1. If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?
1. promotion of indigenous knowledge and orphan crops would help. Most orphan crops have advantages over the ones which are being promoted now.
2. understanding the current status, advantages and utilizing it. In Malawi for example we have many goats which can provide milk to children and women to improve nutrition.
3. Behaviour change communication intensification. People need to know advantages of many orphan crops, goats milk, insects, mice and other foods. In Malawi people have little reliesh and plenty of starch on their meals, a habit that need to change and improve.
4. Legumes which provide nutritous food are a major source of income now that tobacco has no future. The conflict will be bigger now than ever before. There is a need to come up with more viable cash crops and utilize legumes as food.
5. Organic farming. Farmers discovered that applying manure twice work well in the same way chemical fertilizer does in maize. There is a need to encouge better manure making innovations, to reduce starvation, or low yield of maize, the major food crop.
Gladson Makowa