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About IFPRI
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 500 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of theCGIAR Consortium, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.
Vision and Mission
IFPRI’s vision is a world free of hunger and malnutrition. Its mission is to provide research-based policy solutions that sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition.
What We Do
Research at IFPRI focuses on six strategic areas:
- Ensuring Sustainable Food Production: IFPRI’s research analyzes options for policies, institutions, innovations, and technologies that can advance sustainable food production in a context of resource scarcity, threats to biodiversity, and climate change. READ MORE
- Promoting Healthy Food Systems: IFPRI examines how to improve diet quality and nutrition for the poor, focusing particularly on women and children, and works to create synergies among the three vital components of the food system: agriculture, health, and nutrition. READ MORE
- Improving Markets and Trade: IFPRI’s research focuses on strengthening markets and correcting market failures to enhance the benefits from market participation for small-scale farmers. READ MORE
- Transforming Agriculture: The aim of IFPRI’s research in this area is to improve development strategies to ensure broad-based rural growth and to accelerate the transformation from low-income, rural, agriculture-based economies to high-income, more urbanized, and industrial service-based ones. READ MORE
- Building Resilience: IFPRI’s research explores the causes and impacts of environmental, political, and economic shocks that can affect food security, nutrition, health, and well-being and evaluates interventions designed to enhance resilience at various levels. READ MORE
- Strengthening Institutions and Governance: IFPRI’s research on institutions centers on collective action in management of natural resources and farmer organizations. Its governance-focused research examines the political economy of agricultural policymaking, the degree of state capacity and political will required for achieving economic transformation, and the impacts of different governance arrangements.
Research on gender cuts across all six areas, because understanding the relationships between women and men can illuminate the pathway to sustainable and inclusive economic development.
IFPRI also leads two CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs): Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) andAgriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH).
Beyond research, IFPRI’s work includes partnerships, communications, and capacity strengthening. The Institute collaborates with development implementers, public institutions, the private sector, farmers’ organizations, and other partners around the world.
Resources
Displaying 1131 - 1135 of 1521Ending hunger by 2050
"To end hunger and prevent the recurrence of famine and starvation, we need to take the following steps: invest in public health, child nutrition, education, women’s and girls’ social status, and other components of human capital; reform public institutions and create innovative funding and partnership arrangements; change government policies at all levels to be both pro-poor and pro-growth; increase funding for scientific and technological research to boost agricultural production and efficiency; and develop specific policies and institutions to deal with environmental degradation caused
Intrahousehold Allocation and Gender Relations: New Empirical Evidence from Four Developing Countries
Most economic research treats the household as a single agent, assuming that individuals within the household share the same preferences or that there is a household “head” who has the final say. This simple framework has proved immensely useful; despite a common misperception, it can explain many differences in well-being or consumption patterns within households.
Health and nutrition: Overview
Gender differences in health and nutrition have long been a subject of study in the intrahousehold allocation literature. Unlike consumption expenditures or farm production, measurements of health and nutritional outcomes are always at the individual level, and thus factors that underlie systematic differences in outcomes—such as age, gender, and position within the household—are more readily apparent.
Social capital and gender in South Africa, 1993-98
The concept of social capital, well grounded in the sociological and anthropological literatures (for example, Coleman 1988), is increasingly being analyzed and used by economists and other development policy practitioners. The entry point for many economists is Robert Putnam’s research on Italian regional economic performance (Putnam 1993) and his subsequent work in the United States. For Putnam, “social capital refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995, 67).
Microfinance
Among financial institutions serving poor households around the world, microfinance programs have emerged as important players. These programs typically make small loans—sometimes as small as US$50 to US$100 and sometimes as large as several thousand dollars-to households lacking access to formal-sector banks (see, for example, Lapenu and Zeller 2001). One important achievement of the microfinance movement has been its relative success in deliberately reaching out to poor women living in diverse socioeconomic environments.