Vulnerable populations are minimally resilient to shocks, whether caused by humans or natural disasters. Emerging threats and new trends—such as climate change, population growth, aging societies, urbanization, infectious as well as noncommunicable diseases, and environmental degradation—are bound to aggravate the consequences of shocks on already vulnerable populations by triggering damage, loss, and displacement. Such threats pose an additional hurdle to the stated policy objective of the international community to eradicate hunger and malnutrition.

This is first new annual IFPRI publication provides a comprehensive, research-based analysis of major food policy challenges at the global, regional, national, and local levels. Highlights important developments in food policy that occurred in 2011 and takes a look forward into 2012.

Recent global and national food crises exposed major shortcomings in the way food security has been conceptualized and measured.

This paper attempts to project the future supply and demand up to the year 2025 for rice and wheat, the two main cereals cultivated and consumed in India. A review of studies that forecast the supply and demand of Indian agriculture commodities revealed three important limitations of such studies: The forecasts are generally overestimated (in the ex post situation); the methodology is not clearly outlined; ex-ante validation of the forecast have not been carried out. This study presents forecasts based on models that are validated so that forecast performances can be assessed.

The fundamental purpose of agriculture is not just to produce food and raw materials, but also to grow healthy, well-nourished people. One of the sector’s most important tasks then is to provide food of sufficient quantity and quality to feed and nourish the world’s population sustainably so that all people can lead healthy, productive lives. Achieving this goal will require closer collaboration across the sectors of agriculture, nutrition, and health, which have long operated in separate spheres with little recognition of how their actions affect each other.

In the wake of the food crises of the early 1970s and the resulting World Food Conference of 1974, a group of innovators realized that food security depends not only on crop production, but also on the policies that affect food systems, from farm to table. In 1975, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was founded. For the past 35 years, IFPRI has worked to provide solid research and evidence-based policy options to partners in donor and recipient countries.

India’s central development strategy should be to systematize structural and sector-specific measures the government can implement immediately to promote nutrition security while not losing sight of the long-term changes needed to create a modern, inclusive, and just India. Agriculture is fundamental to India’s inclusive and sustainable structural economic transformation. It must therefore play a more significant role in promoting nutrition security.

A new study by the IFPRI analyzes the question of indirect land-use change (ILUC) in relation to the EU's Renewable Energy Directive. It finds that ILUC issues are a valid concern, but that the impact depends on the type of feedstock crop used as well as other factors such liberalization of international trade in biofuels. The study follows an earlier assessment that had already found that ILUC issues are a valid concern, but could not determine their degree of magnitude with certainty.

Growing demand for biofuels, extreme weather, climate change and increased financial activity through commodity future markets are the main causes of high and volatile food prices, according to this 2011 Global Hunger Index report.

In recent years, prices of agricultural land have increased quickly, actually doubling and tripling in many parts of the world. This land value reassessment has been prompted by rising crop prices and perceived land scarcity. But even as the value of land rises, land degradation continues and investments to prevent it are lagging. Awareness of environmental risks has moved to the forefront of global consciousness during the past 25 years.