Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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    • Dear all,

      happy to share into the discussion.

      Re: 2) Research of impact of ag on nut

      We are currently conducting a 4-year cluster-randomized trial in Sylhet, Bangladesh, called Food and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition (FAARM; trial registration link), funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. We evaluate the impact of the Homestead Food Production program of the NGO Helen Keller International (HKI) on food security, nutrition and health. The program works with small-scale farmers training them in vegetable gardening, poultry rearing and marketing, as well as nutrition, child care and hygiene.

      Soil fertility was a key constraint in FAARM home gardens, and therefore we explored the feasibility of urine-biochar as a low-cost organic fertilizer in the Biochar-Urine Nutrient Cycling for Health (BUNCH) study, together with HKI, JPGSPH and Ithaka Institute, funded by LANSA. The farmers produced biochar locally in soil-pit kilns from crop residues and mixed it with cow urine. It turned out to work quite well and we are now scaling up. Read more on this LANSA Blog.

      After the flash flood in April that destroyed the Boro rice crop in our area, we are now collecting data on how badly the families were affected, their food security situation and coping strategies. As part of FAARM, we have been collecting detailed nutrition data on a rolling basis and will thus be able to assess the effects on households and particularly on children.

      Re: 4) interventions for ag resilience to environmental stressors

      I am trained as a medical doctor and epidemiologist and not an agriculture expert, but here a few thoughts:

      1. Resilience requires a buffer. Small-scale farmers that are barely surviving, chronically malnourished, don't have any buffer. Interventions need to improve and diversify their livelihoods and increase their production in an ecologically sustainable way, as well as offering social security mechanisms.
      2. Resilience requires diversity. Much funding is wasted on magic bullets such as golden rice which would decrease crop diversity even more. Instead, we need to promote local varieties tolerant to drought, flood, heat, or pests even if yields are lower under ideal circumstances. (Climate change means we will rarely have ideal circumstances any more.) And we should diversify away from staples (also in research funding, CGIAR still focuses almost entirely on staples) and promote local varieties of pulses, fruit and vegetables rich in micronutrients.
      3. Resilience requires (eco)system-thinking. Agriculture depends on soil life, pollinating insects and on predators eating pests, while agricultural fields can offer habitat and food for many species. Human agricultural activities now extend over much of the planet's surface. Instead of monocultures and toxic chemicals, we should favour agroecological methods that reconcile food production with biodiversity on which we eventually depend for human survival on this planet.

      Looking forward to your thoughts on this!  :-)

      Cheers,

      Sabine