by Shweta Yadav and Emily Schmidt
The International Food Policy Research Institute recently posted a set of 3 research briefs that focused on different simulated impacts of:
1) Coffee berry borer on the Papua New Guinea coffee sector
2) Potential severe El Niño drought on sweet potato production in the Highlands of PNG
3) The recent partial import ban of poultry imports into Papua New Guinea
The research briefs are a culmination of a collaborative study with individuals from the PNG Prime Minister’s National Executive Council, the PNG Department of Agriculture and Livestock, the PNG National Statistical Office, and the PNG Fresh Produce Development Agency. The briefs are a final output of a hands-on training event that occurred during the first 2 weeks of November 2023 in IFPRI’s Washington DC headquarter office. The training hosted 11 individuals from diverse PNG government departments and research institutes. The objective of the workshop was to equip participants with hands-on applications of economic modeling techniques that could inform important agricultural policy decisions.
Paul Dorosh, the Division Director of the Development, Strategies and Governance Unit at IFPRI led the theoretical and technical workshop sessions that introduced partial equilibrium modeling applied in the context of PNG agricultural policy and strategy. Then, workshop participants built an excel spreadsheet model to conduct simulation modelling for the three commodities of interest: poultry, sweet potato, and coffee. In addition to hands-on training and investigation of the single-commodity simulation models, the workshop sessions introduced other tools and analytical techniques such as the updated PNG Social Accounting Matrix, results from the 2023 PNG Rural Household Survey, and climate change implications for agricultural growth in PNG.
During the second week of the training, workshop participants were split into 3 teams to work on the simulation analysis of the 3 different commodities of interest. Each of these teams brainstormed their strategy for their respective commodity. Each analysis team identified the specific policy question they wanted to simulate, and then proceeded to use the single commodity simulation model to assess impacts and policy implications. On the final day of the workshop, each team presented their methodology and findings in a slide deck to the other workshop research teams and a variety of IFPRI researchers.
