Joachim von Braun
Board of Trustees
Organizational StructureHeadquarters:
2033 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006, U.S.A.
Offices in other countries
Date Established: 1975
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
IFPRI at a Glance
2007-2008 Annual Report
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty. IFPRI is one of 15 centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an alliance of 64 governments, private foundations, and international and regional organizations.
This vision is based on the human right to adequate food and freedom from hunger, and the recognition of the dignity inherent in all human beings. It is a vision of a world where every person has secure access to sufficient and safe food to sustain a healthy and productive life and where food-related policy decisions are made transparently and include the participation of consumers and producers.
This mission flows from the CGIAR mission: "To achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, policy, and natural resources management."
Two key premises underlie IFPRI's mission:
- Sound and appropriate local, national, and international public policies are essential to achieving sustainable food security and nutritional improvement.
- Research and the dissemination of its results are critical inputs into the process of raising the quality of food policy debate and formulating sound and appropriate policies.
IFPRI's mission focuses on:
- identifying and analyzing alternative international, national, and local policies in support of improved food security and nutrition, emphasizing low-income countries and poor people and the sound management of the natural resource base that supports agriculture;
- contributing to capacity strengthening of people and institutions in developing countries that conduct research on food, agriculture, and nutrition policies; and
- actively engaging in policy communications, making research results available to all those in a position to apply or use them, and carrying out dialogues with those users to link research and policy action.
IFPRI places priority on activities that benefit the greatest number of poor people in greatest need in the developing world. In carrying out its activities, IFPRI seeks to focus on vulnerable groups, as influenced by class, religion, ethnicity, agroecological location, and gender.
IFPRI is committed to providing global food policy knowledge as an international public good; that is, it provides knowledge relevant to decisionmakers both inside and outside the countries in which it undertakes research. New knowledge on how to improve the food security of low-income people in developing countries is expected to result in large social benefits, but in most instances the private sector is unlikely to carry out research to generate such knowledge. IFPRI views both public organizations and the private sector in food systems as objects of study and as partners.
Given the large body of national and international food policy research, IFPRI's added-value derives from its own cutting-edge research linked with academic excellence in other institutions, such as other CGIAR centers, universities, and other research institutes in the South and the North, and from its application of this knowledge to national and international food policy problems.