IFPRI-AMIS SEMINAR SERIES
Facilitating Anticipatory Action with Improved Early Warning Guidance
Co-organized by IFPRI and Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS)
SEP 26, 2023 - 9:00 TO 10:30AM EDT

Worldwide, the number of people facing crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity has more than doubled since 2017. The 2023 Mid-Year Update of the Global Report on Food Crisis (GRFC) signals 238 million people in 48 countries with recent, comparable data are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, an increase by 10 percent from 2022. The GRFC provides trends and projections of food crises and informs the Global Network Against Food Crisis on where humanitarian and developmental assistance is most needed. These new acute food insecurity numbers come at a time of ongoing uncertainty in global food markets amidst the repercussions of the war in Ukraine, fears for a strong El Niño phenomenon and other potential shocks.

Most food crises grow out of compounding causes such as conflict, adverse weather shocks fueled by climate change, and economic shocks. A good understanding of these causes can facilitate the development of sound crisis response plans and anticipatory action to help mitigate a looming crisis and build food systems resilience. Calls have grown for preemptive or anticipatory action to mitigate impacts, reduce recovery costs, and strengthen social, economic, and environmental resilience to shocks, but resources for humanitarian responses still remain significantly larger than those for preventive development action.

This seminar will take stock of existing early warning, early action systems (EWEAs) and examine whether they provide sufficient guidance to policymakers and decisionmakers keen to enhance anticipatory action and is featured under the IFPRI-AMIS policy seminar series on Making Sense of Food and Agricultural Markets.

Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR; Director General, IFPRI

Global Food Crisis: Where do we Stand and How is the GRFC Servicing Early Warning Systems?
Sara McHattie, Global Coordinator of Food Security Information Network (FSIN)

How to Identify Food Crisis Risks? Early Warning Systems for Global Market Shocks and for acute Food Insecurity
Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions (MTI), IFPRI

What Works and What Does not Work with Existing Early Warning Systems to Inform Preventative Action?
Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Programme (WFP) 

Agricultural Market Early Warning Mechanisms for Identifying Global Risks to Food Security
Joseph Glauber, Senior Research Fellow IFPRI and Secretary of AMIS

How can Improvements/Integration of EWEAs better Facilitate Anticipatory Action?
Sandra Ruckstuhl, Senior Researcher at International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and co-lead CGIAR initiative on Fragility, Conflict and Migration (FCM)

Global Network Against Food Crises and Early Warning, Early Action to Address Food Crises
Leonard Mizzi, Head, Sustainable Agri-Food Systems and Fisheries, European Commission 

More about this seminar: https://www.ifpri.org/event/facilitating-anticipatory-action-improved-early-warning-guidance
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LINKS
Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS): https://www.amis-outlook.org/
Global Report On Food Crises 2023 Mid-Year Update (GFRC 2023 MYU): https://www.fsinplatform.org/global-report-food-crises-2023-mid-year-update

Facilitating Anticipatory Action with Improved Early Warning Guidance

CGIAR SEMINAR SERIES
Famines and Fragility: Making humanitarian, developmental, and peacebuilding responses work
Co-organized by IFPRI, CGIAR, and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
14:30 TO 16:15 CET
JUN 11, 2024 - 9:30 TO 11:15AM EDT

Globally, the number of people facing crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity has more than doubled since 2017. The 2024 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), which informs the Global Network Against Food Crises on where humanitarian and developmental assistance is most needed, reported 282 million people in 59 food crisis countries faced crisis-levels of acute food insecurity and more than 700,000 people suffered famine in 2023. These numbers have increased with the crises in Gaza, Sudan, and Haiti.

Conflict and fragility are major drivers of food crises, often compounded by weather extremes and economic shocks. Sound understanding of these drivers and of the structural factors underlying fragility is needed for timely and appropriate crisis responses and for preventative action. However, no one size fits all. Food crisis conditions and drivers vary greatly across countries, and crisis responders continue to face challenges to effective action along the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding (HDP) nexus.

As the sixth policy seminar in the CGIAR series on Strengthening Food Systems Resilience, this seminar will take stock of what we know about key drivers of protracted food crises and persistent fragility and about the obstacles to successful HDP action. Speakers will discuss: recent trends in acute food insecurity and their causes; the severity and dynamics of acute malnutrition in rapidly developing food crises, with a focus on new methods of collecting evidence; building resilience to economic shocks in fragile, conflict-affected food crisis countries; and ways to adapt humanitarian assistance, social protection, and livelihood rebuilding programs for fragile contexts with vast numbers of displaced people.

Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI and Managing Director, Systems Transformation Science Group, CGIAR
Hendrik Denker, Deputy Head of Division 123, Food and Nutrition Security, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Panel I - Protracted Food Crises: How to break the vicious circle of conflict, climate shocks and economic crises?

Global Food Crises and Fragility: Trends and drivers
Sara McHattie, Global Coordinator, Food Security Information Network (FSIN)

Anticipating and Dealing with Food Crisis Risks: The role of preventative lending windows
Sarah Simons, Program Manager, Partnerships & Quality Team, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, The World Bank

Addressing Food Crises Through the Humanitarian-Development-Peacebuilding (HDP) Nexus: Challenges and opportunities
Mia Beers, Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Panel II – Lessons for Research and Policy from Four Hotspots of Hunger, Famine, and Fragility 

Famine in Gaza: Questions for food crisis risk monitoring and preventive action in fragile and conflict-ridden contexts
Rob Vos, Director Markets, Trade, and Institutions, IFPRI

Methodological Innovations for Understanding Myanmar’s Current Food Crisis and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Derek Headey, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Sudan’s Imminent Famine: What do we know and what can be done to prevent a major humanitarian disaster?
Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow, and Sudan Country Strategy Support Program Leader, IFPRI

Moderator

Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI

More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/famines-and-fragility-making-humanitarian-developmental-and-peacebuilding-responses-work
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Famines and Fragility: Making humanitarian, developmental, and peacebuilding responses work

Policy Seminar | IFPRI Policy Seminar
Worsening food insecurity, waning response capacity: Options for a better way forward
Co-organized by IFPRI, the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) and the CGIAR Science Program on Food Frontiers and Security | Part of the Fragility to Stability Seminar Series
July 2, 2025

Food crises arise from the complex interplay of conflict, poverty, climate variability, and economic shocks, resulting in acute food insecurity among vulnerable populations. According to the latest Global Report on Food Crises (2025), the number of people facing severe levels of acute food insecurity has tripled over the past decade, rising from around 100 million in 2016 to nearly 300 million people in 2024.  

The report warns that intensifying conflict in areas prone to food crises could worsen these conditions, policy uncertainty in major economies could slow income growth around the world, and budget cuts could erode humanitarian assistance, as well as capacities to monitor and anticipate drivers of acute food insecurity. 

This seminar will assess these prospects and discuss ways to counteract them. 

Speakers will discuss:  

• Trends in acute food insecurity and major drivers 
• Challenges posed by budget cuts by major aid donors and impacts on food crisis response capacities 
• Obstacles faced by early warning, early action systems in collecting adequate data to monitor and anticipate food crises and address drivers 
• Insights from AI-driven predictive modeling approaches to overcome select data challenges and better inform anticipatory and preventive action 

Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI

Global food crises, fragility, and prospects: Trends and drivers  

Presentation of the key findings of the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises 
Sara McHattie, Global Coordinator, Food Security Information Network (FSIN) 

What are the consequences for food insecurity risks of waning international humanitarian and development assistance? EC perspectives and responses
Simona Bortolotti, Policy Officer, Sustainable Agrifood Systems and Fisheries Unit, Directorate General for International Partnerships, European Union

Implications of foreign aid cuts for climate resilience and food insecurity 
Kalle Hirvonen, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDER and Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Challenges to humanitarian assistance and anticipatory action amid Sudan’s worsening food crisis  
Nigist Abebe, Regional Representative, Chemonics International; Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping National Officer, World Food Programme (WFP) Sudan

A new approach to assess food insecurity trends and drivers to better inform early action systems  
Luca Russo, Independent consultant and co-lead of study on trends and drivers of acute food insecurity commissioned by the Global Network Against Food Crises (GNAFC)

Using AI-informed modeling to overcome challenges to data collection and predict food crises  
Yanyan Liu, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI 

Concluding Remarks 
Rob Vos, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Moderator 
Katrina Kosec, Interim Deputy Director, CGIAR Science Program on Food Frontiers and Security; Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI 

Links:

More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/worsening-food-insecurity-waning-response-capacity-options-for-a-better-way-forward/

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Worsening food insecurity, waning response capacity: Options for a better way forward

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 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

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