| Sumario: | Recent crises and shocks have eroded food security in many countries. These crises take many forms. Some are global shocks, such as a sharp rise in food commodity prices in world markets. Some are local shocks—for instance, flooding from an extreme weather event, or another from the ever-increasing list of climate impacts.
When a crisis hits unexpectedly, researchers, governments, and international organizations must quickly assess the impacts on household food security in order to devise appropriate responses to avert declines in diet quality and nutrition. However, with little time to develop bespoke models or implement intensive simulations, conducting research and designing informed policies can be challenging. In these scenarios, researchers and policymakers need access to rapid-response tools. IFPRI’s innovative Food Security Simulators (FSS) were developed to address this knowledge gap.
The Food Security Simulator is an easy-to-use MS Excel-based tool based on representative household survey data and rigorous, sophisticated food demand models to capture consumer behavior. The tool, currently available for Kenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, allows users to enter positive and negative price or income changes, along with food preference changes (in the Ethiopia version) in percentage terms and provides simulated changes for a diverse set of food-consumption- and diet-quality-related indicators. These are presented in concise overview tables and visualized in graphs for easy export and use in reports.
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