Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Dear FSN-moderator,

Please find the attached success story on improved food security and income of rural farming families in Afghanistan.

Mohammad Jafar  Emal,

National Poultry Advisor, IFAD/RMLSP/MAIL

Kabul Afghanistan

Many innovative agricultural production and marketing projects have been underway in South Asia, with intentions for increasing acess to fruits and vegetable crops and improving nutrition. These include greenhouse production, home gardening, intensive raised bed cultivation, linking farmers to markets, etc. But there is another part of the value chain or commodity system that is less likely to be researched or promoted -- innovative postharvest handling, storage, processing and distribution practices that ensure that the high quality foods grown on farms or in home gardens make it to the table and provide nutritious food for rural and urban communities.

Since the 1990s there have been several "Postharvest Technology" focused projects in South Asia that can provide some examples of small-scale innovative practices that link ag and food and support improved nutrition. Dr. S K Roy's 100% utilization concept was described in an earlier FSN online discussion (see p.15 in the proceedings).

Empowering women in the postharvest technology sector can promote improved nutition for them and their families. "Panchayat and Economic empowerment of rural women by hands on Training" by NagaLaxmi M. Raman* and Neeru Dubey .

http://iasir.net/AIJRHASSpapers/AIJRHASS14-205.pdf

A reference work that is full of examples of innovative processing practices for South Asia is:

Postharvest Management of Fruit and Vegetables in the Asia-Pacific Region

©APO 2006, ISBN: 92-833-7051-1

http://www.apo-tokyo.org/00e-books/AG-18_PostHarvest/AG-18_PostHarvest.pdf

Food losses in South Asia are known to be on the order of 30 to 50%. Investments in time and money that are made to increase food production without paying attention to the postharvest practices that can reduce losses, add value, extend shelf life and protect foods from nutitional loss often will be wasted resources.

Water resource optimization for climate resilience improve nutrition condition in the saline area of Southwest Bangladesh.

The southwest coastal region of Bangladesh is most disaster prone area and climate hot spot. It has been suffering from negative impacts of climate change like sea level rise, saline area expansion, irregular rainfall, cyclones and tidal surges which increased salinity in soil and water. Though average rainfall is not changing in a broad range, but farmers could not cultivate agriculture due to poor knowledge on water management. The situation has increased stress of life which forced migration from the coastal sub-districts according to National Population Census 2011. It is alarming which motivate LEDARS to take initiatives.

The purpose of the initiative is to enhance resilience capacity of coastal people. 

LEDARS increased capacity of beneficiaries on resilient agriculture through providing skill training on effective water management, provide support to farmers to excavate 54 small ponds, re-excavate 2 canals to reserve rain water, installed 1 deep tube-well, distributes small jar to collect daily used water for homestead gardening and distributes saline and drought tolerant paddy and vegetables seeds. LEDARS provide skill training of 220 women headed families and 1.8 million BDT grants support for sustainable Income Generating Activities(IGA).  LEDARS also provide support to remove drinking water crisis through excavate 12 drinking water ponds, installed and re-excavate 19 Pond Sand Filters(PSF), 45 Rain Water Harvesting Systems and 149 Bio-Sand Filter(BSF). 

The initiative enhanced resilient agriculture and food security of 40% beneficiaries and create access to safe drinking water of 4039 families in Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira district, Bangladesh, 

The initiatives provide technological and financial support to remove drinking water crisis which reduce water born diseases of family members. The project promoting organic farming which has increased nutrition condition of the families. Our initiatives is increasing school enrollment of the children of selected families through reduce time to collect drinking water and reduce frequent water born diseases and malnutrition of children.

Our initiative got excellent thrid prize by Water Showcase in World Water Forum 2015.

Globally, the food and Nutrition scenario has undergone a sea of change. Over the years, India has progressed from being an underdeveloped country to a developing one and this again brings a lot a change in the nutrition arena. Everything changed as per the requirement or you can say demand driven change and has taken a rigid form of lifestyle, the population and the quality of food. From being a country of people who are mostly home grown and home cooked foods, the drift is now a fast food and faster life. The trends are towards fast foods, take away, fast foods, packaged foods, on the other hands there are tons of on-going research also on organic foods, local produce and fresh foods. Apart from the role of agriculture as a source of food, it serves as an important source of income for a large section of our population. Because of modernization the young generation is least interested to do farming and migrating to the cities for employment. As a result, on a large scale the old farmers do farm and follow the old tradition to cultivate, do not want to accept the new technologies. Successful implementation of any strategy, needs a high level of expertise in technical knowledge, managerial skills with an effective behaviour change communication in order to retain the young ones promoting them to take an interest in agriculture as they are the ones easily motivated to adopt the new concept of agriculture , the older farmers need to be convinced to adopt modern technologies present which has minimized the labour work in the field, the city people should be encouraged to eat home cooked food using various new technologies in the kitchen to ease their workload. Agricultural policies and food prices have a profound impact on food intakes and nutrition. India to reveal the areas where disconnects exist between agricultural policy and nutrition.

  Innovative  way tohelp manage Food Security in an Urban Slum

http://www.safwcofoundation.org/index.php/e-library/urban-slum-hyderabad 

Success with sweet potato rich in antioxidants (β-carotene, anthocyanin)

Archana Mukherjee

   ICAR-CTCRI, Regional Centre, Bhubaneswar-751019, Odisha,India

I would like to share my experiences and cannot consider it as success rather a drop of initiative towards a Vast Ocean of Agri-challenges.

 Let us recall the monster ‘Super cyclone’ in Odisha during October 1999.

Being in ICAR and tuber crops Scientist we extended support through ICAR- contingent action plan to rehabilitate the affected farm facilities. I fortunately or unfortunately got the farthest point to extend support from ICAR- CTCRI RC, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India to the victims of Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapada the worst affected coastal districts. In Jagatsinghpur, the village ‘Kanaguli’, I could reach with difficulties and could help then with collaboration of Rama Krishna Mission.

However in Kendrapada, the worst affected island type ‘Mahakalpada block’ was tough to reach. It is during that time I got the support of MSSRF, Kendrapada unit. Staff of that unit were working and crossing day and night with their country boat to help the victims. They came forward to help us to reach the people of that block. The miseries were beyond narration. In addition to relief materials, we supported them with the improved sweet potato developed by us at ICAR-CTCRI to grow as they lost their paddy and other vegetables. Of the 4 varieties (Kishan, Kalinga, Goutam and Sankar) supplied to them, Gouri and Kishan performed well under saline conditions. Performance of Gouri was the best – ‘This mooted me to think in depth as Gouri is enriched with β-carotene’.  I started to work on salt tolerant antioxidants rich sweet potato with the support of ICAR Cess fund scheme. We developed salt tolerant β-carotene and anthocyanin rich sweet potato like ST-14 (β-carotene 14 mg/100g) and ST-13 (anthocyanin 90mg/100g).

These are now gaining popularity not only in coastal belts of Odisha but also hilly backward areas like Koraput, Phulbani, in Odisha, Ranchi in Jharkhand, Narayanpur in Chattisgarh, Gorakhpur in UP, Dangoria Charitable Trust in Andhra Pradesh  and also North eastern parts of  our Country. Figs (1-5) can reflect the joy to work with all.

I am grateful to all those NGOs (MSSRF, WORD, Dangoria Trust, Rama Krishna Missions) and National, International  Govt. programme like TSP, DUS, INEA etc., for the support to reach the people in remote areas. It is our duty to support the people with basic needs “Sustainable food and livelihood”. Our collaborative efforts have enlightened the people of affected and remote areas.

Thanks to all of you involved in this endeavor.

God bless you all.

With kind regards,

Archana Mukherjee

N.B.: Friends, I have some pre commitment and I have to report for my cancer treatment follow up in TMH, Mumbai. I may not be able to participate in coming few days.     

Dear Prof Swaminathan and Dr Dangour,

Greetings from Nepal...!!

Thank you so much for initiating this discussion forum and I am following it keenly to learn the global experiences on the topic which I believe is still a grey area despite the fact agriculture sector has huge potential to improve the nutrition. As part of ongoing project called "Agriculture and Food Security Project" funded by Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP), we are trying to integrate crop, livestock and nutrition for synergistic effect. It would be too early to make any conclusion as the project is in early stage of implementation, however, there are few innovations this project has adopted in terms of integrating agriculture and nutrition.

The first and foremost initiative we are doing is to use all the contact points of health and agriculture sector to provide nutrition education and behaviour change communication on agri or food based nutrition thereby increasing the knowledge and skill base of farmers and women who are involved in the small farming. The nutrition has been integrated in the crop (major crops) and livestock FFS where the female farmer groups are oriented and demonstrated on improving the nutrition practices. Moreover, they are oriented about the nutritional importance of local production and consumption of indigenous and underutilised crops, vegetables and fruits. Similarly, there are FFS on goat and poultry where the farmer groups meet once a month. During the meeting, the farmers are also given messages on the importance of animal source proteins and micronutrients. For addressing the problem of high rate of micronutrient deficiencies, 1000 days mothers are trained on how to establish home nutrition gardens and poultry at a demonstration field known as "village model farm". Later, they apply this learning in their own land where they grow seasonal vegetables and fruits. Given the poor practices related to dietary diversity in complementary feeding, the mothers are also oriented on how to make nutrient dense complementary feeding for children using local available foods, locally grown vegetables and animal source foods with diversified diet. These are demonstrated regularly. The mother's group is going to establish a food preparation, preservation and processing unit where they would gather once a month to demonstrate locally improved practices for preservation of locally grown food, improved cooking practices and how to minimise nutrient loss during post-harvest, storage and cooking.

In addition, the farmer's group, mother's group especially the 1000-days mothers are reached by regular HH visit, their monthly meetings where they discuss on range of issues related to maternal, infant and young child feeding practices. For this, the frontline workers of both agriculture and health functionaries are trained on "agriculture-health-nutrition". This has resulted in great understanding the importance of agriculture for nutrition security among the health workers while agriculture frontline workers have been convinved about the need of nutrition-sensitive agriculture.

In course of time, I hope this would have significant impact on the nutritional outcome especially in improving the dietary practices at the household level, eventually improving the nutritional status of the vulnerable population. My observation especially with groups involved in goat and poultry FFS has great potential in increased production, income generation and consumption of animal source proteins in rural areas. This is one area that could be explored through rigorous research elsewhere in rural area of developing countries. The project is also promoting some technologies that could be used in agriculture sector which can minimise the work-burden on women thereby increasing their time to care for children, family members and of their own. However, the impact needs to be assessed.

The real success of these interventions and innovations is yet to be realised as the project has just started to implement its activities on the ground.

Look forwards to hearing other's views as well. You could reach me for any detail related to the project activities at:

SUMIT KARN

Nutrition Specialist

Agriculture and Food Security Project

Nepal

[email protected]

[email protected]

Nowadays agriculture is very challenging for small farmers in India. In one side per capita land share is reducing so fast due to increasing the population. On the hand food demand in a family is increasing...as a result people are leaving their villages, their farms, their families to earn something in remote city areas/ sometimes migrated permanently even in abroad. 

So, who will produce crop ? People more interested to buy food from the market than produce in own farm.. so, day by day demand is increasing and raising food prices. With this climate change also a important factor.

We don't know how poor farmers will give more attention in farming.

But still there is a hope. This is our responsibility to train that farmers and send them to start innovative agriculture which will provide sufficient and nutritive food for all.

I am working in Mennonite Central Committee in India with collaboration of Canadian Food Grain bank. Here I have shared one food security project running in West Bengal, India. The local partner's name is Rural development Foundation. The context has given below.

Context of project areas

Hasnabad Block of North 24 Parganas of West Bengal, India is having a geographical area of 156.44 square kilometres with a population of around 1,77,470  having a population density of 1134 per square kilometre. RDF has been working in 7 villages of Hasnabad Gram Panchayat  with the financial support from  MCC. The project area is low lying, undulating  islands with meandering river channels as part of Ganga River delta known as Sundarbans. The surface water including river water and  soils are saline and as a result farmers  can grow only one summer paddy with the monsoon rains . The area is also prone to  flood  to Cyclone and surge of tidal waves Poor farmers and underprivileged people of the villages do not have food  security  all the year round. There have been large scale migration of villagers to other parts of the Country for lively hood. The villagers did not get much help from Government during post AILA ( Cyclone) during 2009 when there were large scale devastation and had  a   devastating effect on life and property. The Soil was damaged due to deposition of salt on the farm soil and as a result for 2-3 years the farmers could not raise crops.  We have under taken saline soil reclamation work to improve the soil fit for cultivation and we have been successful to a large extent.  We have also worked on rain water harvesting structure and supply of Saline resistant Crop seeds, Gypsum etc.  This has generated  huge demand for such services from adjoining areas. We have also formed large number of Self Helps, identified   women leaders and provided them training on micro finance and micro enterprise development  followed by Micro finance support. This has created huge impact among the women  The communities have been sensitized on  various issues. The out come of our work has generated interest in the adjoining areas Accordingly we have added 3 more villages of 2 Gram Panchayats

         The conditions of the community is very backward, though  many of them have land  but are affected  salinity . the farmers get around 8-9 Quintal of paddy per acres . They do not have knowledge on use of organic  fertilizers.  There is an urgent need to address the issues which are effecting the daily life  of the poor and livelihood of the community

Agriculture is counted as the main occupation of the people  . Around 70 % of the  population of the district  lives in rural area and the main livelihood of the villagers is agriculture.  The farmers do not adopt any  modern technology for farming and as a result the yield is low. There are  no industry in Sunderbans. As a result we are trying to  convert mono cropped area into double crop area by  constructing rain water harvesting structures, providing training on Agriculture, fishery, Animal husbandry, Handicraft Training,  Formation of SHG ,Training to SHG members for undertaking income generating activities and to provide them support with financial and nonfinancial interventions. Thus we want to make a holistic approach to mitigate the Food security problem  through generation of production, employment and income of the poor both men and women  for proper food security.

Our project area consists of 10 Villages of 3 Gram Panchayat  there are3757 families having a population of 18364. Out of which 1284 are farm families .There are341 Small farmers,909 marginal farmers and 34 big farmers. If we can convert the mono cropped area in to double cropped area the farmers will be immensely benefited through increase in crop production and  yield and the landless labourer will get local employment and will check migration to a large extent  However, reclamation of  saline soil through  organic cultural practices is of vital importance.

See the attached stories.

SAFWCO(www.safwco.org) has employed  over last 28 years multifaceted approach to food security in rural areas of Sindh, Pakistan. This involved provision of  agricultural inputs & implements, development of water channels & culverts, extension of credit facility for agro-livestock development, community physical instructure(CPI) development- farm to road links, seed banks, sprinkle irrigation, value chain management and much more.

Recently, with growing poverty in urban & periurban areas and consequently development of urban slums SAFWCO has started focusing on urban food & nutrition security alongside rural food security using an innovative approach.

SAFWCO successfully interoduced hydroponics in an Urban slum in Hyderabad Sindh,inhabited by minority ethnic community-Hindus,  have imparted the female households members vocational training (stiching) and provided them sewing machines to earn their livelihoods in addition to WASH infrastructure  developed in this slum area known as Ghera Basti ('Settlement in Siege').

Ghera Basti community earlier lived in totally disconnect from mainstream, with their dwellings built around a narrow strip of  dark & long street  with no latrines and drinking water facilities.

Male members used to sell second hand repaired clothings over bicycles, while  the female  HH members spent their time in those poor shelter homes.

The community after social mobilization by SAFWCO has organised itself as CBO and devlopment of hydroponics as kitchen gardening facility and vocational training to female community members has helped overcome malnutrition among especially lactating & pregnant mothers, young girls & children.

SAFWCO now looks for support to further develop the infrastucture and capacity of community living in the Ghera Basti.

Dear FSN Forum,

Please find enclosed herewith success story from MSSRF project of Mahila Kisan Sashatikaran Pariyojana operating in the two distristics of Vidharbha region of Maharashtra state.

Regards,

Sonali