The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recently released its 2025 Global Food Policy Report, outlining key priorities for transforming food and agriculture systems through 2050. The report delivers a forward-looking, evidence-based global food policy roadmap for breaking down silos across climate, health, and agriculture.
“There’s unprecedented urgency around issues that were obscure in 20th-century crises,” Christopher Barrett, the Chair of IFPRI’s Strategy and Program Council, tells Food Tank. He highlights the growing threats of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, zoonotic diseases, obesity, and the rise of ultra-processed foods. “Yet despite these new challenges, there are important similarities,” he adds. “What feeds urgency among policymakers is largely high food prices and the prospect of mass food insecurity and the sociopolitical instability it too often fosters.”
For 50 years, IFPRI has shaped how the world thinks about food policy. IFPRI has published 4,000+ journal articles, and its datasets were downloaded over 2.2 million times in the last ten years. The new report outlines six global priorities to guide food systems research and action.
These priorities include strengthening resilience and inclusion, especially for vulnerable groups and conflict-affected regions. Additionally, IFPRI emphasizes improving diets and nutrition by tackling the root causes of poor food environments. Other focus areas include employing technology wisely, such as artificial intelligence and digital tools, while ensuring fair and equal access to them.
This a global food policy roadmap also calls for greater involvement from the private sector to support innovation across food value chains. It pushes for reforming public spending to better align with goals for nutrition and sustainability. Finally, the report highlights the need to dismantle silos between agriculture, health, environment, and trade in both research and policymaking.
But long-term goals are hard to achieve in a short-term world, according to Barrett. “In most of the world, policymakers and business leaders have grown more short-term-oriented than ever before,” he explains to Food Tank. “That makes it all the more important to seize opportunities when and where they emerge in crises to enact changes that can both solve short-run emergencies and help us embark on the sorts of systemic changes that are essential to reduce the frequency and severity of future crises.”
In response to recent food price spikes, for example, many countries imposed trade restrictions or subsidies to protect consumers. These short-term actions offer relief but disrupt global markets and discourage investment in sustainable agriculture needed for long-term resilience.
Researchers and governments are now asking how to make food systems and agriculture more resilient, especially in fragile, conflict-affected regions. As food insecurity and climate shocks often bring social unrest, the path forward is not always clear. “We don’t yet have a great, science-based understanding of what builds food systems resilience in conflict-affected regions,” says Barrett. “The most obvious, and hard-to-achieve solution, is lasting peace.”
The report emphasizes the role of science in helping reduce the risks that come with high food prices, land and water scarcity, and rising climate threats. Supporting this kind of research, however, requires time, trust, and funding—resources that Barrett tells Food are often under pressure. Short funding cycles, shifting ideological pressures, and the “rising prevalence and celebration of scientific illiteracy” all threaten IFPRI’s work.
IFPRI hopes the report will serve as a foundation for future collaboration and evidence-based action. “The coming decades will require bold ideas, new partnerships, and rigorous research to support the transformation of food systems that nourish people and the planet,” says Barrett.
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