Making a Difference
Models as Assets for Food Security
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.
Impact at a Glance
IFPRI’s modeling systems are valuable assets for informed decision making about investments and policies that impact food systems activities and outcomes. Three models are the cornerstones of IFPRI’s Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit’s work:
IMPACT has informed the decision making of funders and international financial institutions.
Researchers used this model to conduct a study on the Future of Food and Agriculture in Asia and the Pacific, which informed a $14 billion Asian Development Bank investment program.
RIAPA has influenced national agricultural policies and investment plans in over 20 low- and middle-income countries.
RIAPA analyses were also pivotal in guiding the U.S. government’s allocation of $1 billion in Ukraine supplemental funds, shaping both geographic focus and programmatic priorities.
SPAM data were employed for a study on Africa’s irrigation potential, which advised/directed investments in small-scale irrigation by the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
SPAM results have been downloaded over 150,000 times, collectively, making it one of IFPRI’s most downloaded datasets.
CGIAR Impact Areas
Nutrition, health, and food security
Poverty reduction, livelihoods, and jobs
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Environmental health and biodiversity
Gender equality, youth, and social inclusion
The Impacts of IFPRI’s IMPACT, RIAPA, and SPAM Models
Models as Assets
WHERE
Where will policy, investment, and technical solutions be most needed and most effective?
HOW
can we best improve development outcomes?
WHAT
is the outlook for the world’s food systems?
Decision makers struggle with these questions every day. They need high-quality evidence to answer them—to understand trade-offs and course-correct when necessary. IFPRI’s models are assets that fulfill this need. Though it is impossible to know the future, models offer evidence-based projections of alternative future pathways that are useful for informing policy and programmatic and investment decisions.
During times of crisis, decision makers must address these issues rapidly. Up-to-date modeling is critical to informing crisis response when there is no time to build a model from scratch.
Researchers create models by selecting key variables that influence outcomes of interest, such as resources, technology, income, prices, consumer behavior, and government policies. They develop sophisticated analytical tools to understand how these variables interact with each other. This allows modelers to explore how changes in one variable might affect other variables in the system. For example, researchers can use observed trends and economic relationships to model how external shocks or policy changes will affect the technological choices of producers or the consumption patterns of consumers.
IMPACT, RIAPA, and SPAM
This post explores the impacts of three models that are the cornerstones of IFPRI’s Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit’s work. They represent three levels of modeling—global, national, and subnational—and complement one another by answering the “what”, “how”, and “where” questions.
International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade
IMPACT
Level: Global
Question: What?
IMPACT is a system of economic, water, and crop models that are linked to climate models and used to explore long-term challenges associated with sustainably, reducing hunger, and poverty. Under various scenarios of changes in climate, population, income, technology, and other factors, IMPACT projects (1) outputs such as agricultural production and demand (for over 50 commodities and 150 countries), trade patterns, and commodity prices and (2) how these outputs will affect various outcomes related to nutrition, land and water use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Rural Investment and Policy Analysis
RIAPA serves as a laboratory for simulating the outcomes of country-level policy and investment decisions (e.g., agrifood system growth, employment, household welfare, diet quality). RIAPA helps policymakers understand the trade-offs associated with these decisions and prioritize across policy and investment options given multiple development objectives and resource constraints. To date, RIAPA models are available for around 30 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia.
RIAPA
Level: National Question: How?
Spatial Production Allocation Model
SPAM uses “coarse” data—from countries, provinces, etc.—to estimate crop production patterns at a finer scale. The result is a global gridscape of over 45 crops which can be downloaded as a dataset. SPAM datasets are available for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2017, and 2020. SPAM provides the “where” for both IMPACT’s “what” and RIAPA’s “how.” To fully understand the trends analyzed by IMPACT, researchers must identify where they take place. To best target policies and investments, policymakers must have a spatial understanding of production.
SPAM
Level: Subnational Question: Where?
Stories of impact
IMPACT
The IMPACT model’s global projections of multiple and diverse impacts of increased investment in agricultural research and development, resource management, and market infrastructure have informed decision making by major development partners, including the Gates Foundation, the U.S. government, and the World Bank.
Further illustrating IMPACT’s impact, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) invited IFPRI to prepare a study, using the IMPACT model, on the Future of Food and Agriculture in Asia and the Pacific. The findings were shared as the keynote presentation at ADB’s Asia and the Pacific Food Security Forum in April 2024. The event influenced the planning for ADB’s new $14 billion investment program that aims to ease the worsening food crisis in the region. ADB will use the IMPACT model’s findings to select investments that strengthen agrifood systems against the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.
RIAPA
RIAPA has informed national agricultural policies and investment plans in over 20 low- and middle-income countries. The model has contributed to the adoption of policies that more effectively target economic growth, employment creation, hunger reduction, and improvements in diet quality. For example, RIAPA results were used in the development of national policies and investment strategies for Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
RIAPA not only contributes to national policies and investment plans but is also uniquely equipped to deliver rapid analyses on the impacts of crises on agrifood systems, poverty, and food security at global, regional, national, and subnational levels. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, RIAPA provided real-time impact assessments and policy recommendations that significantly influenced key programmatic decisions. For example, RIAPA played a critical role in guiding the geographic distribution and programmatic use of approximately $1 billion in Ukraine supplemental relief funds allocated by the U.S. Congress.
SPAM
The SPAM model, and the crop-specific production data it produces, are critical inputs to many initiatives within and beyond IFPRI and CGIAR. The international organizations, academic institutions, and government agencies that use SPAM include the African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium, which features SPAM in its online library. It also uses SPAM data as inputs for its own modeling work by the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM), which uses SPAM to monitor food security and potential crises. The World Bank used SPAM inputs for its study on Africa’s Infrastructure.
Under the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) funded by the U.S. government, IFPRI used SPAM to conduct a study on Africa’s irrigation potential. It demonstrated that small-scale irrigation has a higher economic return than large-scale irrigation and estimated the investment needed to expand irrigation on the continent. The World Bank and the African Development Bank have cited this study as having informed their investments in small-scale irrigation.
IFPRI’s other models and collaboration across CGIAR
IMPACT, RIAPA, and SPAM are IFPRI’s most-used models, but IFPRI’s researchers have developed several other models to meet users’ demands. With models such as DREAMpy, MIRAGRODEP, and MINK, users can explore research and development scenarios, international economic linkages, and global crop yields.
Models often feed into other models. MINK and SPAM results are used as inputs for the IMPACT model. Integrating multiple models allows researchers to answer more complex questions. IFPRI’s Systematic Analysis for Climate Resilient Development (SACRED) framework uses multiple models to assess complex climate change impacts from global to household level. The Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit continues to build IFPRI’s network of interconnected models.
The future of modeling
In addition to shaping research agendas and investment strategies, one of IFPRI’s most important impact pathways is capacity strengthening. Through the CGIAR Foresight Initiative (2021-2024) and now through CGIAR’s Science Program on Policy Innovations (2025-2030), IFPRI collaborates with partners such as the African Network of Agricultural Policy Research Institutes (ANAPRI) to empower local researchers with the skills to anticipate future challenges and inform policy.
The Policy and Investment Prioritization through Value Chain Analysis (PPVC) project stands as an example of this capacity strengthening work. IFPRI and partners have provided training, open to all 15 ANAPRI member institutions, in using models to analyze value chains. PPVC has worked in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and is now being implemented in Ghana, Malawi, and Zambia.
Over the past three years, CGIAR’s National Policies and Strategies Initiative built capacity for CGIAR tools and innovations in six countries. This includes a series of workshops in Kenya, Egypt, and Nigeria on modeling. At these workshops, participants co-created innovative tools, such as a household microsimulation tool in Kenya. Some of these have been integrated into national institutions. These efforts continue through CGIAR’s new areas of work under the Policy Innovations Science Program. Such continued initiatives pave the way for local researchers to tap into the potential of models as not only proficient users but also creators of models tailored to their contexts, enabling them to inform decisions for resilient food systems around the world.
Capacity strengthening in Africa
More information on the IFPRI Modeling Systems Webinar Series: Informing Future Pathways and Priorities for Agrifood Systems to explore IFPRI’s advanced modeling and data systems can be found here.
This webinar series offers a comprehensive overview of key tools used to analyze the future of food systems. Researchers present the modeling systems developed and applied by IFPRI, in collaboration with other CGIAR Centers and partners. The presentations provide valuable insights into how these systems address critical challenges facing modern agrifood systems and guide future strategies for sustainable development.
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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.
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.
The review of research outcomes was written by Alix Underwood, Managing Editor at the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) and former Research Analyst with IFPRI’s Director General’s Office, and Eleanor Jones, Program Manager in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit. Additional contributions were made by members of the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit team: Karl Pauw, Keith Wiebe, and Liangzhi You, all Senior Research Fellows.
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