1283. Food Policy—Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World

The International Food Policy Research Institute's 2025 Global Food Policy Report: Food Policy—Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World provides a comprehensive review of the evolution of food policy over the past 50 years, how food systems have changed dramatically, and examines food policy research priorities for 2050.

The Green Revolution, which had been underway for 10 years by 1975, brought about an unprecedented leap in agricultural productivity through the development and spread of high-yielding varieties of staple crops that met basic caloric needs, thereby helping to secure food supplies for billions of people. Agricultural development was closely linked to broader economic growth, and it was widely recognized that increased agricultural productivity was a key catalyst for economic growth. However, other investments were also needed, including rural infrastructure, inputs and irrigation, services, natural resource management, sectoral and macroeconomic policies.

The early 1970s was a time of food crises and growing concern about the social and environmental ramifications of rapid agricultural transformation, which could not be sustained by purely technical solutions and called for appropriate policy design and reform. Research showing that adequate food intake depends not only on food production but also on individual access to food improved our understanding of food security and transformed how we thought about the policy environment needed to end hunger, with income improvement, especially for the poor, becoming a key goal of global development strategies.

The macroeconomic crisis of the 1970s and the resulting debt crisis in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the early 1980s, as well as the end of the Cold War, led to a major reassessment of interventionist economic policies and the role of the state in food systems, which in the 1980s and 1990s triggered a wave of market-oriented liberalization and state withdrawal from the agri-food sector, driven by strong donor and development bank initiatives. The large-scale market-oriented economic reforms that began in China in the late 1970s and in Vietnam in the mid-1980s demonstrated the potential for policy reforms to support agricultural reform, economic growth, poverty reduction, and rapid improvements in food security.

The 1990s saw an acceleration of globalization, fueled by advances in transport and information and communication technologies along with the liberalization of domestic markets, with the signing of new trade agreements and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). On the supply side, liberalization and globalization promoted the expansion of food value chains, especially the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, expanded agricultural trade, and increased investment in the food and retail sectors by domestic and foreign private companies.

Despite a global population of 6 billion and rapid urban expansion in the mid-2000s, the world saw a marked decline in undernourishment and poverty. Global poverty rates fell substantially, with the proportion of extreme poor falling from 44% to 21.5% between 1981 and 2005. As economies grew, agriculture's share of GDP shrank and labor began to shift away from farms and toward downstream sectors of expanding food value chains and urban areas.

Unfortunately, this success led to complacency, and policymakers shifted attention and resources elsewhere. Foreign aid for agricultural research and development declined, and although some emerging countries such as China and Brazil increased their investments, public investment in agricultural research and development in African countries remained well below agreed target levels. Moreover, although food security has improved in many developing countries, poverty and hunger remain, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people facing hunger has almost doubled since 1979, and market volatility has also increased. Globally, the average growth rate of agricultural productivity has almost halved since the turn of the century. High international cereal prices caused global food crises in 2007/08 and 2011/12, and in the 2020s, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war further disrupted agri-food markets. In the wake of these recent crises, many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) still face the double burden of high food prices and large external debt.

Overall, the steady progress towards reducing food insecurity and poverty has slowed and in some cases even reversed since the 2010s, and the nature of food system challenges has also changed. Global conflicts and increasing displacement over the past decade have increased the prevalence of acute malnutrition in affected areas. At the global level, nutrition and public health research has noted that the high prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies, especially among women and children, often coincides with a sharp rise in overweight and obesity and related non-communicable diseases. Sustainability concerns are growing as environmental degradation and biodiversity loss intensify and the impacts of climate change, especially extreme weather events, increasingly disrupt food systems. Growing evidence on the role of gender norms and inequalities, intra-household decision-making, and community resource management in shaping food system outcomes, as well as the needs of a rapidly growing young population, are also changing expectations for the role of policy and policy research.

Just as policy research helped overcome challenges half a century ago, it can empower consumers, producers, and policymakers to make better decisions to promote the transformation of healthy, equitable, resilient, and sustainable food systems for decades to come. The report points out many specific areas where further research is needed and highlights the importance of research to address some broad challenges that cut across sectors, as well as partnership-building to support evidence-based policymaking in low- and middle-income countries.

• Strengthen resilience and inclusiveness in food systems everywhere, with special attention to conflict- and disaster-affected areas and vulnerable groups.
• Improve diets and nutrition by addressing the root causes of poor food environments and enabling healthier choices.
• Use new technologies, such as digital innovation and AI, responsibly to ensure equitable access and inclusion.
• Engage the private sector and scale up investments in food system innovation, from research and development to sustainable value chains.
• Mobilize and reform existing public spending and realign agricultural support to align with sustainability and nutrition goals.
• Foster interdisciplinary research and policymaking, and break down silos between agriculture, health, environment, and trade.

(Reference)
Swinnen, Johan; and Barrett, Christopher B. (Eds.). 2025. Global food policy report 2025: Food policy: Lessons and priorities for a changing world. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/174108

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki, Information Program