Animating Questions
- How are food systems interventions being funded and by whom?
- How can we improve the policies and practices driving food system interventions at local/regional/national/transnational scales?
- Are institutions established to address food insecurity fit for purpose?
- How can we improve decision making to achieve food system equity and sustainability?
Projects
Peer Reviewed Research Papers
Combatting illegal fishing through transparency initiatives: Lessons learned from comparative analysis of transparency initiatives in seafood, apparel, extractive, and timber supply chains
John Virdin, Tibor Vegh, Blake Ratcliff, Elizabeth Havice, Jack Daly, Jack Stuart. Combatting illegal fishing through transparency initiatives : Lessons learned from comparative analysis of transparency initiatives in seafood, apparel, extractive, and timber supply chains. Marine Policy, Volume 138, 2022, 104984, ISSN 0308-597X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2022.104984.
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Role of food aid and assistance in addressing the double burden of malnutrition in Ghana: a qualitative policy analysis
Torto NM, Brownell KD. Role of food aid and assistance in addressing the double burden of malnutrition in Ghana: a qualitative policy analysis. BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health 2020; 3:doi: 10.1136/bmjnph-2020-000136
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Chapter 17: Future Challenges, Trends, and Opportunities
Abstract Today, via trade and/or food aid, almost everyone around the planet has access to food that is not grown locally. With this globalization and commodification of food, we now have a much more complex food system. Understanding the food system, as well as predicting future trends, is more difficult than ever before. According to the 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects, the world population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.9 billion by the end of the century. The estimated population growth adds further pressure to the global food system that is currently struggling to feed…
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Moving the Needle on Global Food Systems Financing: Translating Evidence from Health to Agriculture Development Finance
Duke University’s World Food Policy Center partnered with the Duke Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at Duke University and Open Consultants to explore how innovative approaches from the global health sector can be adapted to food systems financing to ensure we are more resilient to avoid or better address future crises. We acknowledge that there are important differences between the health sector and the agriculture and food sectors. However, the dramatic innovation in pandemic response from the health sector provides a source of new ideas for the agriculture and food security sectors. With lessons from the health sector as a lens, we conducted desk research, and key informant interviews and two focus groups (both referred to in this report as KIIs) to explore: the role of grant-based mechanisms, resource mobilization with a focus on innovative financing mechanisms, crisis coordination, and global functions (i.e. activities with transnational benefits).
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Opportunities for the Committee on World Food Security – Post Food Systems Summit 2021
This paper is a think-piece on the role of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in supporting outcomes associated with the Food Systems Summit (FSS). It explores key questions the CFS and its advocates are likely to grapple with moving forward. The goal of the analysis is to identify potential pathways for the CFS within the global governance environment, as policymakers attempt to spur action toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The CFS is a multi-stakeholder, intergovernmental forum in the United Nations (UN) system that develops and endorses global policy recommendations related to food security and nutrition. It does…
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Research Brief: North Carolina Food System Resilience Strategy
This strategy brief focuses on North Carolina and contextualizes the current moment against the historical landscape. The audience for this project is philanthropy. As a group with substantial power, it asks how philanthropy can be a partner to address some of the most entrenched inequities. How, in other words, can philanthropy help create more equity and resiliency in the North Carolina food system? COVID-19’s effect on the food system has been complex. Despite the pandemic’s initial shock to supply chains, the system has largely functioned as intended. Yet that is not necessarily a relief for many, who have experienced harm…
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Research Brief: The Financing Landscape for Agricultural Development – An Assessment of External Financing Flows to Low- and Middle-Income Countries and of the Global Aid Architecture
Key Messages Overall financing landscape and architecture SDG2 needs a coordinated global financing strategy and commitments for increased public and private investment in agricultural development. Agricultural development funders should differentiate between the use of grants and loans more strategically, and use grant funding for: 1) de-risking private sector investment by providing first loss funds, for example; 2) directly funding non-state actors such as producer organizations; 3) soft investments governments would not use loans for, such as technical assistance, capacity building, farmer trainings, greater beneficiary consultation and evaluation services; 4) global public goods such as agriculture research, better data systems and…
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The Financing Landscape for Agricultural Development: An Assessment of External Financing Flows to Low- and Middle-Income Countries and of the Global Aid Architecture
Pre-COVID-19 pandemic, progress was already stalling for achieving Sustainable Development Goal #2 “SDG2”: to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. The global pandemic has only heightened food security concerns globally, and indebted countries have fewer resources available to address this crisis. Certainly resource mobilization and action at the country level is needed, but donors also play a key role by providing official development assistance (ODA). Nutrition, emergency, and humanitarian aid interventions are critical to progress for SDG2, but so is investment in the production side of the system: agricultural development and ensuring producer livelihoods.…
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High Level Commissions and Global Policymaking: Prospects for Accelerating Progress Toward SDG2
This paper assesses the potential and limits of a new high level commission in food and nutrition security (FNS) and agriculture. Our goal is not to advocate for a new commission. Instead, we scope what can be learned from previous similar efforts, and critically analyze whether the functions of a high level commission map on to current challenges in FNS and agriculture. Why have some high level commissions had important impact in shaping global politics while others have fallen flat? What, if anything, could a new commission on FNS and agriculture hope to achieve? And how should such a commission be organized and implemented to maximize its influence?
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Contribution of Fisheries to Food and Nutrition Security: Current Knowledge, Policy, and Research
This report synthesizes current understanding of capture fisheries’ contributions to food and nutrition security and explores drivers of those contributions. Capture fisheries produce more than 90 million metric tons of fish per year, providing the world’s growing population with a crucial source of food. Due to the particular nutritional characteristics of fish, fisheries represent far more than a source of protein. A growing body of data and research focused specifically at the intersection of fisheries, nutrition, and food security can inform such efforts by improving understanding of fisheries’ production and distributional dimensions, consumption patterns, and nutritional aspects of fish in…
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