Overarching comments:
- This early version of the report, while very comprehensive, still lacks a strong storyline. Some reorganization of the sections may help this. The initial section on dietary guidelines, for example, can be merged with the later section (which contains case studies). The Looking to the Future section is repetitive with the previous section containing solutions and case studies—these could be merged and tightened, followed by a more robust Knowledge Gaps section and Recommendations section.
- There is very little discussion of the role that other sectors play in shaping the food system, aside from perhaps trade. How does the food system interact with health, water and sanitation, etc.? A discussion of the synergies between and among various sectors and their positive/negative impact on diets would be useful.
- Smallholders are not addressed much until the end of the report, with an assumption that large-scale/industrial agriculture is being referred to in many cases. We suggest weaving in the contributions of and unique challenges and shifts facing smallholders throughout the report.
- Similarly, the role of youth in agriculture needs to be woven throughout the text (currently, there is only a small section).
- The report uses the terms ‘value chains’ and ‘food systems’ interchangeably…these need to be consistent.
- The importance of a climate-smart food system does not come through sufficiently yet. While it is discussed as a driver and some case study boxes are presented, it would be great to delve deeper into the actions needed to develop a food system that can cope with and overcome challenges related to climate change. The overview chapter of the 2015-2016 Global Food Policy Report provides a framework for this and other issues.
- Governance, accountability, and financing needs to come through more strongly. The Global Nutrition Report addresses many of the relevant issues.
Specific comments:
Section 1.1.1:
- In the conceptual framework, suggest to elevate population growth as one of the drivers since it has a substantial impact on food systems.
Section 1.1.2:
- Local knowledge should be included as a driver. This is discussed in the last section but overlooked in the beginning. Inequality is also missing as a key driver and should be interwoven throughout the text.
- In the discussion of processing and packaging, suggest to clarify that in addition to food safety concerns, processing and packaging also adds economic value to the product.
- The food access discussion covers the macro determinants of distribution but not factors affecting intra-household distribution of food.
Section 3.1.3
- Are there any data on the diets of children under 5 that can be reported? The section focuses on infants (under 2 years of age), adolescents, and women but skips over this key age group.
Section 3.2.3
- The discussion of urbanization would be strengthened by differentiating between the urban rich and urban poor. IFPRI’s upcoming 2017 Global Food Policy Report explores many different aspects of rural and urban life, including food security, poverty, and malnutrition, and the two-way linkages between rural and urban areas.
- The discussion on the Doha round and Nairobi package is overly technical and needs to be elucidated.
- The food policies sub-section would benefit from a brief discussion on the impact of large-scale social protection programs on diets.
- What about the role of financing?
- The gender sub-section could be strengthened greatly through a more comprehensive discussion of women’s empowerment and control of resources. Some key findings from IFPRI include:
- In a study of biofortified oranges sweet potato in Uganda, adoption was higher on plots that were jointly owned, but where the woman was the primary decisionmaker on what to grow (Gilligan et al. 2013).
- As measured by the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture index, the number of groups in which women actively participate, women’s control of assets, and a narrowing gap in empowerment between men and women within households are positively associated with calorie availability and dietary diversity (Sraboni et al. 2014).
- Women’s empowerment mitigates the negative effect of low production diversity on maternal and child dietary diversity and height-for-age z-scores, suggesting that it has greater potential to improve nutrition outcomes in households with monoculture production (Malapit et al. 2015).
Section 4.1.3
- On the sub-section re social protection program, a good source on the Brazil nutrition governance story is Chapter 11 in Nourishing Millions: Stories of Change in Nutrition. Similarly, a more recent assessment of Mexico’s Oportunidades (which includes Fernald among numerous other references) can be found in Chapter 7 of Nourishing Millions. The book also contains full discussions on other topics that could strengthen the various boxes in this section, such as SHOUHARDO, enhanced homestead food production, salt iodization, and Mexico’s sugary drinks tax.
- On the sub-section re investment in R&D:
- Beintema and Stads 2014 offer useful statistics on investment in building up agricultural research capacity. In Africa for example, investment levels are still below the recommended 1-percent target in many countries, which face unstable research funding and a lack of well-trained research staff.
- A recent IFPRI study shows investing in agricultural R&D with the aim of increasing agricultural total factor productivity by 2 percent can lower world prices of cereals and meat by as much as 17 and 15 percent, respectively, as well as increase crop yields by 8.5 percent by 2030. Under this same scenario, the number of malnourished children can be reduced by 7 million (5.4 percent), and hungry people by 160 million (23.2 percent) (Perez and Rosegrant 2015).
- The language re farm to school programs needs to be more cautious. Much of this evidence is still preliminary.
Shenggen Fan