POLICY SEMINAR
Food Loss and Waste in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains
Co-organized by IFPRI, Embassy of Denmark, and World Resources Institute
MAR 14, 2023 - 9:30 TO 11:00AM EDT

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about one-third of all food produced around the globe is lost or wasted. This is particularly egregious in a world where one in nine persons is food insecure, and widespread food affordability concerns in low- and middle-income countries have resulted from COVID-related value chain disruptions and the global impact of the war in Ukraine. 

This annual event will take stock of efforts around the world to tackle food loss and waste through initiatives like Champions 12.3, a coalition of leaders from governments, businesses, international organizations, research institutions, farmer groups, and civil society dedicated to inspiring ambition, mobilizing action, and accelerating progress toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 by 2030.

The seminar will also take a closer look at fruits and vegetables, which are among the healthiest but most wasted foods. Given their perishable nature, great care, attention, and cooperation along all parts of fruit and vegetable value chains are required to reduce food loss and waste.

Welcome
Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions Division, IFPRI, and Lead, CGIAR Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets
Jacob Jensen, Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries of Denmark

Keynote Address
Maximo Torero, Chief Economist, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Panel Discussion
Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions Division, IFPRI, and Lead, CGIAR Initiative on Rethinking Food Markets
Muhammad Yakubu Bubayaro, Founder/CEO, Bunkasa Agritech 
Shannon Sajdak, Senior Sustainability Manager, Apeel
Signe Frese, Director, CSR and Quality, Coop Denmark

Closing Remarks
Liz Goodwin, Senior Fellow and Director, Food Loss and Waste, World Resources Institute (WRI)

Moderator
Luciana Delgado, Senior Research Analyst, IFPRI

More about this seminar: https://www.ifpri.org/event/food-loss-and-waste-fruit-and-vegetable-supply-chains

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Food Loss and Waste in Fruit and Vegetable Supply Chains

GLOBAL FOOD POLICY REPORT
Informe de políticas alimentarias mundiales 2023: Repensar las respuestas a las crisis alimentarias
Latin America & Caribbean Discussion of IFPRI’s 2023 Global Food Policy Report: Rethinking Food Crisis Responses
JUN 21, 2023 - 9:30 TO 11:00AM EDT

Lo invitamos a unirse a nosotros en el evento de lanzamiento virtual para LAC, donde los oradores arrojarán luz sobre los hallazgos significativos del informe 2023 desde una perspectiva regional.

En 2022, el mundo se enfrentó a múltiples crisis. Continuaron las perturbaciones de los sistemas alimentarios debidas a la prolongada pandemia de COVID-19, las grandes catástrofes naturales, los disturbios civiles y la inestabilidad política, así como los crecientes efectos del cambio climático, mientras la guerra entre Rusia y Ucrania y la inflación agravaban una crisis mundial de alimentos y fertilizantes. El creciente número de crisis, su impacto cada vez mayor y el aumento del número de personas hambrientas y desplazadas han galvanizado los llamamientos para replantear las respuestas a las crisis alimentarias, creando así una verdadera oportunidad para el cambio.

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We invite you to join us at the virtual launch event for LAC, where speakers will shed light on the significant findings of the 2023 report from a regional perspective.

In 2022, the world faced multiple crises. Disruptions to food systems from the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, major natural disasters, civil unrest and political instability, and the growing impacts of climate change continued, as the Russia-Ukraine war and inflation exacerbated a global food and fertilizer crisis. The growing number of crises, their increasing impact, and rising numbers of hungry and displaced people have galvanized calls to rethink responses to food crises, creating a real opportunity for change.

Welcome Remarks
Valeria Piñeiro, Acting Head of the Latin American region & Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI

Speakers
Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, IICA Visiting Fellow, IFPRI
Manuel Hernandez, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions (MTI), IFPRI

Panel Discussion
Julio A. Berdegué, Research Professor, Agricultural Economics Department, Catholic University, Chile
Gloria Abraham Peralta, Consultant, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)
Cecilia Lopez Montaño, President, CiSoe

Closing Remarks
Valeria Piñeiro, Acting Head of the Latin American region & Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI

Moderator
Valeria Piñeiro, Acting Head of the Latin American region & Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI

More about this seminar: https://www.ifpri.org/event/informe-de-pol%C3%ADticas-alimentarias-mundiales-2023-repensar-las-respuestas-las-crisis

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RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Global Food Policy Report 2023: Rethinking Food Crisis Responses - https://www.ifpri.org/publication/global-food-policy-report-2023-rethinking-food-crisis-responses
Global Food Policy Report 2023: Rethinking Food Crisis Responses: Synopsis - https://www.ifpri.org/publication/global-food-policy-report-2023-rethinking-food-crisis-responses-synopsis
LINKS
Global Food Policy Report Website - https://gfpr.ifpri.info/
2023 Global Food Policy Report Global Launch Event - https://www.ifpri.org/event/global-launch-event-2023-global-food-policy-report-rethinking-food-crisis-responses

Informe de políticas alimentarias mundiales 2023: Repensar las respuestas a las crisis alimentarias

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

SPECIAL EVENT
From Commitments to Impact: Analyzing the Global Commitments Toward Promoting Food Security and Healthy Diets
Co-organized by IFPRI and The Rockefeller Foundation
FEB 6, 2024 - 9:00 TO 10:30AM EST

Since the mid-2010s, progress in reducing food insecurity and improving diet quality has stalled. Multiple shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have exacerbated the situation and put Sustainable Development Goal 2 on Zero Hunger further out of reach.

There have been many calls for action to address the food and diets crisis facing vulnerable people around the world. The private sector has been called on to invest in transforming food systems—at an annual rate of $320 billion—while the development banks have been asked to align financial incentives with food system-related goals. While some of these actors have stepped up, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) opening of a food shock window to channel funds to countries beset by crisis, ultimately, progress depends on governments. National governments are responsible, and can be held accountable, for ensuring food security; healthy, diverse diets; and stable, dignified livelihoods, for their populations.

Since the SDGs were announced in 2015, governments in both high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries have made commitments to actions to address food insecurity and poor diets by 2030, including at the UN General Assembly, the World Health Assembly, the G-20, and the UN Food Systems Summit. What remains uncertain at this midway point is which commitments and actions are most salient, whether and how much global and linked national commitments are both fit-for-purpose and fit for the future, and to what extent these commitments have the potential to address known challenges to achieving SDG goals on food security and healthy diets.

This seminar will shed light on commitments already made, share research results on the potential of current commitments to achieve a focused set of food and nutrition security goals, and foster continued dialogue with global advocacy partners. A brunch reception will follow the presentations.

Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Managing Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR and Director General, IFPRI
Catherine Bertini, Managing Director, Food Initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation

Report Findings
Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI

Global Scenarios for Food Security: An imperative for action
Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade and Institutions (MTI), IFPRI

From Commitments to Impact
Christina Zorbas, Postdoctoral Researcher, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition in the Institute for Health Transformation, Deakin University 
Shoba Suri, Senior Fellow, Health Initiative, Observer Research Foundation
Elyse Iruhiriye, Associate Research Fellow, IFPRI

Implications of Findings
Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI

Panelists
Mwandwe Chileshe, Director, Food Security Nutrition and Agriculture, Global Citizen
Oliver Camp, Environment and Food Systems Advocacy Advisor, The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
Alexandre Brecher, Communications and Advocacy Advisor, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement
Pedro Vormittag, Deputy Director for External Relations, Brazilian Center of International Relations (CEBRI)

Moderators
Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR and IFPRI
Asma Lateef, Policy and Advocacy Lead, SDG2 Advocacy Hub

Links:
The Rockefeller Foundation: https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/
From Promises To Action: Analyzing Global Commitments On Food Security And Diets Since 2015: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/c700ac9e-1b22-4319-b285-7e14e395b566
The SDGs And Food System Challenges: Global Trends And Scenarios Toward 2030: https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/2961e6f2-5da4-41b4-80fe-8c61a02072a6

From Commitments to Impact

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.

New tracks tagged #Rob Vos