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Monitoring the agri-food system in Myanmar: The rising costs of diets and declining purchasing power of casual wage laborers: December 2021–June 2024
No full textWe assess changes in food prices and purchasing power of casual wage laborers based on large-scale surveys of households and food vendors (fielded from December 2021 until June 2024) in rural and urban areas and in all states/regions of Myanmar. Key Findings Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, diet costs rose steadily by 40 and 41 percent for healthy and common diet costs, respectively. The median price of rice—the major staple—increased by 54 percent between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024 and was the main driver of the 41 percent increase in the cost of the common diet. The most conflict-affected states suffered more from food price inflation. Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, common diet costs increased by 81 percent in Rakhine, 61 percent in Chin, and 48 percent in Kachin. In the second quarter of 2024, both healthy and common diet costs were highest in Rakhine followed by Chin. Over the full period of surveys (December 2021–June 2024), the cost of the healthy diet rose by 121 percent and the common diet by 131 percent; rice and onion prices more than tripled; pulse, chicken, leafy green, and banana prices at least doubled; and all other food prices increased by at least 50 percent. Between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024, purchasing power of daily urban construction wages relative to healthy and common diet costs declined by about 14 percent. The purchasing power of rural agricultural wages to healthy and common diet costs fell by about 4 percent. Adjusted for the cost of one kilogram of rice, urban construction wages fell by 25 percent and rural agricultural wages fell by 14 percent. Food costs outpaced wages, particularly in urban areas, making food increasingly unaffordable for wage earners who are among the most vulnerable household groups in Myanmar. However, nominal wages rose at a faster pace between the second quarters of 2023 and 2024 compared to 2022 and 2023, slowing the pace of declining real wages.MyanmarSSPDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG
The converging climate change and bioeconomy agendas as a pathway toward implementing the post-Malabo CAADP agenda
No full textIn June 2014, the African heads of state and government adopted the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The declaration contains a set of concrete goals to be attained by 2025, known as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which in turn functions as the main policy framework for the African Union (AU) in the agricultural sector. The declaration thus provided a new direction for a more focused approach to achieving the continent’s vision for agricultural growth and transformation (AUC 2014). According to the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the CAADP was designed as a practical instrument and framework through which Africa was going to drive efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The importance of evidence to inform policy design and implementation, inclusive participation of multiple stakeholder groups at all stages of the policy process, and mutual accountability for actions and results are at the heart of the CAADP. These principles help formulate high-quality policies and ensure that successful policies are scaled up while unsuccessful ones are adjusted. Since the adoption of the Malabo Declaration, 10 years have elapsed, and considerable progress toward achieving some of its targets is visible across the continent. With the lifespan of the Malabo Declaration coming to an end, the AU proactively initiated the design of a new 10-year strategy, covering the period from 2026 to 2035. As Africa has embarked on designing this successor strategy, it faces multiple complex challenges compounded by the climate crisis. With the opportune timing of this Annual Trends and Outlook Report, this chapter explores how the convergence of the climate change agenda and the transition to a bioeconomy will shape future strategic political decisions across the continent, effecting an equitable and sustainable transformation of agrifood systems. Thus, the bioeconomy can be a solution to future challenges resulting from climate change (for example, climate adaption) vis-à-vis the challenges of avoiding the unsustainable use of natural resources (through climate mitigation, land use change, and the sustainable use of inputs). Simultaneously, the bioeconomy will generate opportunities for new markets—including markets for bioproducts, bioenergy or food based on insects or waste, and carbon engineering (markets that are discussed in Featured Issue 1).ReSAKSSDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG
Women improving nutrition through self-help groups in India: Does nutrition information help?
No full textWomen’s self-help groups (SHGs) are an important platform for reaching poor women in India. Despite SHGs' women-focused programming, evidence of the impact of SHG-based interventions on nutrition outcomes is limited, and most evaluations of nutrition interventions have not examined intermediate outcomes along the impact pathways or outcomes for women themselves. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention delivered through women’s SHGs in five states in central and eastern India. The interventions involved the delivery of nutrition behavior change communication to groups through participatory approaches, community engagement around key issues, and the strengthening of collective organizations. Our analysis is based on three rounds of rich panel data on close to 2700 rural women and their households from eight districts in these five states and qualitative work from an accompanying process evaluation. Using difference-in-difference models with nearest neighbor matching methods, we present results on women’s anthropometry and diet-related outcomes.Women Improving Nutrition through Group-based Strategies (WINGS)Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI); Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH
Experimental measures of intra-household resource control
No full textWe study experimental measures of preferences for intra-household resource control among 3387 couples in Ghana and Uganda. We implement two incentivized tasks: (1) a game that measures willingness to pay for resource control in the household, and (2) dictator games played privately and jointly by spouses. Across study sites we find that women exhibit a higher willingness to pay for resource control than their husbands and have less influence over joint dictator game decisions. Importantly, behavior in the two tasks is correlated, suggesting that they capture similar underlying latent variables. In Uganda, experimental measures from both tasks are also robustly correlated with a range of survey measures of women's access to resources, agency, and wellbeing. This is not the case in Ghana, suggesting that contextual factors may be important, and researchers may want to collect both measures in a project. Like other recent papers, we find that an important fraction of respondents display negative willingness to pay for intra-household resource control. Our analysis shows that such behavior is displayed by women who have higher levels of economic empowerment and wellbeing, a result that contradicts previous conjectures made in the literature. Altogether, our analysis suggests that, despite lacking ideal theoretical properties, private dictator game decisions (even when collected only from the wife) can perform well as proxies of empowerment.Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI
Gender research strategy
No full textThe primary goal of SHiFT’s gender-responsive food system research is to support the achievement of the SHiFT initiative’s objectives through greater attention to gender issues (Table 1). A secondary goal is to ensure that SHiFT research does not exacerbate existing inequalities, and, where feasible, fosters positive change in women’s empowerment. If SHiFT and its partners were to ignore gender issues, the interventions or other solutions that they design and test would likely fail to address the needs of specific groups where inequality persists.Non-PRIFPRI1; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; G Cross-cutting gender them
Nigeria school feeding program: Baseline cooks’ survey instrument
No full textNSSPDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG); Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI
Changing the equation: Leveraging true cost accounting to accelerate agri-food systems transformation
No full textThe global agri-food system, from field to fork, is failing to nourish billions of people properly, is responsible for nearly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. As it currently operates, this system imposes significant hidden costs on the environment, on the workers who produce ‘cheap’ food in dangerous or precarious conditions, consumers, and society as a whole. These hidden costs, or ‘externalities’, include water pollution remediation, social support for underpaid workers, and public health costs related to diet-related diseases, none of which are captured by traditional economic metrics. Externalities are prevalent in all sectors of the economy, not just agri-food systems, and are systematically ignored in conventional accounting and reporting systems. This omission leads to distorted market signals that encourage unsustainable business practices, the consequences of which are borne by society, particularly disadvantaged communities, and will weigh heavily on future generations while the polluters reap financial rewards. Addressing externalities is therefore essential to building an economic system that supports sustainable development.Natural Resources and Resilience (NRR
Indicators for monitoring and evaluating research-for-development: A critical review of a system in use
No full textResearch-for-development (R4D) refers to research activities specifically designed to address critical social, environmental, and economic challenges and improve human well-being. It is essential to have well-designed indicators to monitor and evaluate progress, guide decision-making, and support learning and improvement. This paper reviews and compares two sets of indicators in use by a large international research consortium: i) ad hoc indicators developed by and for individual (non-pooled) projects, and ii) a standard set of indicators designed as part of a common results framework for a new portfolio of research initiatives. We assess both sets of indicators against the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) criteria, identify common errors in indicator formulation, compare the thematic coverage of the two sets of indicators, and derive lessons for improved indicator formulation. A large proportion of the non-pooled indicators fail to meet the SMART criteria. The indicators in the standard set are stronger, but with scope for improvement, especially in terms of relationship to the result of interest, specification of the indicator, measurability, standardization of outcome indicators, and impact indicators. We recommend having a balanced set of indicators of key outputs, outcomes, and impacts, based on clear and well-defined result statements.DG
Sri Lanka’s New Fertilizer Cash Grant (FCG) Scheme for paddy: What do participants and associates look and hope for?
No full textBIMSTECDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG); Transformation Strategie
IFPRI Malawi Maize Market Report January 2024
No full textMaSSPDevelopment Strategies and Governance (DSG); Transformation Strategie