Across the developing world, urbanization and income growth are driving massive shifts in consumers’ food preferences and subsequently in the form and functioning of local and regional food value chains. These changes hold great potential for improving livelihoods and food security in developing countries, but they also carry social, economic, environmental, and health risks. A better understanding of how producers and consumers are interacting with modern food value chains can help researchers and policymakers pinpoint interventions to strengthen these chains and ensure that value chain transformation happens in inclusive, healthy, and environmentally sustainable ways. This webinar will present findings from the recent CGIAR research on food value chains in three regions.
Matty Demont (IRRI) will speak about the rice value chain upgrading in West Africa during 2009-2019, which resulted from policies implemented by African governments after the food price crisis in 2008 and aimed at crowding in investment in the value chain to help domestic rice compete with imports.
Trent Blare (University of Florida/former CIMMYT) will share results of the study examining consumers’ purchasing habits and demand in peri-urban Mexico City for three types of tortillas: i) machine-made white, ii) handmade white, and iii) handmade blue.
Tanguy Bernard (IFPRI) will present on the experimental research in Senegal implementing a new contracting arrangement that bundles price premium certainty with training and credit for the purchase of a new quality-improving technology.
Matty Demont has more than 20 years of research experience in implementing extensive surveys, value chain analyses, and behavioral experiments with consumers, farmers and value chain actors throughout Asia and Africa to assist research organizations, policy makers and value chain actors in designing strategies to increase food security and catalyze food system transformation. His current research focuses on sustainable rice value chain upgrading and the development of nutrition-sensitive rice-based food systems.
Dr. Trent Blare is an Assistant Professor in the Food and Resource Economics Department. Prior to joining TREC, Trent was a Markets and Value Chain Specialist in the CGIAR international agricultural research system for six years with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Lima, Peru and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Texcoco, Mexico. Dr. Blare graduated with his Ph.D. in Food in Resource Economics from the University of Florida in 2014.
Dr. Blare’s extension and research program is comprised of two components. The first examines the potential for south Florida growers to expand their current markets and gain access to new ones for fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants. He applies innovative behavioral economic techniques and experiments to determine consumers interest in these agricultural products. He uses the evidence from this research to work closely with growers, extension agents, processors, retailers, consumers, and regulators in developing supply chains for these goods.
The second area of Dr. Blare’s program uses non-market valuation methods to place a dollar value on south Florida’s natural resources such as waterways, protected areas, and clean air, that inherently do not have a market value. Establishing these values for natural resources assists decision makers, regulators, and administrators in determining where to focus their efforts and demonstrates the importance of these natural resources to natural resources users and other stakeholders.
Nicholas W. Minot is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Division Director in the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Since joining IFPRI in 1997, he has carried out research on the the impact of trade policy on poverty, agricultural market reform in Africa, fertilizer policy, value chains, income diversification, spatial patterns in poverty, high-value agriculture, market information systems, and food price transmission.
He is currently working on studies of rice price stabilization in Bangladesh, pastoral resilience in Burkina Faso, food and nutrition security in Indonesia, and methods of prioritizing agricultural investments. He is also the co-leader of a research program on Efficient and Inclusive Value Chains within the CGIAR research program Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM).
Before joining IFPRI he taught at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, worked as a policy adviser in Zimbabwe, and served as a survey analyst in Rwanda. He also carried out research on agricultural marketing in Bolivia, Cameroon, and Peru, on small enterprises in Laos, and on household budgets in Paraguay. A U.S. citizen, he received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University and his B.A. in international development from Brown University.
Frank Place is the director of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM). Before being appointed PIM director (August 2018), Frank served for four years as a senior research fellow in the PIM Program Management Unit. His primary duties included coordination of impact assessment and leadership of the program’s cluster of work on technology adoption and impact. Before joining PIM in 2014, Dr. Place worked for the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) for 20 years, based in Nairobi. His main research areas were adoption of agroforestry, land and tree tenure, and soil fertility management. Prior to ICRAF, Frank led a Land Tenure Center project based in Africa and worked at the World Bank HQ in Washington, where he focused on property rights in agriculture. Frank Place received a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1988.