I have been glancing over the reference article, which made me wonder if it would be beneficial to start the conversation on a somewhat provocative note, in the hope that it will lead to some out-of-the-box thinking and more effective approach to addressing the important concerns of food security and nutrition. As I read the material it appeared to represent the traditional approach that research goes directly to extension/education and once learned acceptance will follow automatically, and that your impoverished intended beneficiaries have sufficient discretionary control over their fate to readily accept the results. If you think about it, that really represent a rather absurd assumption perhaps coming from a very superficial understanding of the plight of impoverished smallholder farmers or casual laborers.
As an agronomist let me start with food security which very quickly links to nutrition. The major concern here is not the knowledge of good agronomic practices, nor the possible limited access to production inputs, but the limited operational capacity of the farmers for timely implementation of the crop management. This very quickly come a matter of calorie energy balance. While we acknowledge that smallholder farmers are poor and hungry, rarely do we factor that as a major drag on their farming activities. A more detailed look might indicate most smallholders have access to about 2000 kcal perhaps up to 2500 kcal/day. This barely meets basic metabolism requirements and limits the diligent daily effort to a couple hours a day. Ask them to do more and it would be classified as genocide. Now, if it takes 300 diligent person hours, mostly men, to manually cultivate a hectare of land, how long will it take these undernourished farmers to prepare a hectare of land? Would it be as much as 8 weeks, nearly half way through a rainy season? How much decline in potential yield would this delay result in? Would it be possible to manual hoe one’s way to food security and a balanced diet? Or would the need to for caloric energy take priority as the only means to optimize the economic opportunity? Under these typical and dire circumstance would the most effective action be to look at how to reduce the overall drudgery, increase the return to labor? Could this be done by promoting and facilitating access to sufficient contract tillage with customized private tractors? Is there any other way to increase the operational capacity of smallholders so they can achieve food security and improved nutrition? How often are our innovations for smallholder farmers more labor intensive and thus we are asking poor, hungry, exhausted, over-extended farmers to work harder will beyond their caloric capacity? If we do that are we conspiring for their genocide?
You might want to look at a couple webpages to illustrate this concern including a complete case study from Ethiopia:
http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/ethiopia-diet-analysis/
http://webdoc.agsci.colostate.edu/smallholderagriculture/BrinksDrudgery.pdf
Shifting to casual labor this is easier to get at. It is really a question of what can be afforded with the wages being paid. Here it becomes a straight forward exercise on obtaining a list of consumer prices which usually take about an hour wondering through an open-air market, then determining what the daily casual labor wage is, and who must be supported from it. Now try and balance the nutrition. This is usually a mind-boggling and highly depressing exercise, but should be the starting point for looking at how to improve nutrition for the deeply entrenched impoverished relying largely on manual labor employment. In looking at this remember the bottom line is optimizing economic opportunity. What are the hard choices that must be made, and how much discretionary decision making is possible?
Allow me a hypothetical example that I recently posted on the Secure Nutrition forum on LinkedIn using some real data from Angola after attending a seminar/webinar promoting eggs to avoid childhood stunting. The example is a porter in Luanda, the capital of Angola, where he has a piece meal income loading or unloading lorries. His typical daily wage is $2.50 for working as part of a 6-man team loading or unloading 5 10-ton lorries, typically filled with 120 100kg sacks per day. Yes, that is a deliberate 20% overload, which I think is typically based on an interview with rice transporter in Tanzania. The wages represent $0.50 per lorry. The $2.50/day is set to equal the government established agriculture casual labor wage for Angola. The choice of a porter is because I think they are some of the more deeply entrenched impoverished workers who tend to be among the “invisible” people, frequently overlooked by social workers, etc.
Our typical hypothetical porter is in his late 20s, has a wife, a preschool son, and toddler daughter, all of whom he loves and wishes to take care of including preventing the toddler from becoming stunted from malnutrition, and thus as mentioned in a recent Secure Nutrition seminar/webinar, he would like to provide her an egg/day. Given he normally has a wage of $2.50/day, but he still has some transportation costs getting to & from work, needs some cooking fuel to prepare meals, some kerosene for oil lamp at night, etc. he can only spend $2.00 on food to feed his family. Also, let us acknowledge that his work as a porter is hard manual labor that will require him to exert something in the order of 4000 kcal/day, while his wife doing mostly domestic work around the house including several hours collecting water will exert 3000 kcal/day of this 2000 kcal/day represents basic metabolism for both husband and wife. The children will exert considerable less, with the toddler exerting 550 Kcal/day and the preschool son 1200 kcal/day. Thus, just in terms of calories the family will need 8750 kcal/day. Anything less than that family will lose weight they cannot afford to lose, or the diligence of the work will decline putting the family a greater financial risk. Thus, the main questions is based on the consumer price in Zaire Province of Northern Angola what can a family afford to buy with their $2.00 daily food allowance.
If they spent the entire $2.00 on maize meal they could purchase 1.7 kg maize meal which would provide only 6000 kcal/day which with nothing else would leave a daily deficit of 2500 kcals. No opportunity for substituting some beans to increase the protein in the diet but will reduce the calories and work potential, let alone some green vegetable to enhance the vitamin and mineral. That egg to minimize the little girls stunning is totally out of the question. If they spent the $0.40 for an egg, how would that impact the porter’s ability to load or unload the lorries? Would he have to quit after only 4 lorries were worked, coming home early but with $0.50 less income? What would happen if by chance he wretched his back and couldn’t work for a week? What alternatives foods would you purchase to feed the family, and if that reduced the calories, how would it impact on manual work, family income, family health, and food security? What would be a more appropriate minimum wage that would allow this typical impoverished family to afford a more nutritious diet? Would adjusting minimum wage what a family would need to buy a balanced diet be a good starting point for improving nutrition and food security?
While I will fully acknowledge this is a synthesized analysis, how realistic is it? If not, please comment on what might be more realistic. Does it illustrate that too often there is very limited discretionary dietary decisions for the deeply impoverished? As we work to improve the nutrition of the impoverished, how important is an exercise like this in understanding the discretionary limits on diet and quality nutrition, and address how to bring greater discretionary control to the beneficiaries? If this analysis represents the discretionary limits the porter and his family have, how effective will an extension/educational or the organization structures in the briefing paper effort be to inform fellow porters on the importance of more balanced diet? How much do you think the porters are already aware of their dietary limits but do not have the means to make positive adjustments?
Allow me to provide a couple webpages:
The exercise: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/1028-2/
The consumer prices for Angola: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/consumer-price-comparisons-usa-vs-host-country/#tab-ada7482e-6bc6-8
If anyone wishes to contribute additional case example of the Hard Choices: Compromises in Quality Nutrition, I would be happy to post them on the website for all to consider with due recognition for those contributing.
The bottom line of this contribution is the need to distinguish research/extension from development. This is easily done by a little known and often overlooked component of the technology development and dissemination process. It is called integration and takes research results and adjust the results and the economic environment into which it is being introduced. The example is for agronomic in Malawi, but could easily be shifted to nutrition. I think we need to look a little more at this integration activity primarily for those interested in development. Without it I fear the overall effort at FSN will have only limited impact.
Final webpage: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/integration-an-under-appreciated-component-of-technology-transfer/
Thank you
Dick Tinsley