Can Sustainable Livestock Systems and Alternative Proteins Address the Climate Crisis?
Climate change is severely impacting our food systems, making it increasingly challenging to provide food security and healthy diets for all people. At the same time, food systems contribute 25–30% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The livestock sector alone contributes about half of these GHGs, and has a large land and water footprint.
World Food Day 2023: Five actions to get us closer to water and food security for all
World Food Day 2023 (October 16) focuses on the theme “Water is Life, Water is Food. Leave No One Behind.” While no one doubts that water of sufficient quantity and adequate quality is essential to sustaining all life on Earth, including us humans, water is often taken for granted. This is largely due to the fact that its role in food systems and many other vital processes—including ecosystem health, energy production, and manufacturing—remains, on the whole, invisible.
Facilitating Anticipatory Action with Improved Early Warning Guidance
Worldwide, the number of people facing crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity has more than doubled since 2017. The 2023 Mid-Year Update of the Global Report on Food Crisis (GRFC) signals 238 million people in 48 countries with recent, comparable data are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, an increase by 10 percent from 2022. The GRFC provides trends and projections of food crises and informs the Global Network Against Food Crisis on where humanitarian and developmental assistance is most needed.
Global trade tensions fueled by rising government subsidies risk undermining efforts to fight poverty
We are witnessing important setbacks in the open, international trade system that has driven prosperity around the world and lifted billions of people out of poverty in developing countries. Geopolitical tensions, on the heels of earlier trade wars—and accentuated by shocks such as the pandemic, disruptions in supply chains, and climate events—are heightening the risk of economic fragmentation.
End of the Black Sea Grain Initiative: Implications for sub-Saharan Africa
Russia’s July 17 withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), has sparked fears of reduced exports of wheat and other key commodities to developing countries, along with other market disruptions.
Market Concentration in the Grain Industry: Implications for Food Security?
On June 13, 2023, Bunge Limited, a US-based food trader and processor, announced its intention to buy rival grain trader Viterra, a company controlled by the commodity trading firm Glencore Plc and two Canadian pension funds. If the merger succeeds, the new company would be the second largest grain trading company in the world after Cargill and become a dominant player in wheat and soybean markets. Markets for agricultural inputs like fertilizer and seed are also highly concentrated.
India’s new ban on rice exports: Potential threats to global supply, prices, and food security
On July 20, India announced that it would restrict exports of non-basmati rice to calm domestic rice prices that had risen more than 30% since October 2022 (Figure 1). The ban would halt overseas sales of the grain with “immediate effect,” the government announced, and is estimated to cover about 75%-80% of Indian rice exports.
Lessons from the Ukraine Crisis: New Ebook Released
With the world already reeling from the high food prices and other economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 again raised the specter of a major global food security crisis. Since that time, analysis of the extant and potential future impacts of the conflict on food and fuel prices, trade, food security, and poverty has been a primary focus for policymakers, researchers, and development professionals around the world.
Global Evidence for Improving Resilience and Food Security: Findings from the REAPER Agriculture-Led Growth and Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Evidence Gap Maps
Currently, an estimated 765 million individuals suffer from food insecurity worldwide. Climate change, recurring shocks, stressors, and crises threaten to exacerbate chronic vulnerability, hunger, and water insecurity. Although there is a vast evidence base examining global alleviation efforts, there are few systematic, end user-focused tools to help make sense of the growing literature.
Irregular Migration and Food Security: A View from West Africa
How does food insecurity affect irregular migration, and what role can a needs-based humanitarian response play? A recent collaboration between IFPRI and the World Food Programme took a route-base approach to looking at irregular migration in West Africa—examining migrant origins, their transit experience, and the situation where their journey stalls or ends. The mixed method study includes case studies of the Ténéré desert crossing, across the south-central Sahara, for Malian and Libyan migrants.