Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

How to build on genetic diversity in the traditional food baskets?

The “Genetic Diversity for Food and Nutrition” is a subject still has been overlooked in the larger agenda of food production. This leads to serious setbacks in achieving the goals 2 & 13 of SDGs. “Nutrition for All” in the era of climate change can be achieved only if there is a ‘healthy’ change in designing the diet bowl, especially of the poor and the vulnerable in line with their culture, traditions and dietary needs of the targeted society and in relation with the natural availability of biodiversity of food value. Thus, the purpose of any project that to be taken up to address the issue of food and nutrition must aim for understanding the multi-dimensional perspective of the food diversity available -the orphan crops, forest foods, and wild or semi-wild foods in the traditional food baskets.

Diets are changing globally in keeping with the whims and fancies of the Market. Influencing the market through adequate R & D work is required for making available food and health products from local bio-resources that can play a substantial role towards local food and nutrition security.

There is an enormous scope for identifying and analyzing a wide spectrum of wild and little known species not only for their food and nutritive value but also their curative qualities. Following are some suggestions to “shape and address pathways to healthy nutrition”

• Re-search all the known species of Food and health value (including the wild food plants) from those “Vavilovian Centres of plant diversity”; but this time through an inter-disciplinary research approach that will work in tandem with ethnobotanists, molecular biologists and phyto-chemists, food technologists;
• Screen the priority crop varieties with reference to the genetic diversity that are generally resilient to abrupt disruptions and have potential to contribute breeding for Climate Smart crop varieties;
• Establish Farm Gene Banks by promoting collection and conservation of promising plants including the known wild species of edible and medicinal value
• Analyze the nutritional and phytochemical properties of all the locally consumed varieties to identify the food, nutritional and health value of the species in use.
• Promote innovative applications based on the research results of the nutritional and phytochemical analysis as food.

When we aim for a zero hunger world by 2030, the activities mentioned above are very crucial. We should protect and enhance what we have left with in our traditionally managed food baskets, and we should employ the new science and technologies to better utilize this kind of critical biodiversity. It is high time to work together the botanists, social scientists, gender experts, anthropologists, agricultural scientists, nutrition experts and biochemists with local community men and women to know holistically the dying biodiversity components of traditional food baskets.

N. Anil Kumar/MSSRF

December 11, 2015

Hello All;

Disaster become prolong so we have to think to use this disaster as option. So I have a concept note uploaded.

Moshfaqur

You say: ‘The Report shall consider food chains from farm to fork and all the sustainability challenges of food systems (in the economic, social and environmental dimensions) and how they relate to nutrition’.

I cannot comprehend why the political dimension is left out.

You say:  ‘This calls for a report grounded on a multidisciplinary approach’.

But Attempts at acting in the context of the basic causes (you say root causes) of malnutrition departs from a flawed analysis of reality and have consequently mostly failed (and are doomed to continue to fail). Among the most prominent of these are Multidisciplinary Approaches to solve the problems of so many different human rights violations, the right to food included. There is nothing terribly wrong with this concept, but it just gratuitously assumes that looking at the problem of these violations from a ‘wider’ multi-professional perspective is going to automatically lead us to the better, more rational and egalitarian solutions.

The call for multidisciplinarity, for sharing paradigms amongst the different scientific disciplines where practitioners come from, falls under the same optic of my criticism all along. Just by putting together brains ‘sowed’ differently, without considering where they are coming from ideologically, is not going to, all of a sudden, make a significant difference in the outcome and the options chosen. They may well stay in the domain of addressing the immediate causes of malnutrition, only now everybody involved contributing a small monodisciplinary window to the package of (still pat?) solutions proposed.    Multidisciplinary approaches --as opposed to a dialectical approach-- simply most often take the social and political context (i.e., the individual and institutional power relations) as given; they, therefore, end up being conservative in their recommendations.

You say: ‘The report shall examine issues across the human life cycle (including esp. pregnant, lactating women, children, and elderly), including marginalized and vulnerable populations’.

Yes, in the SDGs there are many calls to pay special attention to the most disadvantaged in society and to adequately meet the needs of mothers and their children, especially the most disadvantaged. But these calls reflect the philosophical position known as ‘prioritarianism’ which is favored by all those critical of any type of egalitarianism --the core basis of human rights. Prioritarianism is based on a misguided humanitarian concern, i,e., to help to improve the situation of people living in extreme poverty --but without any reference to the need to reduce the appalling disparities underlying it. According to prioritarianism, it is morally most important to help people who are worse off --but not addressing the degree of inequality in the society they live in. What is important from the moral and human rights point of view is not that everyone should have the same, but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough, it would be of less moral consequence whether some had more than others.

You say: ‘The Report shall improve the capacity to follow-up transitions and evolutions through the provision of a conceptual framework that might be used in the future’.

Don’t we already have a time-proven framework analyzing the three levels of causality of malnutrition. Will the HLPE be adapting it or will it be working on another (of too many) alternative, but not necessarily better frameworks?

You say: ‘There is a need for a multifaceted approach, including a need to understand the internal and external (e.g. socio-demographic, environmental, and global changes such as climate change) drivers’.

Again, why is the probably key political driver left out? Look at the determinants of the TNCs’ agribusiness food system: How can it be countered if not politically?

Finally, you say: ‘In addition to assessing what is new, the report provides an opportunity to examine what is promising – either as a continuation or revitalization of existing and long-standing food systems’.

I cannot understand why the HLPE leaves out the discontinuation option… It certainly is as important, isn’t it?

Over-nutrition is an unfortunate term and should be replaced with something that considers different causes of obesity. In southern African urban areas among others it has been established that the urban poor are food insecure due to lack of dietary diversity and reliance on sugars and starches -- foods that are promoted throughthe corporate food industry and promte obesity. Fresh foods at a reasonable price are less available to the urban food insecure.

On the other hand it has also been shown by research that consumption of animal sourced foods (ASF) among urban dwellers promotes child health and that therefore the keeping of livestock is a practice that should be encouraged, including among urban populations which are vulnerable to food insecurity and poor health. ASF help in providing zinc to the diet which contributes to prevention of infections through better immune response. This includes dairy products such as milk and eggs, as well as meat.

Following aspects on food production systems need to be highlighted

1. Choice of appropriate crops/cropping systems (major emphasis on fruits and vegetables components)

2. Decline in soil fertility status (specially secondary and micro-nutrients viz. S, Zn, Fe, B etc)

3. Replenishment of soil nutrients availability for higher uptake of micro-nutrients, primary and secondary nutrients by the plants for better human health and nutrition

4. Methods of enhanced bio-fortification (increased Zn, Fe, S, B, K contents in food systems) viz. develoment of customized fertilizers, foliar nutrition to crops, use of plant growth promoters, organic farming, use of bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides

5. Development of green agricultural products

6. Control of soil, air and water pollution (viz. industrial pollutant, toxic elements etc) for direct/indirect effects on human health and nutrition and appropriate remediation for control of these pollutants 

7. Evaluating the impact of tropospheric ozone, UV-B radiation and aerosols on human health and agricultural production systems

8. Effect of temperature rise and elevated carbon dioxide on agricultural production systems, products quality viz. nutrition aspects in general and human health

9. Enhanced land degradation (salinity, sodicity, acidity, waterlogging, heavy metal loadings, radio-active wastes, pesticides residues, nitrates leaching etc) and direct and indirect effects on human health and crops nutrition

10. Specific case studies on these aspects (including management options)

11. Decision support systems development, including development of simulation models, for characterization of the extent of problems, damage mechanisms and management options for better food quality and human health

and many other issues

regards

Dr Naveen Kalra

Former Head, Agricultural Physivcs, Indian Agricultural Research Instiutute, New Delhi, India

Former Head, Center of Agri-Solutions and Technologies, Tata Chemicals Limited, Aligarh, UP, India

We have watched the FAO call for experts, call for information and continue to call for research without implementation and solutions. Algae has been researched at universities for the last 70 years at a cost of $2.5 billion from US taxpayers. Algae is high in protein and can be grown in any third world country to eliminate childhood malnutrition using all off-the-shelf existing technologies.

When you organization realy wants to discuss solutions (not more research reports) using algae for food nutrition and feeds and training for third world countries to develop algae farms for food and feed, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

"There is a horticultural remedy for every nutritional malady" says Prof. M S Swaminathan Father of Green Revolution in India.Nutritional self sufficiency in a family is a priori requirement for national food and nutrition security.With limited space, water, energy and manpower a nutrition garden in the homestead-be it terrace, open space, pots-vegetables and fruits of all sorts can be grown.Pesticide residue free fruits and vegetables can be grown by members of family adding to their purchasing power by selling excess production .The paper attached speaks volumes on the concept of kitchen garden/ nutrition garden.

Your objectives are too many. Just trying to address the first one (how and why diets change) would be monumental (but certainly worth undertaking) given the variety of food systems on the planet. I attached a recent article where we tried to understand why traditional food practices change in one single community...