المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Nutrition education to strengthen family farming and improve people’s diets

 Thanks for introducing and facilitation of discussions on pertinent issues of family farming and people’s diets and nutrition. My contributions, narrated as a personal experience focuses on three issues, i.e., communication strategies, constraints, and future focus:

Communication strategies:

I will share my experience from Kenya (rural) where I was brought up. I recall the 1970s, 1980s and part of 1990s with nostalgia. The home science classes were introduced and taught at lower levels in school, and the focus was on the three main food groups - energy foods, Vitamins and minerals. Examples were drawn from foods grown in the particular locality where the school was situated. Such a focus helped to demystify the jargon of food groups to locally available foods. My home area was full of bananas, maize, guavas, livestock, chickens, mangoes, berries, sugarcane, potatoes, etc. from which teachers pulled examples of foods into the three food groups. Schools by the lake-side gave examples to include fish and other water-based foods.

The school curricular included displays and competition through theater and drama, music and poems. Through the activities, students and people from local communities (audience) shared and received information which linked food crops on family farms to nutritional needs of family as infants, children, youth, mothers, and seniors.

Inter-school competitions and exchanges exposed students to information on alternative foods available in other localities. Other parts of the school curricular such as history and geography helped students learn from a young age of the different types of climatic conditions that support the growth of different types of crops. Parents received information on foods through pre and post–natal clinics. Once again, mothers to be were advised on foods based on what is available in their particular locality or family farms, rather than what is available in the larger market.

Shared market-days exist to date in both rural and urban areas and people travel from near and far to sell and purchase foods. Interactions of people from different parts of the country avails different foods and becomes a channel through which individuals get to ask questions and learn on different foods. To date, my visits to urban grocery stores remain a learning process: I get asked by other customers what I do with some of the `strange’ vegetables in my shopping cart. I too ask how they cook a particular food and its goodness. Over time I have added new foods to my menu; partly because my traditional foods are rare or very expensive (in my current location), and as I interact with people from other parts of the world and learn of the nutritional value of their foods.

Education, education, and education: We are always learning; while at the family table where children ask endless questions on `why they should consume foods, meaning vegetables’ that they do not like. Within our families where Mum insists that we must cultivate some traditional vegetables for consumption, and in the process we learn not only on the value of different foods, but how to cultivate, harvest, cook and consume them. The knowledge gained from the family setting and school follows us into adulthood as we eat in hotels, restaurants and prepare meals in our kitchens. Equipped with valuable knowledge on foods, I am well-placed to sieve information in the media advertisements of foods and drinks. Once individuals develop this basis sense of ‘good food’, they are less likely to sell their chicken and bananas to purchase bread and soda for their children.

At the regional and national levels are specific government, NGO and other development agency supported programs with a focus on foods and nutrition. For example, agricultural extension officers share knowledge on all aspects of farming to include crop cultivation, value adding, consumption and marketing. Research also tends to focus on the nutritional value of locally grown foods, etc.

Constraints:

My contributions here relate to access to education, media, and purchasing power of families. At some point, the school curriculum changed into a more national and international institution, whereby students are being prepared to fit in as national and international citizens. So did the knowledge imparted and information shared on foods, diets and nutrition. For example, school text-books at my rural home will be found to contain apples as an example of fruits, yet, no apple grows in my home area.  Young people end up losing knowledge of locally grown and available foods as they acquire knowledge on news foods that they will struggle to obtain (access and afford) later on in life.

Today’s availability and access to information and communication channels, including social media has exposed both the young and old to information than never before. Do individuals and families accessing the information have capacity to differentiate foods being advertised mainly as a market item for profit, from food items for nutrition? Goes back to the level and strength of internalized foods and nutritional values at a younger age – those will less knowledge and skills will be easy to sway to advertised foods, some whose nutritional value is not readily available to them.

Future strategies/focus:

1.       More emphasis on locally grown and available foods through the educational system, government-focused and NGO programs on food and well-being.

2.       Emphasis through the school system on the different climatic conditions and linkages to specific foods, diets, and nutrition, i.e., if there are no apples in your locality, it does not mean you lack access to nutritious fruits. Eat local.

3.       Provision of infrastructure, for example the construction of roads to enable timely transportation of fresh foods from farms in rural areas to consumers in urban centers.

4.       Encourage the private sector to process, add value, package and sell locally produced foods.

5.       Collaboration with the private sector in the advertisement and campaigns to encourage rural families to consume traditional foods or locally available foods.

6.       Encourage `middle class’ families to consume traditional foods – the standards they set in terms of nutrition, dress, mannerisms, etc. have been found to set standards that rural families or the poor in urban centers will strive to achieve.

7.       Encourage rural and urban families to facilitate ‘family-meal-times’ – one way for young people to acquire skills on the cultivation and preparation of particular foods, and less reliance on the purchase of prepared foods, whose nutritional content they lack knowledge.

Nutrition education through family farming is a process; it is complicated, but achievable: Expose young people to food seeds, to food cultivation processes (can be achieved growing two seeds in a tin), to food harvesting and cooking techniques. Such knowledge will be everlasting, and will be the beginning of better diets and better nutrition.

Eileen Omosa

eileenomosa.com

@iLeenGreen