Series

Developing competitive and inclusive food value chains requires domestic macroeconomic policies to improve the agricultural sector’s business environment and create outside opportunities, and sector-specific targeted measures to promote smallholder participation in competitive value chains by reducing market access costs.

This paper explores how traditional processing of fermented foods can be scaled up while enhancing functional food properties and strengthening local value chains.

This paper argues that food systems transformation should incorporate a dietary perspective that is guided by information on diets, dietary trends, consumer motives, and the food environment characteristics.

This background paper examines the linkages and interactions between women’s empowerment, food systems, and nutrition.

This paper provides a framework for assessing the dynamics of rural wellbeing and food systems change.

This article reviews how food system activities contribute to climate change and how dietary changes affect food systems. It shows that while emissions from food production are increasing in most regions, emissions from land use change are decreasing.

This paper shows that while anticipated increases in food demand by 2050 can largely be met regionally, potential yield increases or diversification will not contribute automatically to inclusive rural transformation. Instead, urbanization may potentially increase rural inequality and poverty.

Although the importance of inclusion in food system transformation is gaining traction, this paper argues that recent research and discourse on the topic is insufficient and that specific actions are needed to ensure that this transformation does not take place on the backs of the rural poor.

Using country-level data from 85 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), this paper outlines a food systems index (FSI) and analyses the linkages between food systems and structural and rural transformation, as well as population distributions.

This paper explores the prospects for a food system index (FSI) capturing several key components that influence differences in food system performance at the country level.

This paper highlights five fundamental paradigm shifts that are required to overcome trade-offs and build synergies between health and nutrition, inclusive livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and food system resilience.

This note provides practical guidance on how to roll out the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) for IFAD-funded projects.

Understanding market demand is a critical step in the process of developing solutions to meet the risk management needs of rural poor people, particularly with regard to insurance.

This note offers practical guidance for IFAD staff, consultants and in-country partners for seeking FPIC in the design and implementation of IFAD-funded projects and programmes, in compliance with IFAD policies and procedures.

IFAD’s second Biodiversity Advantage report showcases five IFAD projects which highlight the integral importance of biodiversity in agriculture.

IFAD’s technical assistance programme INSURED (Insurance for rural resilience and economic development) has been building knowledge about how to strengthen women producers’ access to climate risk insurance. 

We investigate how perceptions of physical water availability in the past are related to farmers’ current irrigation behaviour.

Prototyping aims to gather direct feedback on the solution and the wider insurance scheme, incorporate changes before pilot testing, and make any additional adjustments before the official roll-out.

This analysis investigates the potential mechanism and the practical significance of the impacts of agricultural value chain development in a geographically challenging rural area of a developing country.

This How to Do Note is part of a series of five Notes that accompany the NUS Operational Framework.