Thank you for the opportunity to contribute with comments on the draft FFA. The Tetra Laval Food for Development Office would like to comment as follows:
3.1 Food Systems
The FFA does not single out specific food commodities but rather describes groups of foods (animal-sourced foods, vegetables, fruits etc). FAO published an excellent and very comprehensive report on “Milk and Dairy Products in Human Nutrition” (FAO, 2013 http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3396e/i3396e.pdf) that is worth mentioning. It concludes that milk production and dairy industry development, including production driven by small holder dairy farmers, offer huge opportunities to provide good nutrition, create jobs, daily incomes and reduce food losses. Below are some quotes from the report:
Milk and dairy products play a key role in healthy human nutrition and development throughout life, but especially in childhood.
Milk is an efficient vehicle for delivering several critical micronutrients and improving growth of young children.
Animal milk, rich in bio-available nutrients, delivered to young children, may prevent micronutrient deficiencies and stunted growth. Evidence also shows that milk programming can stimulate local production and simultaneously address malnutrition and poverty.
Milk is a nutritious food and can make a major contribution to household food security and income.
A daily 200 ml glass of milk provides a 5-year-old child with: 21 percent of protein requirements; 8 percent calories; Key micro-nutrients
Dairying provides regular income from the sale of milk surplus for daily household and farm needs
Cattle can thrive on plant matter inedible to humans
In several cases the FFA document indicates that small scale production has to be small scale all through the value chain. This is not true and in many cases inhibits development. Small scale production can efficiently be linked to industrial scale processing and marketing. Below are some suggestions where this can be clarified.
Paragraph 3-4 (page 7)
Instead of only stressing the need to “Enhance the efficiency of traditional food value chains” (probably meaning informal chains, marketing of unprocessed foods) it should be mentioned that for perishable foods (e.g. milk) there is a need to transform informal chains into formal. Also small holder farmers need to be integrated into industrial/formal value chains and get a secure access to market, reduce the losses and improve their incomes. While it is true that “modern food processing and retailing facilities increased availability and access to animal source foods”, it is also true that modern food processing (aseptic packaging of milk for example) does not necessarily need modern retail to reach consumers. With long life products, also the traditional trade can market milk and other sensitive foods.
Page 8
In the list of WHO recommendations of what diets should ensure, the last bullet says: “Adequate intake of animal source foods is guaranteed in children under five”. Why only to children under five? Why not “to all”? These recommendations are probably a quote from another document, but in this FFA it should be concluded that we all need access to animal source foods because of its high nutritional value.
Page 9, paragraph 4
“Greater post-harvest food processing at community level” is mentioned as a solution to reduce relative prices or the time it takes to obtain or prepare more nutritious food. This statement is not true for all foods. Small-scale processing at community level is in many cases not viable and does not always result in good quality. Communities and small scale producers could also be linked to market through efficient, professional and more large scale processors with developed market channels to reach consumers.
Priority actions, page 10-11
Add to bullet five: Strengthen facilities for local food production and processing, especially for nutrient-rich foods. Link small holder farmers to industrial/formal value chains
3.1.2 Sustainable healthy diets
In the discussions about environmental impact of food production, it is now more and more acknowledged that also nutritional content has to be a factor in the assessments of environmental and climate impact of food production. The study “Nutrient density of beverages in relation to climate impact” is the first to estimate the composite nutrient density, expressed as percentage of Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR) for 21 essential nutrients, in relation to cost in GHG emissions of the production from a life cycle perspective, expressed in grams of CO2-equivalents, using an index called the Nutrient Density to Climate Impact (NDCI) index. The NDCI index was calculated for milk, soft drink, orange juice, beer, wine, bottled carbonated water, soy drink, and oat drink”. The study showed that due to a very high-nutrient density, the NDCI index for milk was substantially higher (0.54) than for the other beverages. Results in its entirety were published in the scientific journal Food and Nutrition Research 23 August, 2010 on www.foodandnutritionresearch.net
It could be added under “Priority actions” that “Nutrient density should be taken into account when assessing environmental and climate impact of food production”
3.2 Social Protection
School feeding is a proven way of stimulating local food production and processing as well as a way to improve children’s nutrient intake. However, it is important to remember that not all foods are suitable for small scale local supplies. Domestic production is usually a requirement from governments but food supplies from the closest village are not necessarily the best solution for all foods. In the school feeding paragraph on page 14, “small farmers” should be replaced by “farmers and food processors”.
School feeding should have more weight in this document as an effective tool to address malnutrition and at the same time encourage good eating habits, improve health and school performance and at the same time create a market for high quality, nutritious, locally produced and processed foods.
3.3 Health
School feeding could be mentioned as a way to address both wasting and stunting, just like it is already mentioned under actions to address anaemia in women of reproductive age.
3.3.4 Nutrition education for behavior change
The recommendation to “advice so that farming communities make healthier food produce available, e.g., by procuring food from small farmer cooperatives for dietary diverse school feeding programmes” again presumes that direct sales to local schools is the preferred model for supplies to school feeding programmes. Again, this may work for certain produce but is hard to monitor and does not work for milk for example. Milk is a very common nutritional component of school feeding programmes and needs to be processed and packed before distributed to schools. This cannot be done on a community level without great challenges in distribution. Small producers can be effectively integrated in industrial value chains with the right support from the public and private sectors.
4.4 International trade and investment
Why is not “animal sourced foods” mentioned in the third paragraph as an example of healthy foods?
Mme Katarina Eriksson