Food Security
Food insecurity is a pressing global challenge. IDS-Oxfam research has found that the 2007-11 global food crisis brought about lasting changes in how people work, what they eat and how they care for their families. The causes of food insecurity are complex and the integrated approach required to effectively tackle the problem is often lacking.
IDS’ research on food security cuts across a number of teams and disciplines and seeks to inform and shape current policy debates on developing a joined up response to delivering greater food security and justice for all.
Social protection and food security
Fellows across IDS have been exploring the complex causes underlying the global problem of food security including food price spikes, fair access to land and water and the impact of climate change.
Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) is a five-year research programme, which builds on more than a decade of research and policy engagement work by the Future Agricultures Consortium. The aim of the project is to produce new information and insights into different pathways to agricultural commercialisation in order to assess their impacts and outcomes on rural poverty, empowerment of women and girls, and food and nutrition security in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Through the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project with Oxfam, IDS researchers and partners found that people are no longer experiencing price rises as shocks but rather as a constant pressure, particularly as wages are not rising as fast as the growing cost of living.
The role of the private sector in helping to deliver new food security initiatives
IDS research is also looking at the role of the private sector in increasing the availability and access to food through investments in agriculture and working in partnership with small holder famers. IDS Fellows have also worked with partners such as Oxfam (Growing a Better Future) and Action Against Hunger (Aid for Nutrition) to produce new research on how to tackle global food insecurity and undernutrition.


Dirk Willenbockel - Research Fellow
- Green Transformations Business, Markets and the State Rural Futures
- T: +44 (0)1273 915700
- E: d.willenbockel@ids.ac.uk

Dolf te Lintelo - Research Fellow and Cities Cluster Co-Leader
- Cities Health and Nutrition
- T: +44 (0)1273 915767
- E: d.telintelo@ids.ac.uk



Inka Barnett - Research Fellow
- Health and Nutrition Cities Digital and Technology
- T: +44 (0)1273 915754
- E: i.barnett@ids.ac.uk

Jody Harris - Post Doctoral Researcher
- Health and Nutrition
- T: +44 (0) 1273 915742
- E: j.harris@ids.ac.uk

Nicholas Nisbett - Cluster Leader Research Fellow
- Health and Nutrition
- T: +44 (0)1273 915839
- E: n.c.nisbett@ids.ac.uk

Rajith Lakshman - Research Officer
- Health and Nutrition Cities
- T: +44 (0)1273 915611
- E: r.lakshman@ids.ac.uk

Richard Longhurst - Research Associate
- Rural Futures Health and Nutrition
- T: +44 (0)1273 915751
- E: r.longhurst@ids.ac.uk

Stephen Devereux - Research Fellow
- Rural Futures
- T: +44 (0)1273 915813
- E: s.devereux@ids.ac.uk

Accelerating Progress in Reducing Hunger and Undernutrition
This programme will focus on how agriculture can deliver better nutrition outcomes by developing evidence-based policy options and tools for businesses, governments, NGOs and donors. More details
Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA)
Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) is a five-year, DFID-funded, research programme consortium which aims to produce new evidence and policy insights into different pathways to agricultural commercialisation in Africa and their differential outcomes for local people and economies. More details
Cutting Edge Programme on Gender and Food Security
This BRIDGE Cutting Edge Programme on Gender and Food Security makes the case for a new, gender-aware understanding of food security, arguing that partial, apolitical and gender-blind diagnoses of the problem of food and nutrition insecurity is leading to insufficient policy responses and the failure to realise the right to food for all people. More details
Economy-wide Implications of Agricultural Sector Scenario Projections
The aim of this project is to link the world agricultural model IMPACT housed at IFRI with the global multi-region CGE model GLOBE in order to provide quantitative analyses of the wider implications of agricultural sector scenario projections generated by IMPACT for the rest of the economy, and to enable an assessment of the aggregate welfare effects associated with changes in the agricultural sector that include economy-wide linkage effects. More details
Enhancing Effectiveness of Multi-Stakeholder Platforms in Food and Agriculture
The kind of challenges that the food and agriculture sector is faced with increasingly asks for approaches that can engage effectively with related complexities. Much is invested in multi-stakeholder platforms as they hold a potential for playing an important role in doing so. However, there is a great need to assess their contribution to inclusive and sustainable development, and to assess what makes for effective platforms. More details
Entomophagy and the global food system: future scenarios and plausible pathways
This project will look broadly at the potential implications of entomophagy (insect eating) for the global food system. More details
Food Riots and Food Rights
The objective of this research is to improve the prospects for accountability for food security at a time of volatility. This will be achieved through an exploration of the proposition that recent popular mobilisation around food has activated public accountability for hunger. More details
Food Security, Gender Equality and Peace-Building: Theoretical Framework and Future Agendas
IDS researchers have been commissioned to generate knowledge and evidence-based, actionable recommendations to governments and other stakeholders on the nexus between support to food and nutrition security and building resilient livelihoods, peace processes and stability, and how to integrate gender issues into appropriate policies and actions related to food and nutrition security in situations where conflict exists, has recently ceased, or is likely to reoccur. More details
Future Agricultures Consortium
The DFID funded Future Agricultures Consortium is an Africa-based alliance of research organisations seeking to provide timely, high-quality and independent information and advice to improve agricultural policy and practice in Africa. More details
Global Food and Farming Futures – Lead Expert Group
The Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures addresses the question: ‘How can a future global population of 9 billion people all be fed healthily and sustainably?' More details
GM Crops and Indigenous Management Skill
This project examines the effects of GM seeds on the ‘indigenous management skill’ (IMS) that is crucial to the productivity and sustainability of small-scale crop cultivation. More details
High Level Panel of Experts Report on Social Protection and Food Security
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) requested the HLPE to produce a report, to be presented at the 39th Session of the CFS, a study on social protection and food security. More details
Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index - HANCI
HANCI measures and ranks governments’ political commitment to reduce hunger and undernutrition on an annual basis. More details
Impact Evaluation of the PSNP and HAPB 2012
Since 2003, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has been implementing a new Food Security Programme (FSP). In 2009, this programme was reviewed and reformulated. More details
Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility
Researching the impacts of, and responses to, volatile food prices in poor communities in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zambia. More details
Participatory vulnerability assessment and climate adaptation planning for food security and nutrition in East Africa
In collaboration with Bioversity International, the Climate Change Team at IDS is designing a participatory vulnerability analysis toolkit. The work builds upon a toolkit that IDS created for Mexico’s National Commission for Protected Natural Areas (CONANP), in work funded by GIZ (documentation currently in Spanish only). It will be field-tested in Tanzania in September 2013. More details
Resilience, Adaptability, and Transformability of Fishing Communities in the Face of the World Fisheries Crisis
This project is a response to the initial DFID-ESRC 'Resource scarcity, growth, and poverty reduction' call and it is titled "Tangled in their (own) safety-nets?: Resilience, adaptability, and transformability of fishing communities in the face of the World fisheries crisis. More details
Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre
The STEPS Centre is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It aims to develop a new approach to understanding, action and communication on sustainability and development. More details
The Impacts of Alternative Energy Policies and Energy Price Shocks on Food and Water Security
The interactions between energy and food production are becoming more important as more developing countries have started to increase energy intensity in agriculture and as energy and food prices are increasingly correlated. This project will shed light on these topics across the developing world. More details
The Social Impacts of Crisis
How have people and communities experienced recent global economic shocks? In early 2009, the Social Impacts of Crisis project started work in 12 community 'listening posts' in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Yemen and Zambia to answer this question. More details

Squeezed - Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility, Year 1 Results
The first year results of a four-year study on how food price volatility affects everyday life find important changes in people's wellbeing and development. More details

Seeing the Unseen: Breaking the Logjam of Undernutrition in Pakistan
IDS Bulletin 44.3 (2013)After a lost decade, there is clearly a groundswell of momentum for nutrition in Pakistan, driven by a confluence of policy, evidence and events. This momentum needs to be sustained at the national level, reinforced at the provincial and sub-provincial levels, and converted into action. More details

Nutritious Agriculture by Design: A Tool for Program Planning - a GAIN-IDS Discussion Paper
This Discussion Paper accompanies a new Program Planning tool entitled Nutritious Agriculture by Design. The tool places a nutritional focus on agricultural programmes by providing a framework for programme designers and implementers to guide and adjust agricultural interventions through improved linkages with nutrition. More details

Banking on Food: The State of Food Banks in High-income Countries
IDS Working Paper 415 (2013)Food banks provide food to charities and other grassroots organisations for supporting vulnerable populations. As such, they tend to complement more institutionalised, state-provided safety net programmes. More details

Trajectories of Social Protection in Africa
Development Southern Africa 30.1 (2013)Social protection in contemporary Africa is the product of several strands of social policy, from European social security systems to humanitarian relief interventions. This article argues instead for a ‘social contract’ approach. More details

Vulnerability and Adaptation of African rural populations to Climate Change: the Case of Fishers’ Communities in the Central Delta of Niger
Climate Change 3-4.115 (2012)In this paper we examine ways Sahelian floodplain fishers have adapted to the strong environmental variations that have affected the region in the last two decades. We analyse their vulnerability and adaptive capacity in the face of expected changes in rainfall combined with the predicted effects of dam construction. More details

Global Implications of Somalia 2011 for Famine Prevention, Mitigation and Response
Global Food Security Special Issue on the Somalia Famine of 2011-2012 (2012)The famine in Somalia 2011–2012 is a call for critical reflection and improvement. To summarize the main conclusions, while the emergence of a food security crisis in the Greater Horn of Africa in 2011 was well predicted, inadequate measures were taken to prevent, mitigate and respond to this crisis. More details

Ending Hunger and Malnutrition
IDS Virtual Bulletin 2 (2012)The first article in this virtual IDS Bulletin is by Michael Lipton and dates from 1982. In that year the WHO stunting rate for children of preschool age in sub-Saharan Africa was 39 per cent. In 2012 the rate is still 39 per cent. More details

Nutrition, Governance and Violence: A Framework for the Analysis of Resilience and Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Contexts of Violent Conflict
HiCN Working Paper 132 (2012)Part of the Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) series, this paper analyses the varying levels of resilience experienced by those affected by conflict, and discusses how this evidence can be best incorporated into international and national interventions aimed at securing the access to food and livelihoods by individuals, households and communities affected by violence and conflict. More details

Climate Change Communication and Social Learning - Review and Strategy Development for CCAFS
This working paper offers an overview of current theory and practice on climate change communication and social learning in the global South with a view of informing CCAFS strategy in this area. More details

Returning Home after Civil War: The Consequences of Forced Displacement for Food Security, Nutrition and Poverty among Burundese Households
HICN Working Paper 123 (2012)Published as part of the Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) series, this working paper investigates the food security and poverty of formerly displaced persons and their household. More details

Food Safety, Private Standards, Schemes and Trade: The Implications of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act
IDS Working Paper 403 (2012)Food safety standards for the production of fruit and vegetables that are developed and administered by private sector actors have become a common requirement for producers and exporters of fresh produce in the past two decades. More details

Extreme Weather Events and Crop Price Spikes in a Changing Climate: Illustrative global simulation scenarios
This study uses a global dynamic multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to explore the potential food price impacts of a number of extreme weather event scenarios in 2030 for each of the main exporting regions for rice, maize and wheat. More details

Standing on the Threshold: Food Justice in India
IDS Bulletin Special Issue (2012)India stands on the threshold of potentially the largest step toward food justice the world has ever seen, as the National Food Security Bill works its way through parliament with a view to being passed during its current term period, covering about 70 per cent of households. More details

Accelerating Reductions in Undernutrition: What can nutrition governance tell us?
IDS In Focus Policy Briefing 22 (2012)In order to accelerate progress on undernutrition reduction we need to understand how the governance of nutrition programmes leads to successful outcomes. More details

A synthesis of lessons - Government experiences of scale-up of Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM)
This report is a synthesis from lessons of government experiences of scale up of community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM). More details

Innovative approaches to gender and food security (Insights)
Insights 82 (2012)Development policy and practice can both potentially improve food security while supporting women’s empowerment - but how? More details

Living Through Crises - How the Food, Fuel and Financial Shocks Affect the Poor
What did the global food, fuel, and financial crises of 2008-11 mean to people living in the developing world? How did people cope with the crisis and how effective were they at averting major impacts? These are the questions addressed by this book, which emerged out of qualitative crisis monitoring initiatives carried out by IDS and the World Bank. More details
Delicious, disgusting and dangerous foods are changing our diets
03 Nov 2015By Alexandra Wanjiku Kelbert
Faced with hunger: durable households or resilient networks of women?
02 Jul 2015By Ayesha Mysorewala
We cannot tackle hunger without transforming gender inequalities
29 Jun 2015By Alexandra Spieldoch, Alyson Brody