IFPRI's groundbreaking model of global food supply and demand and natural resource use will soon add a new dimension--gender--to its projections of the future world food situation. Gender is increasingly recognized as an important factor in poverty, inequality, and malnutrition around the world. Over the next year, therefore, IFPRI researchers will be working to incorporate gender dimensions into IMPACT (International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade) to help inform policymakers as they make decisions on economic and social policy.

Research from IFPRI and elsewhere has shown strong links between, for instance, greater female education, status, and decision-making power with outcomes like reduced fertility, improved child health, and better child nutrition. But do results like these mean that specific, gender-related investments and policy reforms could lead to regional or global improvements in human well-being? Would investing in girls' education, for example, actually lead to greater global food security than investing in education for boys and girls? The goal is to develop a policy tool that will provide decision-makers with science-based answers to these questions.

As a first step, IFPRI conducted a two-day workshop this past November to evaluate the long-term global impact of gender-related investments and policy reforms. At the workshop, leading experts in anthropology, gender policy, and socioeconomic modeling confirmed the need for this kind of study and suggested specific gender issues to be pursued.

As they seek to incorporate gender into IMPACT, IFPRI researchers will focus on well-documented data and relationships and then collaborate with other organizations, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank, to collect and incorporate new data.

The inclusion of gender issues is part of an ongoing process of expanding and enhancing the modeling in IMPACT. A key resource on food security issues for policymakers, IMPACT has been extended over time to include not just food commodity demand, supply, and trade, but also use of water resources, trends for specific food sectors such as fish and livestock, and achievement of the food security related Millennium Development Goals.