Faced with limited resources and the need to feed 90 million more people every year, governments and donors want to know whether they should invest in regions with inherent potential to be highly productive, or in less-favored areas where large numbers of poor farmers live and increasingly...

In recent years, the countries of Latin America have made radical changes in their development strategies, including decentralization of government, privatization, and deregulation of markets. These changes have already affected the livelihoods of millions of the region's inhabitants and promise...

Grain traders in 1995 may have wondered if they were about to relive the world food crisis of the early 1970s. Prices for wheat, rice, and maize shot up during the year, grain stocks continued a three-year fall, fertilizer prices increased, and food aid dropped to slightly more than half of what...

"Good health and productive agriculture are both essential in the fight against poverty. In a rapidly changing world, agriculture faces many challenges, both old (natural resource constraints, extreme weather conditions, and agricultural pests) and new (globalization, environmental degradation,...

"Agriculture is fundamental to achieving nutrition goals: it produces the food, energy, and nutrients essential for human health and well-being. Gains in food production have played a key role in feeding growing and malnourished populations. Yet they have not translated into a hunger-free world...

A primary focus of the IFPRI 2020 Vision initiative is to find ways for people to attain food security, that is, sufficient food to lead healthy and productive lives. But what is "sufficient"? And is providing access to food the primary means of protecting people (particularly women and...

The primary goal of agricultural research has been to increase agricultural production, particularly in high-potential areas. This has contributed enormously to reducing the number of people living in poverty worldwide, as well as to reducing food prices for all. Despite these gains, about 1...

"Food safety issues have attracted international attention because they play an increasingly important role in determining whether developing countries have access to export markets.At the same time, food suppliers in developing countries face the challenge of improving food safety for their...

In 1995, 167 million children under five years old—almost one-third of developing-country children—were malnourished. Malnutrition causes a great deal of human suffering, and it is a violation of a child's human rights. It is associated with more than half of all deaths of children...