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This 2013 Global Food Policy Report is the third in an annual series that provides an in-depth look at major food policy developments and events. Initiated in response to resurgent interest in food and nutrition security, the series offers a yearly overview of the food policy developments that have contributed to or hindered progress in achieving food and nutrition security. It reviews what happened in food policy and why, examines key challenges and opportunities, shares new evidence and knowledge, and highlights emerging issues.
We find strong empirical evidence that raising aspirations is one route to empowering women. Higher aspirations on the part of husbands predicts more egalitarian gender attitudes for both the husband and his wife. However, higher aspirations on the part of wives may be an even more important predictor of women's empowerment. In particular, higher aspirations on the part of wives predict both more egalitarian gender attitudes (for both the husband and his wife) as well as greater involvement of women in household decision-making, as agreed by both the wife and her husband.
Economic resilience within the agrifood system is becoming increasingly crucial for assuring sustainable development. This is particularly so in regions with volatile and fragile environments, including Central Asia. Evidence remains scarce regarding what factors can enhance the economic resilience of agents within the agrifood system, including the resilience of productivity and technical efficiency. We partly fill this knowledge gap using the unique panel datasets of farm enterprises in Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan, collected in 2019 and 2022, during which these enterprises experienced significant economic shocks in input prices. Using novel methods that combine Inverse Probability W...
At COP28 countries recognized that unprecedented adverse climate impacts are increasingly threatening the resilience of agriculture and food systems and ability to produce and access food in the prevailing scenario of mounting hunger, malnutrition, and economic stresses. As a result, over 150 countries have signed the Declaration On Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Sys tems, And Climate Action committing to expedite the integration of agriculture and food systems into climate action and, simultaneously, to mainstream climate action across our policy agendas and actions related to agriculture and food systems (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2023). Curre...
In Tajikistan, the poorest country in the Central Asia region and one of the poorest in the world, food consumption patterns remain inadequate for a significant share of the population. Undernutrition and child stunting, among other outcomes, remain prevalent. At the same time, overnutrition and obesity are becoming increasingly serious. Using pooled cross-section datasets collected in 2007 and 2015 from farm households in Khatlon province (the major agricultural area in Tajikistan), we investigate how key agricultural production practices (APPs) (household-level production diversification, land productivity, and production scale) are associated with household-level and individual-level nutr...
In February-March 2023, 2,000 households were interviewed about their socio-economic conditions in twelve districts of Khatlon Province which constitute USAID’s Zone of Influence (ZOI). Based on these recent survey data as well as former survey data from 2015 and 2012, we present findings here related to changes in poverty over the past eight to ten years. Key findings - Housing conditions improved, indicating improved living conditions. Only 1 percent of households had improved sanitation in 2015, but nearly half (49 percent) of all households did so in 2023. - Fewer households experience hunger in 2023 than in 2015. Fewer households reported having had no food in the home at least once i...
The extent of market integration and transmission of food price shocks is a major determinant of price stability and overall food security, particularly in developing countries. Few studies have examined these issues for countries in Central Asia, however. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining wheat market integration and price transmission in Tajikistan, the most food-insecure country in Central Asia. In particular, in this study we measure how well wheat market prices in Tajikistan are integrated with international and regional markets, as well as domestically with each other. Subsequently, we assess the nature of price transmission between these markets. Using horizontal price transmission analysis and asymmetric price relationships, a.k.a. rockets and feathers, we demonstrate how prices change in peripheral food-shortage markets compared to markets located in zones with abundant local production.
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.
Household-level agriculture-nutrition linkage (ANL) tends to be strong in a rural subsistence setting with limited access to the food market. In such a context, markets for food processing services also may be imperfect, and consequently a household’s time-investments in cooking may become important. Using the primary data in Tajikistan, we show that longer periods of time dedicated to cooking by women in the household often significantly enhance household-level ANL. Furthermore, an increase in the diversity, scale, and efficiency of household production, as well as longer cooking time, can also reduce intrahousehold inequality in nutritional outcomes among women and children. These effects are stronger in areas with lower nighttime light intensity and for households with lower values of cooking assets. In a context where household-level ANL is strong, ANL may also depend on households’ self-production of complementary inputs, including cooking services. This dependence reveals both unique opportunities for and vulnerabilities of ANL for the rural poor.
It has been apparent for more than a century that future economic progress in agriculture will be driven by the invention and application of new technologies resulting from expenditure in research and development (R&D) by governments and private firms. Nevertheless, it is conventional wisdom in the economic development literature that there is a significant underinvestment in agricultural R&D in developing countries. Evidence supporting this belief is provided, first by a vast literature showing returns on R&D expenditure to be so high as to justify levels of investment in multiples of those actually found, and second, from available data showing low research effort in developing countries a...