Understanding how the Papua New Guinea (PNG) agricultural economy and associated household consumption is affected by climate, market and other shocks requires attention to linkages and substitution effects across various products and the markets in which they are traded. In this study, we use a multi-market simulation model of the PNG food economy that explicitly includes production, consumption, external trade and prices of key agricultural commodities to quantify the likely impacts of a set of potential shocks on household welfare and food security in PNG. In this study, we use a multi-market simulation model of the PNG food economy that explicitly includes production, consumption, external trade and prices of key agricultural commodities to quantify the likely impacts of a set of potential shocks on household welfare and food security in PNG. We have built the model to be flexible in order to explore different potential scenarios and then identify where and how households are most affected by an unexpected shock. The model is designed using region and country-level data sources that inform the structure of the PNG food economy, allowing for a data-driven evaluation of potential impacts on agricultural production, food prices, and food consumption. Thus, as PNG confronts different unexpected challenges within its agricultural economy, the model presented in this paper can be adapted to evaluate the potential impact and necessary response by geographic region of an unexpected economic shock on the food economy of the country. We present ten simulations modeling the effects of various shocks on PNG’s economy. The first group of scenarios consider the effects of shocks to production of specific agricultural commodities including: 1) a decrease on maize and sorghum output due to Fall Armyworm; 2) reduction in pig production due to a potential outbreak of African Swine Fever; 3) decline in sweet potato production similar to the 2015/16 El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate shock; and 4) a decline in poultry production due to COVID-19 restrictions on domestic mobility and trade. A synopsis of this report, which focuses on the COVID-19 related shocks on the PNG economy is also available online (Diao et al., 2020).1 The second group of simulations focus on COVID-19-related changes in international prices, increased marketing costs in international and domestic trade, and reductions in urban incomes. We simulate a 1) 30 percent increase in the price of imported rice, 2) a 30 percent decrease in world prices for major PNG agricultural exports, 3) higher trade transaction costs due to restrictions on the movement of people (traders) and goods given social distancing measures of COVID-19, and 4) potential economic recession causing urban household income to fall by 10 percent. Finally, the last simulation considers the combined effect of all COVID-19 related shocks combining the above scenarios into a single simulation. A key result of the analysis is that urban households, especially the urban poor, are particularly vulnerable to shocks related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Lower economic activity in urban areas (assumed to reduce urban non-agricultural incomes by 10 percent), increases in marketing costs due to domestic trade disruptions, and 30 percent higher imported rice prices combine to lower urban incomes by almost 15 percent for both poor and non-poor urban households. Urban poor households, however, suffer the largest drop in calorie consumption - 19.8 percent, compared to a 15.8 percent decline for urban non-poor households. Rural households are much less affected by the Covid-19 related shocks modeled in these simulations. Rural household incomes, affected mainly by reduced urban demand and market disruptions, fall by only about four percent. Nonetheless, calorie consumption for the rural poor and non-poor falls by 5.5 and 4.2 percent, respectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying lockdowns have had enormous negative economic impacts and tested the resilience of people across all income levels. However, as with most crises, the poor disproportionately face the largest challenge in coping with economic shocks given their low asset base, lack of savings, and the informality of their employment. Recent estimates suggest that as many as 140 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty by the crisis, threatening gains made in the fight against poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in the last decade (Laborde, Martin, and Vos 2020). Social safety net policies have expanded considerably during the pandemic, helping to prevent vulnerable populations from falling further into poverty and supporting households’ recovery following the pandemic. This brief summarizes some of the patterns that have emerged, using data from the COVID-19 Policy Response (CPR) Portal to better identify how governments are targeting their efforts, which groups they are prioritizing, and whether citizens are satisfied with these interventions.

Developments in the agricultural economy of Papua New Guinea have major impacts on household food consumption decisions. A household’s ability to produce and sell food is affected by climate and associated agricultural potential, market opportunities (domestic, import and export) and unexpected shocks. Each of these factors affects the overall food system, thereby influencing production and consumption of all food products and the markets in which they are traded. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a challenge far more complex than an agricultural production shock, such as those due to El Niño or pests. Rather than directly affecting agricultural output and rural household welfare, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected economies across the globe via trade disruptions (logistic challenges; international trade barriers), social distancing policies (domestic food market and nonessential business closures), and transportation restrictions (road closures; air travel cancellations). The measures aimed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have affected household incomes via urban job losses, reduced market interaction, and dramatic changes in world food prices. While rice prices have increased, luxury food prices, such as for chocolate (i.e. cocoa), have decreased. PNG’s unique and highly varied biophysical landscape has shaped agricultural production patterns, outcomes, and livelihoods for centuries. Understanding how the PNG agrifood economy and resulting household consumption is affected by COVID-19 therefore requires attention to linkages and substitution effects across various products and the markets in which they are traded.

This study analyzes the past performance and future opportunities and challenges of Tajikistan’s agrifood system (AFS). The study measures the current size and structure of AFS and its historical contribution to economic growth and transformation through a data-driven exercise. A forward-looking economywide model is used to assess the effectiveness of future AFS growth (led by agricultural productivity gains in different value chains) in promoting multiple development outcomes. The findings of the study indicate that AFS transformation is an important part of Tajikistan’s economic transformation and structural change. Because of lower growth contributions from AFS’s off-farm components as well as fewer farm workers moving from primary agriculture to off-farm activities within AFS, Tajikistan’s AFS did not grow as quickly as the broader economy. Expanding off-farm activities to boost on-farm productivity growth remains a challenge for sustainable transformation of Tajikistan’s AFS. Using an economywide model, we find that there is no single value chain group that would most effectively achieve all desired development outcomes including broad economic growth, job creation, declining poverty, and improved diets. Livestock value chains, however, have the most potential to contribute to multiple development outcomes, particularly to dietary improvement, and these value chains also performed impressively during the study period. Moreover, most cattle and ruminants are owned by household farms, and their growth could contribute to broader agricultural transformation. The maize value chain also ranks high in the model-based comparison, but it seems to only modestly contribute to job creation and diet quality and had performed disappointingly during the study period. While growth in livestock and maize value chains face a series of challenges and constraints, promoting them together seems to offer an effective way to broadly achieve important development outcomes.

This paper presents a model-based and data-driven analysis of alternative public investment options for Tajikistan’s agrifood system based on cost-effectiveness in achieving multiple development outcomes. The study indicates that there is no single intervention that is the most cost-effective across all economic and social outcomes, including agrifood GDP growth, job creation, poverty reduction, lowered undernourishment, and improvement in diet quality. Irrigation infrastructure development, R&D in husbandry, and food loss and waste reduction are the most cost-effective investments in the combined economic outcomes, including growth and jobs. In contrast, irrigation, food loss and waste reduction, and seed systems are more effective in the combined social outcomes, including poverty, undernourishment, and diet. Considering time horizons, extension services are more effective in the short run, while irrigation and R&D deliver greater impact over time. Sector variations in the magnitude of effects are also observed among investment interventions. Overall, comparisons across development outcomes, sectoral focus, and timeframes reveal important synergies and trade-offs, underscoring the need for evidence-based tools to guide effective policy and investment decisions.

Urbanization has had a major impact on livelihoods in Ghana and throughout Africa as a whole. However, much research on urbanization has focused on effects occurring within cities, while there is insufficient understanding of its effects on rural areas. This paper examines the impact of urbanization—through a typology of districts—on rural livelihoods in Ghana. The country’s districts are classified into seven spatial groups according to the size of the largest city in each district in southern and northern Ghana. The paper does not address rural–urban migration but instead focuses on the livelihoods of rural households. In contrast to the extensive literature focusing on the effects of urbanization on individuals, we assess its impacts on individual rural households as a whole, with a particular focus on youth-headed households. Many rural households have shifted their primary employment from agriculture to nonagriculture, especially in the more urbanized South. In contrast, change in livelihood diversification within rural households with family members’ primary employment in both agriculture and nonagriculture appears much less rapid. Rural youth-headed households are significantly more associated with the transition away from agriculture than households headed by other adults, and such trends are stronger in locations closer to larger cities, particularly in the South. Although the nonagricultural economy is becoming increasingly important for rural households, contrary to expectations, the probit model analysis in this paper shows that agricultural production does not appear to be more intensified—in terms of modern input use—in the more urbanized South, and youth do not show greater agricultural technology adoption than other adults, indicating that the constraints against modern input adoption may be binding for all farmers, including youth and farmers in more urbanized locations. We also find that rural poverty rates are consistently lower among nonagricultural households, and the share of middle-class population is also disproportionally higher among rural nonagricultural households than agricultural households. While the probit analysis confirms the positive relationship between being a nonagricultural household and being nonpoor or becoming middle class after controlling for all other factors, education seems to play the biggest role. As rural youth become more educated and more households shift from agriculture to the rural nonfarm economy, a different range of technologies for agricultural intensification is necessary for agriculture to be attractive for youth. A territorial approach and related policies that integrate secondary cities and small towns with the rural economy deserve more attention such that the diversification of rural livelihoods can become a viable alternative or complement to rural–urban migration for youth.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique challenge to governments across the globe, reinforcing the need to improve understanding of domestic and international trade trends to provide more informed options for policy response. Papua New Guinea’s growing international trade in food and other agricultural products will continue to be important to overall food security outcomes among rural and urban households in the country. Rural households that produce key export cash-crops, such as coffee, cocoa, or palm oil, depend on the cash economy to supplement their food consumption, while urban households depend on rice and other agri-food imports, as well as domestic goods, for consumption. This project note focuses on trends in agrifood imports and exports during the last two decades to better evaluate potential changes in import demand and export potential for PNG. In doing so, it informs an upcoming economy-wide multi-market model analysis that will evaluate a variety of potential shocks to PNG’s agri-food system on household welfare in order to identify policies to manage potential food security threats. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of many diverse shocks that may adversely affect the economy of PNG over the next decade. The expansion of a portfolio of organized databases, analytical tools, and policy resources, such as the multimarket model, is warranted to facilitate real-time policy analyses to inform key development investments and initiatives.

The regional context in which rural livelihoods in Myanmar are embedded varies widely, in terms of physical geography, climate and agroecology, local resource base, agrarian structure, infrastructure provision, proximity to urban areas and neighboring countries, social networks, institutions, and ethnicities. The composition of livelihoods in each administrative and geographical zone of the country reflects these diverse contexts. Marked variations in patterns of livelihoods are evident at multiple scales, from the zone or region, down to township, and village level, so that the composition of livelihoods in villages close to one another sometimes varies widely (Phyo, 2022). Despite a high level of place-based specificity, many broad similarities and common trends also shape the composition of livelihoods at sub-national and national levels. These include: Generally low levels of agricultural productivity relative to other countries in the region, in terms of both land and labor (World Bank 2016); High rates of landlessness and legacies of land confiscation and unresolved struggles over land rights and access (Mark and Belton 2020); Generally poor, though -prior to 2020 - rapidly improving, public infrastructure and services, including electricity, roads, schools, health services, and rural credit (Belton et al. 2017; Lambrecht and Belton 2018); Relatively low levels of diversification and capital in the rural non-farm economy; High rates of international and domestic outmigration (World Bank and LIFT 2016; CHIME 2019); Histories of ethno-political conflict and insecurity (South 2009). This working paper synthesizes analyses from four large household surveys, each covering a major agro-ecological zone, to evaluate inter-regional variations in the composition of livelihoods and the rural economy. The four zones examined are the Delta (Ayeyarwady and Yangon), the Dry Zone (Mandalay, Magway, Sagaing), the hills (represented by Shan South), and the coasts (represented by Mon State). We also synthesize recent secondary sources that offer additional context and insights on regional livelihood dynamics from these and other areas of Myanmar, including the impacts of the ‘triple crisis’ (covid, coup, and price inflation) beginning in 2020.

Context: The average consumption of protein foods in Papua New Guinea (PNG) remains insufficient to meet nutritious diet guidelines, especially in rural areas. While an expanding literature has demonstrated that poultry is a cost-efficient animal source food to increase protein intake, rural households in PNG face high prices at the market for poultry meat. Similarly, the high price of poultry production inputs constrains greater uptake of rural poultry production. PNG’s heavy reliance on feed (and feed input) imports, as well as high transportation costs and insufficient rural manufacturing and processing infrastructure creates limited opportunities for rural subsistence and commercial poultry production growth. Objective: There is a lack of value chain studies to understand the feasibility of expanding the local mini livestock feed mill model in PNG to increase poultry feed supply in underserved areas. This study builds from earlier work on rural livestock feed infrastructure programs, and aims to fill the knowledge gap on the opportunities and constraints for expanding domestic livestock feed production and distribution via rural mini feed mills. Method: The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI) conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 8 mini mills and 13 poultry farmers across 4 highland provinces during October and November 2022. We synthesize the interview transcriptions of the qualitative interviews in tandem with quantitative analysis of food consumption and agri-food trade data, as well as the authors’ own field observations in this paper. Results: The in-depth interviews showed that the poultry farmers who purchased from local mini feed mills substantially lowered their feed costs, resulting in greater gross profits compared to rural poultry farmers that only sourced feed from commercial feed suppliers. However, the mini feed mills that we interviewed outlined a series of challenges in sustaining rural feed mills in PNG. The main challenges of running a successful mill included feed mill equipment procurement, electricity reliability, reliable raw ingredient supply, mini mill retailing to secure a client base, and adequate information about feed formulation. We identified two potential approaches that have overcome many of the identified challenges, that could be replicated and adapted to expand mini feed mill operations in the Highlands. The first approach is a farmer cooperative model that incorporates credit and feed delivery services to cooperative farmers. In doing so, they are able to better estimate volume demand for processed feed and accommodate feed production accordingly. The second approach follows a lead firm model, whereby a local farm supply retail outlet is expanding its business to include livestock feed production and supply, overcoming equipment procurement constraints given their previously developed business model focused on farm implement supply. Our evaluation provides detailed costs and benefits of both approaches for potential expansion of these livestock feed producer and distributor models.

Despite poultry being lauded as a relatively affordable source of protein and micronutrients in many lower-income countries, chicken meat is twice as expensive in PNG compared to nearby Southeast Asian countries. Recent rural household consumption data collected by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggests that an important share of households do not eat enough protein to meet healthy dietary guidelines (Schmidt et al., 2024). Poultry, along with fish and pork, are the three most important animal-source protein foods in the country, yet these products remain financially prohibitive to a large share of the population. This paper explores the unique challenges and opportunities within PNG’s poultry sector using a "growth diagnostic" approach (pioneered by Rodrik, 2010). Through interviews with key stakeholders across the poultry value chain, we found that while high feed costs persist as a significant challenge, poultry farmers have yet to adopt additional cost-reduction strategies, such as establishing small-scale regional feed mills, utilizing local feed ingredients, and diversifying feed and input imports. An intriguing puzzle of PNG’s poultry sector is the limited number of small-scale producers successfully transitioning to medium-scale operations. This primarily stems from high transport costs and restricted access to input and sales markets. The challenges of marketing chicken in PNG have received less attention than production. Drawing on the experiences of successful models in other countries and considering the specific situation of PNG's poultry sector, fostering poultry production and processing clusters (e.g., in Lae suburban areas) emerges as a potential strategy to address production, transportation, and marketing constraints. By concentrating production, value chain clustering can enhance access to essential services (e.g. slaughtering and cold storage), improve market access, and reduce overall costs. While clustering holds promise for PNG’s poultry value chain, its success hinges upon joint action between the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs operating within the value chain.