FSP Pathway to Impact

Making a Difference

CGIAR IMPACT AREAS: Nutrition, health, and food security Poverty reduction, livelihoods, and jobs

More than

35 million

This blog post is part of a special monthly series entitled “Making a Difference,” documenting the impact of IFPRI's projects and initiatives. These stories reflect the wide breadth of the Institute's research, communications, and capacity-strengthening activities around the world, in fulfillment of its mission. The blog series has been peer-reviewed by IFPRI's Impact Committee members.

This review of research outcomes was written by Alix Underwood, Research Analyst, Director General's Office, IFPRI; Betina Dimaranan, Senior Research Coordinator, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, IFPRI; Abdullah Mamun, Senior Research Analyst, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, IFPRI; and Rob Vos, Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Unit, IFPRI. The CEROS site was designed by Lee Dixon, Senior Graphic Designer, Communications and Public Affairs Unit, IFPRI.

About IFPRI The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a research center of CGIAR, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries. IFPRI was established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries. Partnerships, communications, capacity strengthening, and data and knowledge management are essential components for translating IFPRI’s research to action and impact. The Institute’s regional and country programs play a critical role in responding to demand for food policy research and in delivering holistic support to country-led development. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world.

IFPRI is reaching the lives of millions of people through its contribution to policies and programs that reduce poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. This blog series highlights how IFPRI’s research is contributing to policy decisions and investments made by governments, development organizations, and other partners, and making a difference for food and nutrition security in developing countries around the world.

View More blog posts

Security Portal (FSP) websites from 2021-2023, providing viewers with up-to-date information and analytical tools to monitor food crises—this sets the FSP apart from other portals.

Since its launch in 2010, the portal has developed resources in response to several crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which disrupted the global flow of agricultural commodities,

imposed export restrictions. In response, the portal launched the Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker, which provides critical monitoring and analysis of restrictions enacted globally.

13 countries

The tracker has been viewed

times since it was added to the FSP in 2023.

42,981 times

The Great Recession of the late 2000s had a profound effect on global food security. Between 2004 and mid-2008, when the global recession was hitting full force, food grain prices — a key indicator of food security — increased significantly. Corn prices increased 89%, wheat prices 108%, and rice prices 224%. Yet these spikes were not just the product of market disruptions. IFPRI’s 2010 report Reflections on the Global Food Crisis concluded that the 2008 increase in rice prices was mostly due to adverse policy responses such as export restrictions by major rice producers. These caused major importers, such as the Philippines, to buy unusually large amounts of rice in anticipation of price spikes (i.e., panic-buying). Available global supplies fell, and prices rose. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that the resulting price spikes pushed the number of people in hunger worldwide from 923 million in 2007 to 963 million in 2008. This global food crisis exposed a critical need for improved food security analyses, solutions, and early warning systems for policymakers, development organizations, and other stakeholders. The actions that exacerbated the 2008 food price crisis — export restrictions, panic buying, stock building, and lack of transparency — might have been much reduced if more evidence about better policy options had been available. IFPRI responded to this need by launching the Food Security Portal (FSP), with funding from the European Commission, in 2010. The portal supports IFPRI’s role in the Food Security Information Network, a technical platform of 16 organizations that exchange expertise on food security analysis and produce high-profile resources such as the annual Global Report on Food Crises. Since 2010, the world has faced several overlapping crises, and the FSP has adapted to meet new needs. It developed a suite of resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic; launched several tools in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and provides resources on the climate crisis, such as the climate adaptation in the agrifood system tool. The FSP has become a hub for the monitoring and analysis of food crisis risks.

Shaping Global Agendas

The IFPRI Food Security Portal’s Pathways to Impact

The tracker has been referenced

by news outlets. Many of these are local outlets in countries with active restrictions.

more than 50 times

The tracker has influenced global agendas. For example, it provided evidence for a joint statement issued by the WTO, FAO, IMF, WB, and WFP, calling for countries to remove export restrictions.

The Food Security Portal (FSP) meets demand for timely information on developments impacting global food security

*Pageview metrics are from Amazon cloud logs, not from Google Analytics. Amazon cloud logs enable tracking of visitors who have not accepted Analytics cookies. However, they do not provide detailed user engagement metrics.

IFPRI’s FSP adds value for policymakers, researchers, observers of agricultural commodity market trends, and humanitarian and development agencies wishing to learn from, respond to, and prepare for food security crises. It has features not included in other platforms, such as FAO’s Food Price Monitoring and Analysis Tool, also launched in 2010 in response to soaring food prices. The FSP is unique for the following reasons:

The portal’s value-add

Breadth

Modeling

While many other portals offer information on food prices, the FSP provides data and analyses about factors influencing food prices (e.g., production, export restrictions, disease), as well as outcomes tied to food prices (e.g., import vulnerability). It also offers training courses, publicly available and targeted to researchers worldwide, to strengthen their capacity to address these factors.

While other portals offer mainly raw data and visualizations, many of the FSP’s tools incorporate IFPRI’s state-of-the-art models. For example, the Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System tool provides daily alerts regarding the degree of volatility in international markets for major staple foods and other key agricultural commodities.

These features explain the high usage of the FSP. IFPRI found that researchers and decision makers from other organizations used the portal to access data and analyses on food prices, export restrictions, and early warnings for food crises — all housed under the same roof. In 2020, World Food Programme (WFP) Chief Economist Arif Husain called the portal an “amazingly good” system, saying, “It reduces duplication of information but also exponentially increases access to our information.” FSP websites received over 35.5 million pageviews from 2021 to 2023, a period of intense foment on international markets. The specialized analytical tools on the portal that have received the most traffic since their launches are the Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System, with over 100,000 views; the Control Panel for Risk Monitoring, with almost 85,000 views; the COVID-19 Impacts on Global Poverty tool, with over 47,000 views; and the Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker, with almost 42,000 views.

[The FSP] reduces duplication of information but also exponentially increases access to our information.

– Arif Husain

Chief Economist, World Food Programme

One of the pathways IFPRI uses to impact food security outcomes is shaping global policy research agendas. This type of impact is very difficult to quantify, as there may be hundreds or thousands of information sources — journal articles, policy briefs, presentations — that cumulatively influence the numerous individuals who decide which topics to prioritize. Though it is possible to evaluate impact by interviewing policymakers, this requires properly designed impact assessments. The FSP’s Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker provides an example of the portal’s strides in generating evidence that can shape global agendas and priorities from food security perspectives. The tracker has drawn numerous media citations and queries from news agencies. It has also generated interest from international organizations and donor agencies, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Group of 20, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. News articles and other outputs generated — either locally or internationally — with inputs from the tracker have likely influenced discussions among readers. Hopefully, this influence has continued downstream to national governments and the individuals who make decisions on trade policies during food price crises.

An impact story: The Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker

Following the impact pathway, the tracker has influenced global discourse. Starting internally, the tracker’s detailed information on restrictions across time has been a critical resource for numerous blog posts and articles written by IFPRI’s senior researchers. These were part of a special series on the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war — for which IFPRI researchers won the AAEA’s 2023 Quality of Communication Award—and have been some of the most-viewed blog posts on IFPRI’s website. For example, a post on India’s rice export restrictions drew almost 20,000 pageviews, making it the most-viewed IFPRI blog post of 2023. Importantly, some of these posts were republished in local newspapers across the world and cited by major news outlets like Bloomberg, creating further interest in the tracker. Journalists around the world have requested interviews with the IFPRI researchers behind the tracker, asking about the food security implications of export controls on various commodities. The tracker has been explicitly referenced by news outlets over 50 times, receiving 12 mentions in July 2022 alone. Many of these mentions have been made by news organizations in countries with restrictions in place — contributing to important public debates. Indonesia and India provide two examples of this. CNBC Indonesia and other Indonesian outlets have used information from the tracker to educate their audiences about export restrictions. Beginning in January 2022, Indonesia enacted export volume restrictions on palm oil products. Indonesia’s palm oil exports account for about one third of the global vegetable oil market. IFPRI estimates that these restrictions affected global trade of over 223 trillion kilocalories. To put this in perspective, an individual typically needs between 1,500 and 2,000 kilocalories per day. Indian news outlets such as First Post have also used the tracker in this way. In May 2022, India implemented the first in a series of restrictions on exports of wheat, sugar, rice, and several other commodities. As India is the world’s largest rice exporter, taxes and bans on rice exports alone are estimated to affect the global trade of almost 40 trillion kilocalories. More generally, news organizations around the world have cited the tracker in ongoing public debates over the risks of agricultural trade barriers:

Influencing global agendas

The tracker’s impact story starts with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The war limited the flow of goods from these two major agricultural exporters, which drove up prices of wheat, fertilizers, and other key commodities. In a desperate attempt to protect their populations from shortages, 13 countries imposed export restrictions on food in the month following the invasion. IFPRI’s experts knew that trade restrictions often negatively impact vulnerable populations. In fact, they had already designed a tool, the COVID-19 Food Trade Policy Tracker, to monitor and analyze trade restrictions implemented in response to the pandemic. Anticipating further restrictions due to the Russia-Ukraine war, IFPRI revamped the tool into the Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker. The expanded tool provides comprehensive coverage on the topic, including a monthly update on changes in restrictions. It comes with excellent data analytics, including datasets, maps, and charts that show coverage of restrictions and their share in globally traded calories, alongside other relevant information. Users can compare these metrics between the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 COVID crisis, and the 2022 Ukraine crisis.

“Export bans, higher tariffs and other barriers have been imposed on 17% of the international food market on a caloric basis as of June 28, according to a tracker maintained by the International Food Policy Research Institute, headquartered in Washington.”

“Another consequence of the food crisis aggravated by the war in Ukraine is food protectionism. Ukraine exported cereals to much of the world, and now, with ports blockaded by Russian troops, shortages have already prompted 22 countries to restrict exports of some foods in order to supply their population, according to data from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The World Bank brings the figure to 34 countries if fertilizer sales limitations are added.”

“Since the outbreak of the crisis, 27 countries around the world have set up food-related trade barriers, banning or restricting exports of grains, meat, edible oils, vegetables and fruits, and fertilizers, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.”

In addition to influencing general discourse through the media, the tracker has been an important source of information at international forums, such as the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting and the World Trade Organization (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022. For the latter, IFPRI sought to make high-quality evidence available in advance: IFPRI’s experts used data from the Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker to produce a book chapter and blog post and hold a policy seminar, providing recommendations on how to address rising export restrictions.

Photo: World Trade Organization / Jay Louvion

By this time, the crisis-driven expansion of food export restrictions had passed its late April 2022 peak, when almost 17% of globally traded food and livestock feed calories were affected (see figure below). For comparison, this is slightly more than were affected by restrictions during the 2008 food price crisis. They began a downward trend in May.

Though no major breakthrough in terms of disciplining export restrictions was reached at MC12, importantly, member states agreed that food items purchased for humanitarian purposes by the WFP should be exempt from restrictions. The following month, the WTO, FAO, IMF, the World Bank, and WFP issued a joint statement calling for urgent action to address the global food security crisis, including the removal of export restrictions, citing statistics from the Food and Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker.

Though it is impossible to quantify the Food and Fertilizer Export Restriction Tracker’s downstream impact on governments’ decisions to remove restrictions, it can be said with certainty that IFPRI has played an important role in tracking countries’ trade measures on various commodities during episodes of crisis, and disseminating that information with rigorous analysis on urgent food security issues.

This is just one example of how one of the FSP’s tools has influenced downstream policy decisions. The portal’s considerable reach indicates that its impacts extend far beyond this story. To keep expanding that reach, IFPRI researchers aim to provide more context-specific information on the portal. They have already created a sub-portal for Africa South of the Sahara, and recently received funding from the Asian Development Bank to do the same for the Asia and the Pacific region. Also on the docket are country-level dashboards — such as the Nepal Food Security Dashboard, developed with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — for countries facing the highest levels of food insecurity.

The portal’s plans to expand its reach

In addition, IFPRI continues to improve the monitoring of global food market shocks and the risks they pose to food security. Funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and USAID, this work both heavily relies upon and has helped enhance the tools hosted on the FSP. The FSP is committed to helping the world react more quickly and effectively to shocks such as extreme weather events, conflict, and disease — in a collaborative effort to achieve food and nutrition security for all. Policymakers, development professionals, and researchers find increasing value in early warning systems and data on food prices and the factors that influence them. The portal can serve as a model for meeting this demand — ensuring that policies and interventions are steeped in high-quality evidence. The world is an increasingly uncertain and volatile place; building early warning systems after a crisis has begun won’t work. Established monitoring and information systems like the FSP help to anticipate crises before they arise and ensure that responses are timely and effective.

“To determine the countries banning food exports, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the Food & Fertilizer Export Restrictions Tracker from the International Food Policy Research Institute. The nations on this list implemented food export restrictions after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The restrictions remained active as of June 21, 2022.”

“Today, the situation is far worse. In the weeks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, data from IFPRI showed an increase in food export restrictions, with at least 23 nations having issued either outright export bans or curbed export licensing by mid-July. Some countries, such as Indonesia, were forced to ease export restrictions only after protests by farmers and small-scale producers.”

“The curbing of food trade has dealt a huge blow after the major agreements reached at the World Trade Organization summit in Geneva three weeks ago. The International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) revealed that 17.22% of Kcal turnover in international food trade this year has been subject to export bans, higher tariffs or other trade barriers – many of which are still in place.”

“The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report, quoted by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) Indonesia Friday (15/7), said that there are various restriction policies in several countries that apply throughout June 2022. The definition of restriction includes prohibitions, permits and/or export taxes.”

“IFPRI's Food and Fertilizer Export Restriction Tracker stated yesterday that the current share of restrictions on imported calories is 31.28% for Bangladesh. It was even higher at 38.60% during the height of restrictions imposed by exporting countries a few months ago.”

Because of rice export restrictions, “India’s exports of the grain to its major markets have slumped from usual levels, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, according to recent analysis from the International Food Policy Research Institute.”

Impact Pathway: Shaping Global Agendas

The tracker's progress is demonstrated in this part of the pathway

Though much more difficult to demonstrate, the tracker aims to progress to this part of the pathway

Food and fertilizer export restrictions tracker (information resource)

IFPRI outputs (e.g. articles, blogs, book chapters, etc.)

News outlets

International organizations (e.g. WTO, G20, etc.)

National governments

IFPRI's mission: To sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition

Improved policy making (e.g. removal of restrictions)

pageviews* of Food

Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System: One of the FSP’s Many Tools

View More blog posts