In the wake of the food crises of the early 1970s and the resulting World Food Conference of 1974, a group of innovators realized that food security depends not only on crop production, but also on the policies that affect food systems from farm to table. In 1975, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was founded—nine years after the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For the past 38 years, IFPRI has worked to provide solid research and evidence-based policy options to partners in recipient and donor countries and at multilateral agencies.

This chapter uses an estimated social accounting matrix (SAM) to provide a detailed quantitative description of the North Arcot study region in 1982/83. The SAM framework provides a consistent, comprehensive, and detailed picture of the transactions in an economy. Production activities, commodities, factors, government, households, and other institutions can all be accommodated, and the pattern in which incomes are distributed takes its place alongside the sources of income generation.

Risk is a pervasive feature of life in poor rural areas of developing countries. This brief outlines a conceptual framework for understanding the nature of risks faced by poor rural households and their consequences before turning to a more detailed discussion of these risks.

"Agricultural research has greatly increased the yields of important staple food crops, and for many people this has meant more food availability and trade opportunities. Yet many people in rural areas in developing countries still live in abject poverty. Therefore, policymakers, donors, and researchers are refocusing their priorities away from simply producing more food to making sure that agricultural research benefits the poor in particular. How can we ensure that new agricultural technologies are appropriate for the different groups of people who most need assistance?

This collection of policy briefs cover research results from a multicountry research program on rural finance policies for food security of the poor, 1994-2000. It offers lessons learned from IFPRI´s program on rural finance and household food security with regard to the poors’ demand for financial services. The lessons are derived from detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Asia and Africa: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan. The 14 briefs cover the results of research undertaken between 1994—2000.

Technological change, such as the replacement of traditional with modern crop varieties and introduction of irrigation, has been effective in increasing the yields and production of various crops— notably rice and wheat—as well as incomes of farmers in developing countries (Pinstrup-Andersen 1982; Pinstrup-Andersen and Hazell 1985; Lipton 1989). However, the impact on food consumption and nutrition is poorly documented.

Annual Report

The fight against poverty remains the key development goal of the Government of Mozambique (GoM). Success in the transformation of the agriculture sector is considered a necessary condition for meeting the goal because agriculture and poverty are closely related. About 80% of the population heavily depends on agriculture as their primary source of livelihood, and about 73% lives in rural areas. Currently, the level of agricultural productivity is low compared to that in other developing countries, including southern African countries.

This policy note summarizes research that builds on existing studies on the gender-differentiated impacts of shocks on household asset holdings in Bangladesh, which is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change because of its densely populated coastal area and large population living below the poverty line.

The primary purpose of the research conducted from January to December 2006 was to investigate the ways in which the AIDS epidemic was playing out in a Zomba District sample of households that had been studied since 1986. The single most important characteristic of this research is that we have information on the same households for twenty years, a span of time for a longitudinal study that we believe to be unique in current research in Malawi.

In addition to global developments and food policy changes, 2014 also saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions in individual countries and regions. This chapter offers perspectives on major food policy developments in various regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in China over the last two decades. It disaggregates road infrastructure into different classes to account for differences in their quality, and then estimates the impact of road investments on overall economic growth, agricultural growth, urban growth, urban poverty reduction, and rural poverty reduction.