Evidence-Based Research

This week IFPRI launched a new Spanish-language web portal that focuses on food and nutrition security in Central America, the Food Security Portal for Central America and the Caribbean (CAC-FSP). The objective of the portal is to provide a set of indicators on food and nutrition security and early warning mechanisms as well as opportunities for dialogue among policymakers, researchers, the private sector and others seeking to increase the resilience of the world’s poor to possible food-related crises, including price and climate shocks.

By combining climate and yield projections with the IIASA Global Biosphere Management Model, researchers say they have identified the likely needed adaptations and transformations for global agricultural systems.

A person’s aspirations, or goals and targets for their future, can be a driving force in their life, providing motivation and guiding their choices. But when forming aspirations, all people dismiss some options for their future lives, and fail to even imagine other options or opportunities. Once formed, our aspirations can limit the possible futures we consider by focusing our attention on some future options and filtering out others.

Ensuring that small-scale farmers and producers enjoy a bigger piece of the financial pie is the aim of a new web resource on agricultural development.

The Value Chains Knowledge Clearinghouse , led by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets , is based on the concept of Value Chains Development (VCD). The approach seeks to build new or strengthen existing commercial ties between two or more actors, such as businesses and consumers. Several NGOs, donors, and governments have adopted VCD as a key element of their rural poverty reduction strategies.

At the L’Aquila G-8 summit in 2009, governments and organizations committed more than $20 billion to agriculture and rural development as a means of promoting food and nutrition security.

Within the overarching frameworks of the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI), the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the Accra Agenda for Action, Ghana also committed to improving aid accountability and development effectiveness via “demand-driven development cooperation” and a “donor-coordinated approach.”