Access to enough safe and nutritious food is a key to sustaining life and promoting good health. Food can however also be a vehicle of disease transmission if contaminated with harmful microbes (bacteria, viruses, or parasites) or chemicals/toxins. Around the world, an estimated 600 million - almost 1 in 10 people – fall ill after eating contaminated food each year, resulting in 420,000 deaths and the loss of 33 million healthy, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (WHO, 2022).

Soil acidity is a major constraint to crop production in Ethiopia. It has affected soil health resulting in, inefficient use of fertilizer, significant crop yield losses, and shortage of feed for livestock in wheat-based mixed farming systems. Soil acidity level in the country is highly variable and require context-specific lime recommendations.

Fruits & vegetable value chains (F&V VC) in Nigeria hold significant potential to continue toward sustainable, inclusive food system transformation. Domestic food system growth, including that of F&V, remains crucial in achieving a healthy food environment and serving as a source of various micronutrients. There is a need for bundles of innovations to address multiple challenges along F&V VC in Nigeria, characterized by a set of challenges that are unique to developing countries and F&V.

This paper uses comprehensive and long time series monthly food price data and a panel dyadic regression framework to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses on spatial market integration across a diverse set of food items in Nigeria. The empirical results reveal several important insights. First, we show that a significant slowdown in the speed of adjustment and price transmission occurred during the pandemic.

This study investigates the effect of married couples’ joint decision-making on rice variety selection on rice productivity—a measure of food security. The study uses the 2016 Rice Monitoring Survey and the endogenous switching regression (ESR) method. Results show that rice farms with joint decision-makers (husband and wife) would have higher yields, particularly in households that adopted MRVGen1 (before 1986) rice varieties. Thus, families with joint-decision making have higher food security.

Agriculture remains the primary livelihood in Ghana, marked by a growing emphasis on cocoa production nationwide. Existing research highlights the importance of supplementing rainfed cocoa production with irrigation. Simultaneously, mining has emerged as a key driver of the country's economic growth. However, there is an urgent need to assess the measurable impacts of cocoa production with supplemental irrigation and mining on water resources sustainability and quality.

Country profiles are more than a simple compilation of national indicators. They are constructed and designed around a common framework and methodology to identify hotspots of unsustainability in the food systems and prioritize interventions at multiple scales to address these through targeted actions and investments.
An important feature of the country profiles is that they are co-produced with key public and private food system stakeholders engaged in both identifying the data and validating results and emerging key messages.

Women are more food insecure than men globally and in every region. This paper investigates the global gender gap in food insecurity and its evolution following the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the food insecurity experience scale (FIES) data collected from over 700,000 individuals across 121 countries, our empirical analysis showed that individuals aged 25– 34, regardless of gender, and women in rural areas had been disproportionally affected by the pandemic.

Aquatic food systems make significant contributions to sustainable development through generating employment; providing community and household food and nutrition security; and strengthening family well-being, socioeconomic growth, poverty alleviation, climate resilience and environmental sustainability. SDG 5 makes an explicit commitment to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” in their own right. Yet gender inequalities and barriers remain prevalent in rural areas of lowincome countries, including where there is a high reliance on aquatic food systems.

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between intrahousehold dynamics, agricultural productivity, and dietary diversity using a nationally representative panel household dataset in Malawi (two waves: 2019 and 2021, with 5,067 female and male respondents per wave). We used the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) indicators, complemented by intrahousehold dynamics in access to extension services and technology awareness and adoption. Panel data were analyzed using household fixed effect models.

This report provides a comprehensive statistical overview of agricultural household data collected by IFPRI from a smallholder commercialization survey in late 2022. Sampled to be representative to the provincial level, ten households were surveyed in 202 villages for a total of 2,020 households interviewed. The survey covers a wide range of topics including household demographics, agricultural farm holdings, input use, crop choice, levels of commercialization and other non-farm sources of income.

Through participatory vegetable and seed system development, ethnic minority farmers in target sites were organized in value chain groups to jointly produce and market various vegetable seeds/seedlings and vegetables. With the support of project partner and local partners, the groups’ capacity to identify market opportunities and engage with value
chain actors improved, whereby production increased by 5-7 times, from 70 to 400 tons after two years. Group and individual incomes also increased, and one group proceeded to register as a cooperative.