Highlights Of The Ifpri And Ifad Partnership

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) were both created in response to the food crises of the 1970s. We have worked together for more than 20 years to catalyze agricultural and rural development and improve food security in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. IFAD and IFPRI have strengthened the productivity and resilience of smallholder farmers and other rural people, with a particular focus on helping expand their access to innovative local farming methods, climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies and financing, and more profitable markets. To further promote rural development and transformation, IFAD and IFPRI have built cutting-edge information systems and tools that deliver sound data and analyses to governments, donors, farmer organizations, and other stakeholders. As a result, the two organizations have fostered evidence-based policy making and investments that promote agricultural growth and rural development.

More than two decades of strong partnership between the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) began with a shared goal of creating more effective and efficient food aid distribution systems. Our work helped improve the delivery of essential food aid to the most vulnerable in times of crisis, inform decisions to administer food or cash transfers using sound evidence, and strengthen evidence-based policy making by developing information systems and networks for food security. Over time, the collaboration moved toward designing social protection programs that use food and cash transfers to improve nutrition for the poor. More recently, our partnership has contributed to helping vulnerable people become more resilient to shocks and crises and to moving countries toward pathways of long-term growth, prosperity, and Zero Hunger. This brochure presents highlights of the IFPRI-WFP partnership.

For more than two decades, IFPRI’s research and policy analysis have been a resource for Bangladesh in making impressive strides in ensuring food security and reducing poverty. Working closely with the Bangladesh Ministry of Food and Disaster Management and its Food Planning and Monitoring Unit, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, BRAC, CARE International, and civil society organizations, IFPRI has supported Bangladesh in its goals of improving nutrition, women’s empowerment, social protection, and coping with natural disasters. IFPRI looks forward to deepening its collaboration with these and other partners through its Policy Research and Strategy Support Program and complementary initiatives, and to enhancing long-term capacity in policy analysis and evidence-based research. Such strong collaborative efforts have translated and will continue to translate research into policy action that will help accelerate Bangladesh’s progress in ending hunger and undernutrition.

For four decades, the rich partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has generated cutting-edge technical knowledge and enhanced expertise in support of food security and improved nutrition for all, and for making agriculture and food systems more inclusive, productive, resilient, and sustainable. Driven by these shared goals, FAO and IFPRI have contributed to a strong evidence base to strengthen the capacity of policy makers in making sound policy decisions. Our work helped create important information resources and networks for food security, strengthen the focus on gender in agriculture, spur strategic public investment in agriculture, promote productive and sustainable rural development, and advocate for enhancing the positive impact of agriculture and food systems on nutrition. This brochure presents highlights and successes of the partnership between FAO and IFPRI.

This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. Despite numerous international consultations and an increased number of actors, there has been no real growth in international assistance, except for the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, and dietary transition. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will change in the United States bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?"--

The Global Food Policy Report is IFPRI’s flagship publication. This year’s annual report examines major food policy issues, global and regional developments, and commitments made in 2015, and presents data on key food policy indicators. The report also proposes key policy options for 2016 and beyond to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2015, the global community made major commitments on sustainable development and climate change. The global food system lies at the heart of these commitments—and we will only be able to meet the new goals if we work to transform our food system to be more inclusive, climate-smart, sustainable, efficient, nutrition- and health-driven, and business-friendly.

Driven by the need to produce more food for an ever-increasing population that is further marred with declining and degrading natural resource base, adapting to and mitigating climate change have posed a big challenge. It is an established fact that in agriculture, fertilizers, flooded rice cultivation, energy use in irrigation, tillage, and enteric emissions from ruminant animals are the main contributors of greenhouse gases, which accounts to about one-fourth of the total emissions. The evolution of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) emerged as a scientific response to this multi-headed hydra, which helps achieve higher production with reduced emission. The fact remains that the small farm holders of South Asia, who are already facing several non-climatic stresses, have limited capacity to adopt new technologies. There are a host of barriers in the form of limited access to natural resources, information, finance, and above all, low human capital that limit the adoption of technology. The global community is aware of these climate change challenges and has initiated programs to overcome these challenges across the world. In this context, and to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, there is a need for evidence-based research that have the potential to bring about transformative change in agriculture and food systems.