Unloading vegetables from a truck. 2012 Xiaobo Zhang/IFPRI
MOTIVATION
Nearly two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in the Asia-Pacific region. In order to improve food security in the region, food value chains need to be upgraded to ensure adequate and affordable food supplies. While margins of error within each segment of a food value chain may be low, collectively they can contribute to higher retail food prices. Reducing these margins can benefit both producers and consumers greatly. A suite of policy and program measures at different levels of the supply chain can stimulate the efficiency and competitiveness of expanding staple markets.
ONGOING WORK
IFPRI researchers, with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), undertook a study to find ways to increase value-chain finance for the poor in the Asia-Pacific region. The exchange of evidence, data, and results among institutions and individuals is critical to the expansion of sound financing. In December 2012, IFPRI and ADB published The Quiet Revolution in Staple Food Value Chains, which explains the study’s research, results, and policy implications. Among other findings, the popular new book (downloaded nearly 10,000 times in three months) explains the need for different policies to cover the Asia-Pacific region’s wide variety of agricultural zones and farming styles and capacities. Areas that produce rice and potatoes, the region’s major staple crops, are highly heterogeneous, so government strategies must be tailored to different situations—especially to incorporate marginal farmers.
