Policies, Institutions and Markets
When policies, institutions, and markets fail, key public goods and services are undersupplied, incentives are biased against agriculture, consumers pay too much for food, and relationships that create wealth are ruptured. The Policies, Institutions and Markets research program generates knowledge on how these three areas can be improved to help smallholder farmers and poor consumers live better lives.
PIM is sponsoring an Invited Panel session at the upcoming 4th International Conference of the African Association of Agricultural Economists in Tunisia. The theme of this session is the dual emphasis on research and applications; i.e., high quality research results in the domains of interest to PIM and explanation of how the results have been applied or could be applied in practice.
Decisions on selection of papers and sponsorship will be made by the PIM Management Committee.
A workshop on "Metrics for Agricultural Transformation: Update on Recent and Ongoing Developments" was held at IFPRI on April 19, 2013. Co-hosted by USAID and DANIDA, the participants shared information on the current status of the fast-tracked Agribusiness module (the BBA); took stock of evolving thinking on metrics for agricultural development since the June 2012 Copenhagen meeting; reflected on implications for development of an Agricultural Transformation Index (ATI); and considered next steps to move the agenda forward.
A few of the presentations are provided: read more...
To further support and participate in the development of a Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa, a one day meeting was held with, African experts, development partners and CGIAR Research Program (CRP) leaders. Designed to build on the presence of several key partners attending a meeting in Dublin on April 11-12, sponsored by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets and the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations conference on Food Security Futures: Research Priorities for the 21st Century, the one day discussion was sponsored by the CGIAR Consortium Office and organized with the Steering Committee for the Dublin Process. read more...
Improving nutrition in Indian school children with high-iron pearl millet chapattis. Source: flickr (Alina Paul-Bossuet/ICRISAT)
When researchers from the CGIAR and the FAO gather with stakeholders from around the globe to discuss research priorities for the 21st century in Dublin this week, they will ask: How can public sector research help meet the challenges of food and nutrition security?
Despite a decline in the prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries from 23 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2012, improving nutrition among the poor remains a challenge. Public sector research has helped reduce hunger in the past—think of the Green Revolution, which successfully doubled cereal production in many countries between 1965 and 1999, more than keeping up with population growth. read more...
FAO and CGIAR Conference to Address Research Priorities
for Ensuring Food and Nutrition Security for the World’s Poorest
April 11, 2013—During the next 40 years the world’s population is projected to reach more than nine billion people. Demand for food is expected to increase by 60 percent under business-as-usual assumptions. Competition for land, water, and food could lead to greater poverty and hunger if not properly addressed now, with potentially severe environmental impacts.
The Food Security Futures conference will bring together senior researchers from the CGIAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as well as representatives from the private sector, civil society and other research organizations to examine the contribution that public research must make to food security and nutrition, natural resource management, and climate change in order to meet the challenges of the coming years. The conference is organized by FAO and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM), led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a member of the CGIAR Consortium. read more...
Cross-posted from IFPRI.org
Arab Spatial Food Security and Development Atlas
The great hope that rose from the Arab awakening is being continually tested—not only by ongoing political unrest, but also by lesser known forces: volatile food prices and supplies, and grinding poverty. Translating hope to better lives rests on effective policy—and effective policy rests on access to adequate and accurate information, also in scarce supply in the region. For instance, only around half of the region’s countries make poverty figures publicly available, and the frequency and accuracy of those figures varies widely.
Enter Arab Spatial, an online information storehouse that aggregates food security and development information from the region’s governments as well as international institutions. The tool displays the data on maps that users can zoom in on to the regional, national, sub-national, and even the pixel level. Users can then build and print their own maps overlaid with information of their choosing.
The first Food Security Futures Conference will bring together senior researchers from CGIAR and FAO to present their perspectives on research priorities for the 21st century. The conference is being held in Dublin, Ireland, the week before the EU Presidency (held the by Irish government) meeting on ‘Hunger – Nutrition – Climate Justice: Making Connections for a More Sustainable World’, 15-16 April 2013.
Topics
- Overarching food security issues and challenges for sustainable food security
- The nutrition dimension of food security and challenges for sustainable food security
- Food security and sustainable resource use
- Food security and climate change
A substantive research paper on research priorities will be presented for each topic, with comments by selected NARS scientists, participants from the private sector and others. Attendees will address next steps to be taken by international organizations charged with addressing the research needs of a sustainable food security future.
More technical meetings in the 2-3 days leading up to the formal program will also be organized.
More information coming up - Stay tuned!
The ‘Dublin process’ initiative aims to deepen alignment and collaboration between Africa’s agricultural research, extension and education programs and the research programs of the CGIAR, to facilitate agricultural transformation in Africa.
A pre-conference meeting was held on October 28, 2012 at GCARD2 to develop concrete next steps to make the alignment between CGIAR and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) operational.
Karen Brooks, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets and member of the Dublin Process Steering Committee, comments on the main outcomes of this meeting: " The meeting highlighted several concrete efforts underway to move the process forward: a memorandum of understanding to be signed between the African Union Commission and the CGIAR Consortium, the Science Agenda for African Agriculture, the use of a Mapping and Alignment Tool to identify and link all ongoing initiatives under the CGIAR Research Programs in Africa, setting up joint work between CAADP and the CGIAR institutions to develop and implement the Technology Platform called for by the G8… Solid foundations for programmatic alignment and collaboration between CAADP and CGIAR are being designed, and I am confident that this process will make an important contribution to agricultural transformation in Africa.”
Presentations and documents:
Final Dublin II Workshop Summary
African agricultural science agenda Monty Jones GCARD2 28 October 2012
CAADP carrying the Dublin Process forward
The CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets hosted a pre-conference meeting at GCARD2 on October 28, 2012: “From Global Futures to strategic foresight: planning the transition to sustainable quantitative methodologies”.
This meeting, led by Gerald Nelson (IFPRI), introduced the work done so far to the broader GCARD audience, took stock of technologies identified to date and challenges in incorporating them into relevant models, and considered priorities for continuation of the effort under the Policies, Institutions and Markets program.
The Global Futures project, initially a 3 year effort supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is designed to evaluate the impact of potential investments in research on the world’s most important crops, focusing on the regions most vulnerable to global changes, with special attention to the needs of the rural poor and smallholder farmers. The inclusion of these activities under PIM starting in 2012 will enable more CGIAR centers to participate in the effort and allow for a systematization of the methodologies used to evaluate the promising technologies.
The Global Futures project was also the focus of a parallel session on foresight held on October 29, 2012: see Presentation "From Global Futures to Strategic Foresight" presented at this session.
The new brochure on the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, 
Institutions and Markets is now available. It provides summary information on the objectives, research themes, impact pathways and partnerships of the program.
.