The remarks made thus far have been very interesting. Since, “Under-nutrition remains one of the world’s most serious but least addressed socioeconomic and health problems and is among the leading causes of child mortality” (ACF International), making agriculture work for nutrition is a tremendously important and timely issue for discussion.
If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?
Firstly, we would suggest an assessment of the nutritional status of the country/state or region and identify those households which are nutrition insecure buy using various indicators. This will be done so as to indicate which areas will be targeted first (based on the magnitude of undernorishment) by the agricultural investment programme.
We would also recommend an increased cooperation among agricultural professionals at country level and institutional level that would foster a national nutrition strategy and action plan; this would require the allocation of adequate budgetary resources. Guyana, for instance, has a ten year Food and Nutrition Security Strategy (2010-2020). One of the aims includes ensuring that children and other vulnerable groups have access to food.
We would support regulations that allow smallholders to have some sort of comparative advantage in terms of increased market access and opportunities, especially for nutritious foods.
We would also suggest adjustments in policies to be made preferable to individuals supportive of nutrition, including improvements made in food price policies, subsidies, trade policies and pro-poor policies. This would in turn encourage more investment in food nutrition.
Although the above points may lead to an increase in the accessibility and availability of nutritious foods, it does not give us a certainty that more individuals will consume it. This brings us to our next suggestion; using some form of moral suasion, like nutrition education, to communicate and advocate for nutrition, detailing the importance of nutrition and the consequences of under-nutrition. An important point to note is that there are also social and cultural factors that prevent some marginalized groups from eating certain nutritious foods.
Dear Members,
The remarks made thus far have been very interesting. Since, “Under-nutrition remains one of the world’s most serious but least addressed socioeconomic and health problems and is among the leading causes of child mortality” (ACF International), making agriculture work for nutrition is a tremendously important and timely issue for discussion.
If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?