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Linking Agriculture, Food Systems and Nutrition:
What's your perspective?
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Until 26 February 2012
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 How to participate
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Send your contribution to
the Forum moderator
FSN-mo...@fao.org
or register to the
FSN Forum and post
your contribution on the
web based forum.
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Dear FSN Forum Members,
Please find below the latest contributions to our online discussion Linking Agriculture, Food Systems and Nutrition: What's your perspective? sharing the points of view of research institutions, private sector, NGOs and consultancies.
We invite you to keep following and contribute with experiences, case studies and references that can help in understanding how to best leverage agriculture and food systems for improving nutrition.
Please read the full topic here, also available in French and Spanish; as usual, feel free to contribute in these languages.
All contributions and resources received are available in the proceedings.
The FSN Forum Team |
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Facilitator's notes
• Corinna Hawkes from the City University, London, commenting on the first contributions received yesterday.
Contributions received
• Emile Frison from Bioversity International, Italy presents the organization's Nutrition Strategy;
• Agri-Food Network, an informal coalition of international trade associations involved in the agri-food sector at the global level, argues that with biofortified food, micronutrient-enriched fertilizers and improved agronomic practices agriculture can play an important role in addressing nutrition security;
• Farming First Coalition, supported by 131 organisations representing the world’s farmers, scientists, engineers, industry and agricultural development organisations, states that the nutrition challenge cannot be solved solely by the health sector as farmers are the first nutrient providers and the entire agri-food chain has a vital role to play;
• Bob Rabatsky from Fintrac, USA, introduces a program in Honduras, with targets for both agriculture and nutrition outcomes;
• Reimund Kube from Nascent Solutions, USA, stresses the importance of awareness raising and educational programs rather than improved agricultural productivity to improve people's nutritional intake.
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Corinna Hawkes, Facilitator of the discussion
How interesting to see the first keynote post comes from an agricultural practitioner concerned with unhealthy diets and noncommunicable diseases. It’s a clear example of an agricultural community – in this case a network – that has seen an opportunity in health: a market. Markets are imperative for the agricultural sector. It indicates, yet again, that the nutrition and health sectors need to focus on markets too.
The example of CaFAN shows real vision. That said, as ever with agriculture and nutrition issues, there are issues for debate. For many in the development community “import substitution” is a dirty word. Are building better links between agriculture and nutrition just about bucking global macroeconomic trends and going local again? Much as there is huge potential in local approaches - and I for one would welcome more of them, especially for fruits and vegetables - it's not the only way to work, and may alienate large numbers of potential allies. That’s where the food systems approach comes in: it’s a systematic approach – as pointed out by another contributor– to coherently link together the opportunities at the local, national, regional and global level.
This is also relevant to the comment made about the paper published in the BMJ that found "very little evidence" of the nutritional benefits of agricultural benefits. Is this to suggest that over the millennia, there is no proof that agriculture has made any contribution to nutrition? Clearly not! Sure, I would agree with the conclusion that we need to better evaluate these types of specific interventions - and I very much hope that CaFAN are doing that in the Caribbean. But let's start thinking more broadly about the nature of the contribution agriculture makes to nutrition outcomes - through the food system and the marketplace.
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Contribution by Emile Frison
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The world faces an enormous challenge of ensuring that the global community has access to a safe and nutritious diet, while simultaneously combating the rising number of health problems related to malnutrition such as obesity and diabetes. Agriculture and the global food system are capable of playing a key role in addressing this challenge, yet agriculture needs to be designed with nutrition in mind. The recent food price volatility crisis, climate change and the rise in cost of petroleum-based inputs shine a light on factors that contribute to the unsustainable nature of our agricultural system. But within these challenges lie opportunities to change the way we do business at the same time as making an important contribution to better nutrition security for the future. There is also a clear recognition that the agriculture, health and nutrition sectors will make considerable advances in nutritional security when working together. The time to act is now, building upon the momentum to improve nutrition around the world with examples such as the 1000 Days and Scaling Up Nutrition movements.
Bioversity International is the leading research organization dedicated to the use and conservation of agricultural biodiversity and is part of the CGIAR Consortium of International Research Centres. During the 40 years of the CGIAR’s existence, the organization has provided innovative research and impacts that have helped to change lives on a large scale. The CGIAR, we expect, will be even more efficient in providing crucial solutions to the problems faced by smallholder farmers globally. The CGIAR has developed a new strategy that includes one important outcome and a research programme that focuses on nutrition and health.
In that context Bioversity has developed a nutrition strategy that defines a ten-year road map for a comprehensive research programme that will provide increased understanding and evidence of how a wider use of agricultural biodiversity can contribute to improved nutrition in more sustainable agricultural systems for smallholder farmers and their beneficiaries. We aim to show
that agricultural biodiversity, underutilized crops and local and traditional foods can be powerful tools to combat poverty and malnutrition while preserving healthy ecosystems. As in the past, we will work with a broad range of partners and we invite all interested stakeholders to join forces with us to forge a new model of agriculture that does not just produce more food, but provides diverse healthy diets in a sustainable way.
For the full Nutrition Strategy of Bioversity International please follow the link:
http://www.bioversityinternational.org/fileadmin/bioversityDocs/Research/
Nutrition__new_/Bioversity_Nutrition_strategy__fullversion__.pdf
Emile Frison, Director General, Bioversity International
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Contribution by Agri-Food Network
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From increasing the availability of total calories, to specific measures on nutrient deficiencies, agriculture can play an important role in addressing nutrition security.
Biofortified foods are bred to have higher amounts of micronutrients and can help provide essential vitamins and minerals. One example is Golden Rice which contains higher amounts of beta-carotene and iron, with potential benefits for 250 million children who risk blindness due to vitamin A deficiency and 1.4 billion women who suffer from anaemia due to iron deficiency.
Micronutrient-enriched fertilizers improve soil fertility, helping to support higher yields of more nutritious food. Poor soil quality is a significant factor that leads to micronutrient deficiencies in humans – if the soil is not rich in all the necessary nutrients, food products will not contain the necessary nutritional balance. A program in Turkey has used this technique to successfully address zinc deficiencies in their population.
Improved agronomic practices can also help. Crop rotation is a good practice to improve productivity but it also encourages food diversity. A rotation of legume, cereal, and oilseed crops has benefits to populations in terms of range of nutrients. Conservation tillage can halt and even reverse the process of soil degradation, helping to prevent nutrient depletion of soils and protect yields.
Once food is produced, though, there are still many challenges to get it into people’s hands. In 2010, FAO estimated that poorly developed systems for handling, storage, packaging, transportation, and marketing of agricultural products in developing countries results in post-harvest losses ranging from 15% to a staggering 50%. Investment in food infrastructure and handling could reduce losses and improve food safety. Developed countries also face losses due to food waste from harvest, through delivery to food services, and in households. Waste is worst in fresh fruits and vegetables which deliver vital nutrients to humans around the globe.
Nutrition is the foundation for health and development, upon which all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) depend. Yet whilst the cost-effectiveness and efficacy of malnutrition interventions through agriculture have been clearly demonstrated, these activities have yet to be deployed at scale and in tandem with each other.
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Contribution by Farming First Coalition
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Traditionally, nutrition security has been viewed as the realm of health professionals. Yet the nutrition challenge cannot be solved solely by the health sector: farmers are the first nutrient providers and the entire agri-food chain has a vital role to play. Continued focus on improving agricultural productivity is an important prerequisite to realising food security goals, including nutrition security.
Recommendations for policymakers
Farming First supports the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Initiative and its Thousand Days programme to improve maternal and child nutrition from pregnancy to the age of two.
Farming First encourages policy makers to support the SUN initiative and encourage the adoption and implementation of relevant nutrition strategies at country levels.
Specifically, Farming First calls for nutrition strategies to:
1. Include agricultural activities in national nutrition strategies and promote the role of farmers as nutrient providers.
2. Train farmers in using appropriate agricultural inputs and techniques that can encourage the production of abundant and nutritious crops and mixed diets, including fruits and vegetables.
3. Highlight the importance of increasing productivity and diversity as an essential component of ensuring access to nutritious foods. Fighting undernutrition is the first step to securing nutrition security.
4. In addition, micronutrient deficiency affects not only people but also plants, livestock and soils. By addressing all forms of micronutrient deficiency, productivity gains can be made and people’s nutrition can be improved.
5. Target farmers, especially women farmers in developing countries, as key partners in improving household nutrition and delivering nutritional interventions, such as dietary supplements
In addition, to ensure nutrition policies are effective and comprehensive, it is important to:
1. Scale up support for market development and infrastructure investment cost-effective interventions, especially cross-sector collaborations
2. Improve access to markets and encourage healthier food through diversification, market incentives, and consumer education. That includes raising awareness of nutritional challenges throughout the food chain, using marketing and information campaigns.
2. Reduce waste by focusing on harvest losses and consumer waste. In many countries, the lack of agricultural infrastructure and market information does not allow the efficient distribution of agricultural outputs.
3. Conduct further research on nutritional needs in the population, encourage cross-disciplinary research among agricultural, horticultural, nutritional, and medical scientists, and expand biofortification, plant breeding, and micronutrient solutions.
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Contribution by Bob Rabatsky
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Fintrac is implementing a four year program for USAID in Honduras, with targets for both agriculture and nutrition outcomes. We are new to the nutrition activity as we have been working primarily as an agriculture development company. The project is one year old and has had success in incorporating nutrition messaging and outcomes using our agriculture extensionists to reinforce the message. I am attaching a short description of our nutrition efforts and look forward to the discussion.
http://typo3.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fsn/docs/Agriculture_nutrition
/ACCESO_Spotlight_Nutrition_12_11_ENG.pdf
Bob Rabatsky
Fintrac, Inc.
Food Security Solutions
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Contribution by Reimund Kube
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Dear colleagues,
the Feed the Future Program of USAID is integrating food and nutrition in a systems approach. It admits that there is no proof for a direct positive relationship of improved nutrition as a result of improved agricultural productivity. I even think that with the evidence we have so far, we have to assume that there is no direct positive relationship, as people's decision's about food consumption are guided by many largely irrational factors like habit and taste, but also by concrete ones like "what is available that I can afford?"
There is no alternative to awareness raising and educational programs that start in school to bring down the number of people who prefer rice and chocolate or eat cassava, but no fish. There are differences between rural and urban habits and opportunities, and certainly is there no silver bullet as solution. In Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, I found populations that produced good and healthy foods, but nevertheless were suffering from malnutrition, as they preferred to sell it and buy canned food and alcohol instead. Hence the need for behavioural changes which the best place to start with is in school, including the establishment of gardens with organically grown fruits, vegetables and legumes.
Reimund Kube
Advisor, Sustainable Agriculture and NRM | |
