To eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition while making agriculture and food systems sustainable requires an integrated approach that includes nutrition and social protection in the agricultural and food security interventions.
In this approach for example, the provision and supply of school meals is linked with local agriculture, and reinforced by hands-on work on food and nutrition education; school gardening and active engagement of families, school personnel and communities to create children’s lifelong healthy eating habits and healthier school food environments.

Through this integrated and comprehensive approach several objectives can be met: enhanced food and nutrition security, market creation, livelihoods improvements, development of value chains, promoting healthy diets using local products of value chains and increasing and diversifying local agriculture.

The approach should be based on a sound policy, legal and institutional framework backed up by political commitment and inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral coordination. It is based on four pillars: food security, nutrition, social protection and agricultural innovation.

The “Developing Capacity for Strengthening Food Security and Nutrition in Selected Countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia” project is well-timely to strategically mitigate the challenges and promote cross-sectoral collaboration by providing adequate capacity to effectively pursue and manage coherence between agriculture, health, education and social protection sectors. Through its pilots, the project provides an evidence base and functional capacities across line ministries and decentralized government bodies to build political commitment and coherence for the development of policies, legislations and programs.