Food-based intervention strategies to improve nutritional standards of rural communities in the developing world play a key role in poverty reduction efforts. The nutritional level of a community is an important indicator of its socio-economic status and, accordingly nutrition and food-based interventions have high priority in development programmes and projects.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has focused attention on world hunger through major initiatives such as the International Conference on Nutrition (ICN), World Food Summit (WFS), WFS: five years later and the International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH). These resulted in commitments by governments to address global food insecurity and malnutrition. The United Nations Millennium Declaration of 2000 and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) too have made food and nutrition a cornerstone of development.
Horticulture-based food such as fruits, vegetables and nuts is important for the daily diet, providing essential micronutrients, fibre, vegetable proteins and other bio-functional components. FAO is implementing horticulture-based field operations and normative activities including field projects to improve household food security and nutritional levels in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Technical assistance is being provided to national governments and relevant stakeholders for improved planning, targeting and monitoring of food security programmes. In collaboration with the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific undertook an initiative to promote nutrition based on horticultural food.
This report is an account of the nutrition component of the Integrated Horticulture and Nutrition Development Project (BGD/97/041) funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), with FAO as the technical agency. The five-year project commenced in 2001 and was implemented under National Execution (NEX) arrangements by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). A significant project outcome was the development of a community-based nutrition programme which has led to major improvements in the nutritional knowledge, skills and technologies of rural communities. A dietary impact assessment found substantially higher energy, protein and micronutrient intake among households covered by the project as compared to non-project households.
The project offered valuable lessons in using horticulture-based nutrition development strategies to improve food security and nutritional standards in other developing countries in the region, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. I trust this document will be a useful contribution to FAO’s collaborative activities in horticulture and nutrition towards household food security and nutritional improvement in the Asia-Pacific region.
He Changchui
Assistant
Director-General and
FAO Regional
Representative for Asia and the Pacific
