Global events, July 14th and 15th 2022
The Food Prices for Nutrition project assembles data and methods to monitor food access using the cost and affordability of healthy diets, with funding from the FAO to produce the results that will be published on July 6th in the FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO flagship annual report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. The UN agencies’ SOFI 2022 launch event will broadcast online here, and will provide globally standardized data on a suite of FAO indicators for the cost and affordability of a healthy diet (CoAHD). These same indicators plus more granular metrics will then be published by the World Bank in a new Food Prices for Nutrition data hub (link tbd), associated with a set of research studies from IFPRI as well as software tools and other work led by Tufts University with funding from FCDO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
On July 14th and 15th, the project is supporting a sequence of two global online events designed to decision-makers and analysts with the new Food Prices for Nutrition data and results. These events are described in a separate list of confirmed speakers and initial draft agenda.
Once the host institutions establish websites for each event, links will be updated here:
— A World Bank Live online event on July 14th, 10:00-11:30am ET, featuring the World Bank Acting Chief Economist, the FAO Chief Economist, the Director-General of IFPRI, and national leaders from Africa and Asia discussing how Food Prices for Nutrition data can be used to improve food systems, and
— An IFPRI policy seminar on July 15th, 10:00-11:30am ET, featuring Food Prices for Nutrition project leaders and participants around the world, discussing how policy analysts and researchers can use the new methods and data in their own work.
These two global events complement the large number of country-specific, targeted outreach, engagement and training efforts undertaken by the Food Prices for Nutrition project.
Coordinated global outreach and engagement events in July 2022 will help establish Food Prices for Nutrition data and metrics as key tools for policy analysis and monitoring in global and national food systems, looking behind the new data, methods and results to disseminate key innovations needed for systematic monitoring of access to healthy diets:
— use of retail prices for many differentiated food products, not just a few farm commodities,
— price conversion into standard units, accounting for edible fraction and water weight,
— selection of least-cost items in quantities sufficient nutrient adequacy or dietary guidelines,
— comparison to available income based on household survey data as a measure of affordability, and
— development of both default standards and customized methods to address specific needs in particular settings.
To publicize the value of these innovations, the events in July 2022 will be accompanied by blog posts and media outreach to engage policy audiences and the research community. These build on the project’s previous events and media, using diverse platforms for articles and data visualization at the World Bank, IFPRI, Tufts University and elsewhere. The twitter hashtag for this and related activity is #FoodPricesForNutrition, with related content on LinkedIn.