This report strengthens the economic case for increased public investment and more robust policy attention to food safety in low and middle income countries and provides guidance on ways to achieve significant, broad-based impact from such actions.

The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment, and it is widely expected to address key food and agricultural challenges with a new set of policies and programs. This policy brief presents key recommendations from a forthcoming book, Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, which provides research-based “food for thought and action” to support the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve food security.

Two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health, economic, and social disruptions caused by this global crisis continue to evolve. The impacts of the pandemic are likely to endure for years to come, with poor, marginalized, and vulnerable groups the most affected. In COVID-19 & Global Food Security: Two Years Later, the editors bring together contributions from new IFPRI research, blogs, and the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub to examine the pandemic’s effects on poverty, food security, nutrition, and health around the world. This volume presents key lessons learned on food security and food system resilience in 2020 and 2021 and assesses the effectiveness of policy responses to the crisis. Looking forward, the authors consider how the pandemic experience can inform both recovery and longer-term efforts to build more resilient food systems.

This Open Access book compiles the findings of the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 and its research partners. The Scientific Group was an independent group of 28 food systems scientists from all over the world with a mandate from the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations. The chapters provide science- and research-based, state-of-the-art, solution-oriented knowledge and evidence to inform the transformation of contemporary food systems in order to achieve more sustainable, equitable and resilient systems.

Food systems and diets underpin many critical challenges to public health and environmental sustainability, including malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and climate change, but sustainable healthy diets have the unique potential to reshape the future for both human and planetary well-being. The 2024 Global Food Policy Report draws on recent evidence to examine the role of food systems in driving nutrition outcomes and opportunities for transforming food systems to ensure healthy diets for all. Chapters by IFPRI researchers and partners evaluate proven and innovative ways to sustainably improve diet quality and reduce malnutrition, including ways to make healthy diets more affordable, accessible, and desirable, how to improve food environments, the role of both agricultural crops and animal-source foods, and governance for better diets and nutrition, all with a major focus on the most vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. Regional sections explore the diverse challenges countries face and promising policy responses for transforming food systems for sustainable healthy diets.

Ensuring optimal diets and nutrition for the global population is a grand challenge fraught with many contentious issues. To achieve food security for all and protect health, we need functional, equitable, and sustainable food systems. Food systems are highly complex networks of individuals and institutions that depend on governance and policy leadership. This book explains how interconnected food systems and policies affect diets and nutrition in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. In tandem with food policy, food systems determine the availability, affordability, and nutritional quality of the food supply, which influences the diets that people are willing and able to consume. Readers will become familiar with both domestic and international food policy processes and actors, and they will be able to critically analyze and debate how policy and science affect diet and nutrition outcomes.

Despite global economic volatility, growth in developing East Asia and Pacific (EAP) was resilient during 2018, and in the first quarter of 2019. The growth outlook for developing EAP is expected to soften in 2019, as China's economic expansion continues to moderate. Downside risks remain, including expected moderated global demand, continued trade tensions, the risk of a faster-thanexpected financial tightening in developed economies, the risk of weaker-than-expected growth in China, and continued financial market volatility. Also, or in combination, these risks could weigh on the· region's growth prospects in the short-to-medium term. To manage global and regional headwinds, developing EAP economies should reduce short-term vulnerabilities and enhance buffers, redouble their commitment to an open, rules-based international trade and investment framework, including through deeper regional economic integration, and deepen structural reforms. The intensification of risks underscores the need to continue to enhance economic security by investing in human capital and strengthen social assistance.