At the threshold of the twenty-first century, widespread poverty, food insecurity, and environmental degradation cause severe human suffering and threaten to destabilize global, regional, and national economic and ecological conditions. If these trends continue unabated, the world will not be a pleasant place to live for most of humanity. The International Food Policy Research Institute has developed a 2020 Vision of a world where every person has economic and physical access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life, where malnutrition is absent, and where food originates from efficient, effective, and low-cost food and agricultural systems that are compatible with sustainable use and management of natural resources.