Congratulations to Rattan Lal, who was named the 2020 World Food Prize Laureate! His soil-centric approach to agricultural practices spurred innovative soil-saving techniques that benefited the livelihoods of over 500 million smallholder farmers. His contributions—spanning five decades of work across four continents—have improved food security, nutrition, and environmental sustainability for billions of people around the world.
Additional highlights from this week’s Compact2025 News in Brief include:
- The number of social protection programs continues to climb, with more countries introducing new policies to address COVID-19 and its economic fallout. In a real-time review of country measures, the World Bank currently lists 195 countries and territories that have planned or introduced social protection measures in response to COVID-19.
- The World Bank’s June 2020 Global Economic Prospects analyzes the global economy in crisis, and forecasts a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP for this year. The global recession will likely impact food security: acute hunger could double and affect more than 260 million people in 2020.
- The latest special issue of the IFPRI Insights newsletter highlights the importance of trust in science and government for successful mitigation responses to COVID-19 and to plan for future epidemics. See IFPRI’s COVID-19 webpage for more evidence, blogs, tools, and events.
