Hello everyone,
I am glad to share with you a personal story. I have a nutritional background and I have always been interested in food security, particularly how we, as individuals, can contribute to achieve a world free of hunger. After working for seven years in the private food sector in Lebanon, I decided to join a Master’s degree called "Management of Urban Food Security" at La Salle Beauvais, a specialized university in France focusing on agriculture, nutrition, and health. The Master especially targets young students from developed countries with the aim to instil a wider understanding of food security problems and provide practical tools and mechanisms that would allow students to go back to their country and contribute to achieving a positive social, economic, and political change, but more important, to give them the know-how to achieve sustainable and nutrition sensitive agriculture.
Integrating nutrition into the curricula of agriculture education institutions is a necessity and it goes a long way. Why?
We can answer with another question: who will be the farmers of the future? We will! Everyone will be. A nutrition-sensitive agriculture concerns every one of us, whether you are an agronomist, a nutritionist, a politician, a teacher or an engineer, agriculture and nutrition affect every aspect of your life. There is no agriculture without nutrition and no nutrition without agriculture. It is time that every farmer knows what crops they should cultivate for a healthy balanced diet, what crops can contribute to maintain nutritious soil sustainably, what crops can have a positive impact on the environment and help climate change mitigation and adaptation, how to avoid post-harvest loss, how agricultural products processing is an added value, how to stock products, how to access markets, how markets work, etc. The list is long. But imagine a world where farmers perfectly know the nutritional value of their products, how to engage their communities and get organized to optimize outcomes, and how to communicate with the public sector, civil society, and the private sector.
This master’s degree does not make me an agronomist. I am still a nutritionist but the curricula that rightly addresses nutrition and agriculture education has changed the way I see nutrition. Recently, I asked a colleague in my class what he thought of the Master’s degree. He said: When I go back to Niger, I will know exactly what crops I should recommend the farmers to grow in order to fight the drought and have a nutritious healthy lifestyle.
Personally, I never regret leaving everything behind, including a paid job, to pursue this master’s degree. I strongly believe in the value of integrating nutrition into the curricula of agriculture education. There is no doubt for me that nutrition-sensitive agriculture education should become part not just of specialized agriculture institutions but even to some extent in primary and secondary schools. In order to promote awareness and increase interest in nutrition-sensitive agriculture, schools should start to organize visits for their young students to farms, agro-industries, food supply chains, and to their own school cafeterias to show them how agriculture and nutrition are combined, and why this combination is essential. Such initiatives would encourage college students to pursue agriculture studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and enrich the agricultural sector.
Thank you all,
Ghady
Ms. Ghady Chedrawi