report —the first in a new annual series that will reflect on the challenges and developments of 2011 and provide an outlook for 2012. This new publication asks: What could have been done differently? What should be done in the future? The GFPR will be publicly released on April 23 via a policy seminar .
Watch a live webcast of the seminar
Watch Maximo Torero discuss food price volatility and the GFPR.