Integrated economic modeling of global and regional micronutrient security:

In this paper, we examine the implications of alternative country-specific scenarios for biofortification on the reduction of micronutrient deficiency prevalence in under-fives. The scenarios are implemented within a long-term projections model of agriculture production and consumption, given the timeframe needed to develop and implement biofortification of crops and the need to account for changing diets over time. The effectiveness of the various biofortification strategies is largely determined by the evolution of regional dietary patterns over time, which show continued reliance on staple food crops among the poor. It suggests that cereal grain-focused biofortification is likely to be most effective in South Asia, while targeting roots and tubers is most effective in Sub-Saharan Africa.Biofortification, Micronutrients, Economic models,

An Integrated Economic Model of Global Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Agriculture

We present the results of integrating the fisheries sector into an existing computable partial-equilibrium global model of agriculture, livestock, bioenergy, forestry, and land use. The model is constructed by reconciling publicly available global datasets from the FAO as well as the literature. The model of the fish sector represents capture and aquaculture at the country level. Capture is further differentiated at the level of FAO Major Fishing Areas, while aquaculture differentiates between subsistence systems and systems fed commercially formulated aquaculture feeds. Seafood is split into 10 commodity groups. International trade is bilateral and the model differentiates between food, feed, and other uses of fish. Using projected changes in population and income, future demand for seafood is estimated to exceed 250 million tons in 2050. Future supply from capture fisheries is expected to be determined by fishery policies and to remain limited, and the remainder of the demand shall be satisfied from aquaculture. The aquaculture production systems of the 10 commodity groups are characterized using varying feed ratios and varying feed composition of fish meal, fish oil, soybean meal, rapeseed meal, maize, wheat, and groundnut meal. We estimate that the aquaculture sector will require an additional 120 million tons of terrestrial feed products in 2050. Due to the relatively high efficiency of the aquaculture sector, this translates into relatively minor land-use effects, namely an additional 12 million hectares of cropland in 2050

Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation

"The Challenge The unimpeded growth of greenhouse gas emissions is raising the earth’s temperature. The consequences include melting glaciers, more precipitation, more and more extreme weather events, and shifting seasons. The accelerating pace of climate change, combined with global population and income growth, threatens food security everywhere. Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Higher temperatures eventually reduce yields of desirable crops while encouraging weed and pest proliferation. Changes in precipitation patterns increase the likelihood of short-run crop failures and long-run production declines. Although there will be gains in some crops in some regions of the world, the overall impacts of climate change on agriculture are expected to be negative, threatening global food security. Populations in the developing world, which are already vulnerable and food insecure, are likely to be the most seriously affected. In 2005, nearly half of the economically active population in developing countries—2.5 billion people—relied on agriculture for its livelihood. Today, 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas. This Food Policy Report presents research results that quantify the climate-change impacts mentioned above, assesses the consequences for food security, and estimates the investments that would offset the negative consequences for human well-being. This analysis brings together, for the first time, detailed modeling of crop growth under climate change with insights from an extremely detailed global agriculture model, using two climate scenarios to simulate future climate. The results of the analysis suggest that agriculture and human well-being will be negatively affected by climate change: * In developing countries, climate change will cause yield declines for the most important crops. South Asia will be particularly hard hit. * Climate change will have varying effects on irrigated yields across regions, but irrigated yields for all crops in South Asia will experience large declines. * Climate change will result in additional price increases for the most important agricultural crops–rice, wheat, maize, and soybeans. Higher feed prices will result in higher meat prices. As a result, climate change will reduce the growth in meat consumption slightly and cause a more substantial fall in cereals consumption. * Calorie availability in 2050 will not only be lower than in the no–climate-change scenario—it will actually decline relative to 2000 levels throughout the developing world. * By 2050, the decline in calorie availability will increase child malnutrition by 20 percent relative to a world with no climate change. Climate change will eliminate much of the improvement in child malnourishment levels that would occur with no climate change. * Thus, aggressive agricultural productivity investments of US$7.1–7.3 billion are needed to raise calorie consumption enough to offset the negative impacts of climate change on the health and well-being of children." from TextAdaptation, Agriculture, Climate change, Developing countries, food security,

The potential role of producer and consumer food policies in the EU to sustainable food and nutrition security

EU sustainable food and nutrition security is no sure-fire success. The future ofthe agro-food system is uncertain and subject to different macro-level trends.Previous analysis revealed the role of food system drivers creating challenges andopportunities for dietary and environmental improvements under certain futureconstellations. However, these challenges and opportunities need to be addressed by policies to allow for actual improvements in the sustainabilityperformance of EU food systems, for people, planet and profit. In this deliverable,an assessment and pre-test of potential policy measures is carried out. The policyanalyses are contrasted to a ‘business-as-usual’ baseline scenario with currenttrends of food system drivers. We apply the SUSFANS modelling toolbox in orderto test relevant policy measures in four distinct aqua-agro-food policy sectors.Regarding health and nutrition of the EU population, we provide a ranking ofpotential dietary policies and interventions based on their effectiveness,implementation costs and restrictiveness for consumers and producers. Based onthis overview, options for health and nutrition policy are designed containing amixture of different policy instruments. These apply – in line with the allocationof policy responsibilities in the EU - at the level of individual member states andnot at the realms of an EU policy. In the context of the Common AgriculturalPolicy (CAP), we assess the impact of a livestock density restriction on EU Agricultural areas. Results indicate a reduction of soil nutrient surpluses (-9 to -13%) and of greenhouse gas emissions (-9%) at EU average and considerably stronger in the livestock density and over-fertilization hotspots. Trade openness restricts the impact on food consumption and dietary change of EU consumers. Three Common Fisheries Policies (CFP) are tested with the newly developed fish modules of GLOBIOM and CAPRI: Directing capture in EU waters to levels that keep fish stocks at the maximum sustainable yield (MSY), or at the maximum economic yield (MEY), and the implementation of national aquaculture growth plans composed by EU member states. Our results show limited policy impacts due to the rlatively small size of the EU fish producing sector with some trade butlimited consumption changes. Finally, different storage policies are tested with the new short-term volatility module of GLOBIOM. The scenarios reveal that storage availability and intervention prices reduce price volatility caused by yield shocks. The assessments illustrate that individual, yet unaligned policy measures can already contribute significantly to reaching sustainable food and nutritionsecurity. On the way to the final foresight assessment extensions are require regarding a) metrics quantifiability, b) the harmonization of metrics computationapproaches, and c) smaller model improvement

Model description

The International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) was developed at IFPRI at the beginning of the 1990s to address a lack of long-term vision and consensus among policy-makers and researchers about the actions that are necessary to feed the world in the future, reduce poverty, and protect the natural resource base. In 1993, these same long-term global concerns launched the 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Initiative which created the opportunity for further development of the IMPACT model. In 1995 the first results using IMPACT were published as a 2020 Vision discussion paper: Global Food Projections to 2020: Implications for Investment (Rosegrant et al. 1995) in which the effects of population, investment, and trade scenarios on food security and nutrition status, especially in developing countries, were analyzed. IMPACT continues to serve as the basis for research examining the linkage between the production of key food commodities and food demand and security at the national level in the context of scenarios of future change. Studies focus on regional issues, commodity-level analyses, and cross-cutting thematic issues. IMPACT is also embedded in a variety of major global assessments to complement interdisciplinary, scenario-based work on the future of food supply and demand. The first comprehensive set of results for IMPACT were published in the book Global Food Projections to 2020 (Rosegrant et al. 2001). These projections—which were presented in 2001 at the IFPRI-sponsored conference in Bonn entitled: Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020—are presented with details on the demand system and other underlying data used in the projections work, and cover both global and regionally-focused projections. A complete list of the research published using the IMPACT modeling framework is provided in Appendix 1, including reports for international organizations, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the FAO, and national governments. NOTE: The 2008 version is superceded by this 2012 version, and the 2008 version is retained for archival purposes and researching using this model should use the documentation from 2012.Non-PRIFPRI1; GRP38; HarvestChoiceEPT

International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) Model

The IMPACT model is designed to examine alternative futures for global food supply, demand, trade, prices, and food security. The IMPACT model allows IFPRI to provide both fundamental, global baseline projections of agricultural commodity supply, demand, trade, prices and malnutrition outcomes along with cutting-edge research results on quickly evolving topics such as bioenergy, climate change, changing diet/food preferences, and many other themes. IMPACT covers 44 commodities, which account for virtually all of world food production and consumption, including all cereals, soybeans, roots and tubers, meats, milk, eggs, oils, meals, vegetables, fruits, sugar and sweeteners, and fish in a partial equilibrium framework. It is specified as a set of 115 country-level supply and demand equations where each country model is linked to the rest of the world through trade. The model is written in the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) programming language. The solution of the system of equations is achieved using the Gauss–Seidel method algorithm. This procedure minimizes the sum of net trade at the international level and seeks a world market price for a commodity that satisfies market-clearing conditions.PRIFPRI1; GRP38; HarvestChoice; Global Futures and Strategic ForesightEPT

Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean: Current Situation, Future Trends and One Policy Experiment

This study employs the IFPRI IMPACT model to examine the effects of a hypothetical ban on the clearing of native vegetation for agriculture in tropical areas within LAC on GHG emissions, food production, food prices, and child malnutrition at several spatial scales. Results suggest that a complete ban on land clearing for agriculture would significantly reduce GHG emissions associated with the clearing of forests and other forms of natural vegetation vis-à-vis what would have occurred in the absence of the ban. The ban would also reduce agricultural production within tropical areas in LAC, however, the economic losses are not distributed uniformly across the three sub-regions within tropical LAC- the northern South American rim around the Amazon suffers approximately 45% of all losses in gross value of agricultural output attributable to the ban. The report also finds that at global level, the overall effects on commodity prices of the simulated ban on area expansion on LAC are not large and (hence) the effects on childhood malnutrition are small