What's New

As of today (Dec. 10), the dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been crippled, as its Appellate Body (AB) has been left with less than three members on the seven-member body. The U.S. government has blocked the WTO from appointing new members, leaving the AB without the minimally required number of judges to hear appeals in trade disputes.

The FAO Food Price Index reached a 26-month high in November and rose almost 10 percent above November 2018 levels. This significant increase was driven mostly by meat and vegetable oil prices.

Join the Food Security Portal (FSP), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) in the launch of the global foresight tool Impacts of Alternative Investment Scenarios. The tool was recently developed by IFPRI’s IMPACT model team and the FSP. The Global Foresight tool provides researchers and policymakers with a flexible way to explore the impact of various agricultural investment scenarios on agricultural production, productivity, and hunger for the period 2010-2050.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 will take major transformations of the agricultural sectors of developing economies. These transformations of food and agricultural systems—or delays in carrying them out—will have direct and indirect implications for multiple SDGs. An important first step is overhauling countries’ policy systems and reorienting them towards evidence-based policy making.

Fourteen percent of the food produced globally is lost during the post-harvest production stage before reaching the retail stage of the food system, according to the newly-released FAO 2019 State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report . While significant, this figure is less than an earlier FAO loss estimate of one-third of all food. Some regional losses are higher, reaching over 15% in North America and Europe and over 20% in Central and South Asia.