Agriculture and Food

23 items available

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A strong food and agriculture system is fundamental to economic growth, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and human health. The Agriculture and Food Series is intended to prompt public discussion and inform policies that will deliver higher incomes, reduce hunger, improve sustainability, and generate better health and nutrition from the food we grow and eat. It expands on the former Agriculture and Rural Development series by considering issues from farm to fork, in both rural and urban settings. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice.

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  • Publication
    What's Cooking: Digital Transformation of the Agrifood System
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-03-16) Schroeder, Kateryna; Lampietti, Julian; Elabed, Ghada
    The digital agriculture revolution holds a promise to build an agriculture and food system that is efficient, environmentally sustainable, and equitable, one that can help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. Unlike past technological revolutions in agriculture, which began on farms, the current revolution is being sparked at multiple points along the agrifood value chain. The change is driven by the ability to collect, use, and analyze massive amounts of machine-readable data about practically every aspect of the value chain, and by the emergence of digital platforms disrupting existing business models. All this allows for drastically reduced transaction costs and pervasive information asymmetries that plague the agrifood system. The success of the digital transformation, however, is not guaranteed as the risks it brings are numerous, including those related to data governance and inadequate competition within and between digital platforms. What’s Cooking: Digital Transformation of the Agrifood System investigates how digital technologies can accelerate the transformation of the agrifood system by increasing efficiency on the farm; improving farmers’ access to output, input, and financial markets; strengthening quality control and traceability; and improving the design and delivery of agriculture policies. It also identifies a key role for the public sector in maximizing the benefits of this process while minimizing its risks, through enabling an innovation ecosystem featuring open datasets, digital platforms, digital entrepreneurship, digital payment systems, and digital skills and encouraging equitable technology adoption.
  • Publication
    The Safe Food Imperative: Accelerating Progress in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019) Jaffee, Steven; Henson, Spencer; Unnevehr, Laurian; Grace, Delia; Cassou, Emilie
    Food safety is vital for achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals, including ending poverty and hunger and promoting health and well-being. Unsafe food can cause illness and death, and it keeps people from working and thriving. It undermines food and nutritional security, imposes costs on the food economy and public health system, and disrupts international trade. The global burden of foodborne disease falls disproportionately on children under age five and on the populations of low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa. Low- and middle-income countries are estimated, in aggregate, to experience a productivity loss of some US$95 billion per year as a result of unsafe food. The Safe Food Imperative argues that much of the health and economic burden of unsafe food can be avoided through preventive measures, investments, and behavioral changes adopted from farm to fork. It draws attention to policies and approaches that governments can use to invest wisely in food safety, to better leverage private initiatives, and to engage effectively with consumers. Both its analysis of food safety challenges and its recommendations for priority public and other stakeholder actions are differentiated for countries at different levels of economic development. The Safe Food Imperative will be of interest to food safety and development practitioners, as well as to policy makers and policy analysts in low- and middle-income countries---those associated with technical ministries (especially agriculture, health, and trade) and those involved with economic and development planning and budgetary and fiscal management.