IMPACT – the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade –was developed at IFPRI at the beginning of the 1990s, upon the realization that there was a lack of long-term vision and consensus among policy makers and researchers about the actions that are necessary to feed the world in the future, reduce poverty, and protect the natural resource base. In 1993, these same long-term global concerns launched the 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture and the Environment Initiative. This initiative created the opportunity for further development of the IMPACT model, and in 1995 the first results using IMPACT were published as a 2020 Vision discussion paper: Global Food Projections to 2020: Implications for Investment (Rosegrant, Agcaoili-Sombilla and Perez, 1995), in which the effects of population, investment, and trade scenarios on food security and nutrition status, especially in developing countries, were analyzed.

IMPACT has been used in several important research publications, which examine the linkage between the production of key food commodities and food demand and security at the national level. Such examples can be found in the paper looking at the relationship between meatintensive diets in developed nations and food security in developing countries, Alternative Futures for World Cereal and Meat Consumption (Rosegrant, Leach and Gerpacio, 1999); or the article Global Projections for Root and Tuber Crops to the Year 2020 (Scott, Rosegrant and Ringler, 2000), which gives a detailed analysis of roots and tuber crops and their importance to the food economies of the poor. The report Livestock to 2020: The next food revolution (Delgado et al., 1999) assesses the rise in livestock demand in developing countries that was trigged by rising incomes in recent decades, and considers the current and expected future developments of this “livestock revolution”, as well as its implications for policy.

NOTE: This 2008 version is superseded by the 2012 version, and that this 2008 version is retained for archival purposes and researching using this model should use the documentation from 2012.