Forum global sur la sécurité alimentaire et la nutrition (Forum FSN)

Farming systems approaches invariably include crops, fisheries and live stocks and their interactive relationship within the households specially in the small and marginal household in the South Asian context. This has the uniqueness in addressing the household food consumption and nutrition. The development and fast tract diffusion of climate smart technologies can address and reduce the household vulnerabilities. We can reduce the livelihood vulnerability in climate vulnerable areas through reducing the sensitivity of any crop, fish or livestock technologies. These practices will also increase the adaptive capacity of the small households. This can be described by the following equation as described by B.M. Simpson (2016):

Livelihood vulnerability = (Exposure × Sensitivity) – Adaptive capacity

Recently the Global Hunger Index has explained the condition of hunger in all over the world. Developing countries which have high growth rate have serious hunger conditions. Organic farming may reduce the cost of farming and conserve our natural resources such as water, soil and minerals.



Dr Harish Yadav

New Delhi

Homestead gardening is an ancient practice to the farm families of Bangladesh, where the women used to grow vegetables or fruits using their own seeds. The quantity of the production as well as its contribution to family nutrition varied largely from farmer to farmer depending on the availability of land areas as well as land type. Rural farmers have little access to information and advisory services for decision making in real time. Creating an innovation platform by linking the different actors of production system including farmers, extension personnel, researcher, input dealers etc. through a simplified mobile app in local language will help farmers in decision making in real time for sustainable agriculture with improved nutrition security.

"Sustainable farming system for food and nutrition security" is a topic of current relevance when land under farming gets reduced, irrigation water scarce, farm labour costly, incidences of pests and diseases becoming more prevalent, farmers suicide blotting civilized nations, global hunger index going down in highly populated countries like India. Gandhi the father of Indian nation called for selfsufficiency in family food and nutrition availability by making use of available space in the house, use of water and waste for farming and household members providing farm labour. Called variously as kitchen garden, backyard garden, nutrition garden and now hydroponics, aeroponics, rain shelter farming, vertical gardening etc., the sustainable farming system is providing both physical and mental health and wellness. Vegetable and fruit growing is a therapy for the aged, mentally retarded and depressed. In Ayurveda system of medical treatment, consumption of fruits and vegetables is advocated. Hidden hunger becoming a global concern, kitchen garden can play a positive role.

Dear all,

Q2. Are you conducting any research on the impact of agriculture and environment on food and nutrition security?

Yes – we are interested in reducing zinc deficiency in Pakistan. Currently, deficiency is widespread with over 40% of women deficient. Most households in Pakistan consume wheat flour on a daily basis. Biofortification through crop breeding and application of zinc fertilizers can increase the concentration of zinc in wheat grain and offers a strategy to help alleviate zinc deficiency.

We are conducting research near Peshawar among a marginalised population to test the effectiveness of biofortified wheat flour for improving nutritional zinc status: http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/projects?ref=BB%2FP02338X%2F1

The flour has been milled from a strain of wheat grain, recently released in Pakistan by HarvestPlus

The protocol is registered with the ISRCTN (International Standard Registered Clinical/soCial sTudy Number) here: http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN83678069

In Pakistan, the research is coordinated and conducted by the Khyber Medical University, The Abaseen Foundation and Fauji Fertilizer Company. Please follow our project #BiZiFED on Twitter and get in touch if you have any questions. 

Thanks,

The BiZiFED Team 

I am a PhD student from Niger republic. I am going to say something on the impact of farming system on the environment. If we look at traditional soil management practices such as Zai  which is a practice that can trigger soil biodiversity. With a high diversity of soil biota, the soil functions increase. We have four main ecological functions: nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, maintenance of soil structure and pest control. Just I want to demonstrate that there there is a link between soil biodiversity and soil functions. What attract soil biodiversity? It's Zai which is a farming system. To sum up, farming system impact positively the environment by sequestering carbon dioxyde which is a green house gas.

AMADOU ISSOUFOU

Dear all,

Wonderful to see so much interest in this topic.

It would be fantastic to learn about more examples of on-going research on this important topic.

Please keep your contributions coming!

Alan

Dear all,

I am a graduate student working on 'social and environmental dynamics of coarse cereals cultivation'. Of the four questions mentioned above, my research will focus on the direct two parts to essentially come up with some output that my feed into answering the last two questions.

I am in my early stage of study and has chosen the hilly tracts of Palghar district in the state of Maharashtra, India as one of the area for field study. This region has historically (literature from early 60s have documented this) to been a hotbed of malnutrition prevalent among its predominant tribal population. Since millets formed a part of their daily diet in this rainfed area, I will try to see how the role of this cereal is being perceived by the people there. Through this I try to see any disparities between production and consumption of cereals, its resource footprint, pathways linking it with wellbeing (economic and health status).

This will be done through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods like ethnographic study coupled with analysis of change in cropping pattern in the region. Along with Palghar, one more region will be considered for the study which is yet to be finalised. I am planning to begin my field study early next year and all your comments and opinions are welcome. Hope I can contribute more to this discussion in the following months.

Incidentally, my masters dissertation was carried out at CAbC MSSRF headed by Dr. Anilkumar on the topic 'food security and traditional knowledge under climate variability'.

Thank you,

Swaran

Good Day,

I am really very fortunate that LANSA provided me with the great opportunity to look into the background of agriculture with the lens of system and nutrition. We as an organisation, VAAGDHARA tried to interact with the local community in Banswara district of Rajasthan, India and document their perception as system.  We also tried to look at the existing farming practices from the angle of their impact on environment linking them with different goals as stated in SDG 2030. 

Our findings are associated with two approaches mostly discussed within the purview of Sustainable Consumption and Production, that are a linear model of farming and a circular model of farming. We would share our findings in separate write-up. 

Our research has tried to work with farms on adapting diverse food items. Our experience in this field demands for widespread diversity in food system and linking it with the cutlivation.

In our findings, an increase in food diversity and agriculture diversity is important for building the resilience of small and marginal farmers to face environmental stressors.

Dear all,

happy to share into the discussion.

Re: 2) Research of impact of ag on nut

We are currently conducting a 4-year cluster-randomized trial in Sylhet, Bangladesh, called Food and Agricultural Approaches to Reducing Malnutrition (FAARM; trial registration link), funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. We evaluate the impact of the Homestead Food Production program of the NGO Helen Keller International (HKI) on food security, nutrition and health. The program works with small-scale farmers training them in vegetable gardening, poultry rearing and marketing, as well as nutrition, child care and hygiene.

Soil fertility was a key constraint in FAARM home gardens, and therefore we explored the feasibility of urine-biochar as a low-cost organic fertilizer in the Biochar-Urine Nutrient Cycling for Health (BUNCH) study, together with HKI, JPGSPH and Ithaka Institute, funded by LANSA. The farmers produced biochar locally in soil-pit kilns from crop residues and mixed it with cow urine. It turned out to work quite well and we are now scaling up. Read more on this LANSA Blog.

After the flash flood in April that destroyed the Boro rice crop in our area, we are now collecting data on how badly the families were affected, their food security situation and coping strategies. As part of FAARM, we have been collecting detailed nutrition data on a rolling basis and will thus be able to assess the effects on households and particularly on children.

Re: 4) interventions for ag resilience to environmental stressors

I am trained as a medical doctor and epidemiologist and not an agriculture expert, but here a few thoughts:

1. Resilience requires a buffer. Small-scale farmers that are barely surviving, chronically malnourished, don't have any buffer. Interventions need to improve and diversify their livelihoods and increase their production in an ecologically sustainable way, as well as offering social security mechanisms.
2. Resilience requires diversity. Much funding is wasted on magic bullets such as golden rice which would decrease crop diversity even more. Instead, we need to promote local varieties tolerant to drought, flood, heat, or pests even if yields are lower under ideal circumstances. (Climate change means we will rarely have ideal circumstances any more.) And we should diversify away from staples (also in research funding, CGIAR still focuses almost entirely on staples) and promote local varieties of pulses, fruit and vegetables rich in micronutrients.
3. Resilience requires (eco)system-thinking. Agriculture depends on soil life, pollinating insects and on predators eating pests, while agricultural fields can offer habitat and food for many species. Human agricultural activities now extend over much of the planet's surface. Instead of monocultures and toxic chemicals, we should favour agroecological methods that reconcile food production with biodiversity on which we eventually depend for human survival on this planet.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this!  :-)

Cheers,

Sabine