Closing Remarks: Shenggen Fan, Director General, IFPRI

Markets play a key role in delivering food and nutrition, even for poor and remote rural households. But nutrient-rich foods, especially animal-sourced foods, are very expensive in poor countries, suggesting that markets for perishable but nutritious foods are not functioning well. Both scientific research and real-world programs have largely focused on farm-level interventions to diversify household production and consumption, not recognizing the important role of market purchases.

This policy seminar will present innovative new research on food markets and nutrition from the ARENA-II (Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture) project—including cross-country studies of the costs of nutritious foods and nutritious diets as a whole, and case studies of fish, dairy, and poultry products.