The high cost of nutritious foods can worsen poor diets and nutrition outcomes especially among low-income households. Yet little is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of the cost of nutritious diets in South Asia, where malnutrition in multiple forms remains high.

Food imports are placing an increasing burden on the world's poorest countries, a new FAO report says. The world food import bill has broadly tripled since 2000 to reach $1.43 trillion in 2017, while it has risen around fivefold for countries that are the most vulnerable to food shortages.

Considerable poverty and food insecurity in Ethiopia, combined with the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, make agricultural transformation a crucial development goal for the country.

Rwanda's economy rebounded in the second half of 2017. The rebound, driven by improved exportperformance and revitalized agriculture, pushed annual growth to 6.1 percent and led to upwardrevisions of the growth projections for 2018 and 2019.

Chronic hunger is increasing around the world and food crises are spreading and intensifying. A new report by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), World Food Assistance: Preventing Food Crises, examines these crises, asking what causes them to break out, what determines their scale and how they might be prevented.