A presentation by the Agriculture and Rural Development Thematic Group
The flagship IFPRI report presents the impact of Covid-19 on food and agriculture around the world, along with government responses. Covid-19 has had a negative impact on food systems, and government policy responses have often not been helpful. Recommendations to do better, to have a better impact on agriculture, nutrition, social protection, and natural resources are provided.
The report can be found here: IFPRI
Speakers:
- Johan Swinnen, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He became director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in January 2020. He is a Commissioner in the Food Systems Economics Commission; Co-Chair of the Think20 (T20) Task Force on Climate Change, Sustainable Energy, and Environment; and also a member of the Champions 12.3 Leadership Group to Reduce Food Loss and Waste (SDG Target 12.3) and of the Africa Europe Strategic Task Force on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. Prior to joining IFPRI, Dr. Swinnen was professor of economics and director of the LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance at KU Leuven (Belgium) and senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. He was a lead economist at the World Bank from 2003 to 2004 and economic adviser to the European Commission from 1998 to 2001.
- John McDermott, Director, CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. o John McDermott leads the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), led by IFPRI. Previously, he was Deputy Director General and Director of Research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi from 2003-2011. John’s research career has focused on public health, animal health and livestock research in developing countries, primarily Africa where he lived and worked for 25 years. He has led projects on zoonotic and emerging diseases in Asia and Africa and was a visiting Lecturer at the University of Nairobi and a Professor at the University of Guelph. He has also served as an advisor to FAO, WHO, OIE, and other international agencies, served as a non-executive Director of the Global Alliance for Livestock Vaccines and Medicine (GALVmed), and as a member of the advisory committee of Veterinarians with Borders in Canada.
- Danielle Resnick is a Senior Research Fellow and Governance Theme Leader at IFPRI and leads the CGIAR’s Policies Institutions and Markets (PIM) research on Political Economy of Policy Processes. Her key research areas include the political economy of agricultural and food policies, decentralization, urban governance, informal trade, political parties, and democratization. She has conducted primary fieldwork in several African nations and published over 60 journal articles, books, and book chapters. Her research has been funded by USAID, the International Growth Centre, and the Social Science Research Council, among others.
- Neha Kumar is a senior research fellow in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Neha is an economist by training and has expertise that spans the diverse sectors of agriculture, social protection, gender and nutrition-focused programs. She has been involved in several multidimensional impact evaluations, and has expertise with state of the art econometric techniques for impact evaluation. She has several years of survey design and field work management in different countries and contexts and currently leads a portfolio of projects in India and Bangladesh examining the linkages between agriculture, nutrition and gender. Neha holds a PhD in economics from Boston University.
- Samuel Benin joined IFPRI in 2004 and was outposted to Kampala, Uganda to lead its country program to support the design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of key agricultural and rural development strategies. In February 2006, Sam relocated to the Washington DC office to lead the research on monitoring and evaluation, particularly assessing the impact of public investments, policies and programs on poverty reduction, growth and other human development indicators in Africa. Sam also managed the inter-Center Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), and then the Statistics on Public Expenditures for Economic Development (SPEED). In 2017, joined the Africa Regional Office as Deputy Division Director, assisting the director in managing the division’s research portfolio and providing overall intellectual leadership and guidance for the strategic research areas of the division and capacity building related activities. Sam’s research interests focus on policy, institutional and technology strategies for agricultural and rural development.
Host: Kevin Cleaver, Chair of ARD TG
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