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DRAFT

Breakout Session P1.2 Household Nutrition Security: Briefing Paper

Lynn Brown (WFP)

Context – the problems being addressed

One billion people in the world do not have enough food to eat, even as vitamin and mineral

deficiencies are compromising the health and nutrition of even more. As well as the

unbearable human cost - undernutrition irreversibly damages cognitive and physical

development – it is estimated that undernutrition contributes to the loss of an average of 2-3

percent of developing countries’ GDP. The international development community is now

considering how agriculture could better contribute to improving human health and nutrition

and how health and nutrition could contribute to a more productive and sustainable

agricultural system?1 Paramount to reaching these answers is the need for greater

collaboration between the agriculture and health communities and the bringing together of

two sectors that in the past have often acted in silos.

Global agriculture is facing a myriad of challenges such as how to overcome shortfalls in food

production, how to reduce food loss and waste, how to diversify agro-ecosystems, how to

improve resilience of crops and more. These challenges are aggravated by issues of land and

other natural resource availability, population growth, urbanization, price volatility and

climate change. Policymakers must consider all of these challenges in agriculture as well as

refine the traditional focus from ‘how to increase food production’ to ‘how agriculture can

improve nutrition and health’. Examples of such a shift include a focus on greater diversity of

crops, breeding of new varieties of crops with improved nutritional content (bio-fortification)

and schemes to increase household production and consumption of micronutrient-rich

vegetables, fruits and animal-source foods and the advancement of sustainable diets among

other initiatives. Nutrition programmes equally need to consider how they can support local

agro-systems.

15. There are major opportunities to incorporate small adjustments to investments across sectors

such as agriculture to make them more nutrition sensitive with a potentially impressive impact

on nutrition outcomes. Based on experience to-date, five steps are necessary for transforming

new operations to be more nutrition sensitive:

a. Explicitly incorporate nutritional considerations into initial design of projects/policies;

b. Integrate nutritional considerations as elements of investments, not necessarily as the

primary objective;

c. Modify the design/consider alternatives to minimize unintended negative

consequences and maximize positive impacts;

d. Support nutritional objectives with technical capacity within countries;

e. Monitor and evaluate nutrition impacts with appropriate indicators.

While the research agenda is growing, there remains limited concrete evidence on how

1 IFPRI Global Food Policy Report 2011

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agriculture–nutrition linkages work. A mapping exercise has been completed by

DFID/LCIRAH outlining the research gaps. However, more nutrition-relevant data from

agricultural interventions needs to be generated, collected and shared, and nutritional

indicators need to be included in evaluations. LCIRAH identify the need for greater

understanding of the pathways from agricultural inputs and practices through value chains to

effects on food environment, consumption and nutrition. Innovation and engagement with the

private sector is also key to linking the two silos and improving household nutrition security.

Current activities presented and discussed in the session

Chair: Barbara Burlingame (FAO); Facilitator: Lynn Brown (WFP)

The Chair and Facilitator will open the Session by introducing the topic and identifying

constraints and opportunities in incorporating nutrition into AR4D agendas, systems and

processes and achieving greater household nutritional security;

A panel of practitioners with field experience will outline diverse approaches, activities,

challenges and visions for meeting nutrition needs;

This will be followed by a Session on global platforms, dialogue, policies and

initiatives;

Following a plenary discussion on the above two sessions, a panel of donors,

foundations, representatives from the private sector and research institutes will map out

the road ahead and the relevant priorities and actions for working together to take the

agenda forward as well as the critical role of funding.

Practitioner panel on meeting nutrition needs through diverse approaches.

Action contre la Faim (ACF) will present case studies on low input gardens in Zimbabwe,

health gardens in Mali, SUSTAIN in Myanmar and bio-fortification in South and Central

America.

Helen Keller International (HKI) will consider how to take forward and strengthen

partnerships, the need for balancing consumption and income needs (moving away from

consumption-only goals), the importance of intra-household and equity issues, challenges of

scale and targeting and the issue of data deficits in measuring nutrition and other outcomes.

Diversity for Development (D4D) will focus on the need for greater diversity within

agricultural systems and the need to coordinate advocacy through the D4D Alliance.

Global Initiatives and Platforms

CRP4 will present the role of the CGIAR research programme on agriculture for nutrition and

health (A4NH) and its three pathways through which agriculture can enhance human nutrition

and health: through agriculture and food value chains, by improving the desired nutrition and

health impacts of large-scale programmes and by supporting better policymaking and

investment in agriculture, nutrition and health.

SecureNutrition, focused on taking a multi-sectoral approach to improved nutrition outcomes

through investments in the agriculture and rural development sector, will present its active

community of practice - both virtual and physical - where information and operational

knowledge on how to increase the nutritional impact of agriculture and food security

investments and interventions is being shared.

FAO will present on sustainable production and diets. diets focusing on nutrients, foods and

diets as ecosystem services, developing sustainable production intensification strategies

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within environmental limits, characterization of agro-ecological zones for sustainable diets,

measuring nutrients and bioactive non-nutrients in food biodiversity, documenting traditional

food systems of indigenous peoples, development of indicators for sustainable diets,

calculating environmental footprints for achieving dietary adequacy and addressing nutrient

losses and waste.

DFID/LCIRAH will discuss their mapping and gap analysis of current and planned research

on agriculture for improved nutrition and resulting conceptual framework defining pathways

by which agriculture may contribute to nutrition, either directly or indirectly.

WFP will outline the different platforms, policy issues and focus including the Global Donor

Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD), Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) and the Gender in

Agriculture Partnership (GAP).

Intended outcomes

Identify what activities can be started immediately to bring the agriculture and nutrition

agendas closer together;

Identify the opportunities and bottlenecks to achieving this;

Develop a roadmap outlining how to reach the identified goals.

Commitments to collective actions in 2012-2014 (national, regional or international)

i. With existing resources

Establish a framework for examining agricultural interventions in support of nutritional

outcomes, in order to establish where gaps in research exist (LCIRAH);

More task team leaders in the agriculture sector to integrate nutrition into their programs

(WB);

Research institutes working in partnership to provide relevant and timely knowledge,

technology and evidence for decision-making and implementations (CRP4);

A seminal scientific paper determining the merits of crop diversification to be published

in a scientific journal and used by the D4D alliance in multiple global fora (D4D);

Roll out integrated gender-nutrition-communication manual and mainstream nutrition

orientations to agriculture extension services and NGOs (HKI);

Disseminate lessons learned of the added nutrition impact of gender-transformative

community actions, and of food-based approaches (HKI);

Link smallholder agriculture production under “Purchase for Progress” to bio-fortified

crops where available (WFP);

Identification of a common research agenda and priorities that links agriculture,

nutrition and the environment, with sustainable diets as the aim. (FAO);

Develop a research agenda that is a direct response to the UN Secretary General’s ‘Zero

Hunger Challenge’ on access to food for all all year round, ending stunting among

children under two, ensuring food systems are sustainable, doubling smallholder

productivity and income and a reducing food waste (FAO).

ii. With additional support

Extend the network of researchers who are undertaking and evaluating agricultural

interventions for nutritional outcomes so as to engage a larger research community and

include training in evaluation methods (LCIRAH);

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Continue to seek interest and resources to scale up nutrition sensitive agriculture,

particularly in high undernutrition burden countries (WB);

Expand market-based approaches to promoting the nutritional value of varieties;

cultivate research and development investment in nutrient-rich processed and packaged

foods (HKI);

Continue to explore the sustainability and nutritional impact of individual-based and

network-based approaches to smallholder farmers (HKI);

Empower farmers with communication and marketing skills, and support smallholder

farmers as local government resource persons on nutrition and food security (HKI);

Integrate rigorous evaluation of BCC strategies and cost-benefit analysis of intensive

and “light” nutrition actions (HKI);

Promote development of ready to use supplemental foods using locally sourced crops

(WFP).

iii. With specific large scale programme investment

Link research across programmes so researchers in one programme will benefit from

what other researchers are doing in other programmes (LCIRAH);

Continued engagement with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development

Programme (CAADP) process through the Africa region. Specifically, both agriculture

and nutrition teams from the World Bank are collaborating and engaging on Pillar 3 of

the CAADP, which is focused on increasing the food supply and reducing hunger across

the region by raising smallholder productivity and improved responses in emergency

situations (WB);

Advocate for integrating nutrition into the agriculture extension curriculum and taking

affirmative actions to increase representation of women in agriculture departments at all

levels (HKI);

Establish liaisons connecting female farmers nationally or throughout the region (HKI);

Invest in media campaigns to address nutrition behaviour (HKI);

Increasingly incorporate locally produced supplemental foods in programming to

prevent stunting in children under two years (WFP).