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

Dear Sirs,

This is just a general comment. In my opinion it is very important to introduce a formal and structured nutrition program in the agriculture curricula. Apart from the logical advantages it could avoid important biases. These occur in some medical pre-graduate medical studies: Pediatric nutrition (first year of life); Endocrinological nutrition (diabetes, obesity); Cardiovascular nutrition (hyper LDL cholesterolemia);  Gastroenterological nutrition ( intestinal malabsorption), etc. The problem is that  real bases and   guidance about correct  nutrition is missing for the moment and there seems to be no firm possibilities of including this in the medical studies.

As only unsafe food causes 2 million people to die per year (WHO) a general approach, in this case at food production level is more than welcome.

Manuel Moya

Catedrático E/ E Professor & Head

Chair of the Technical Advisory Group on Nutrition of International Pediatric Association (IPA)

Editor in Chief of IPA Newsletter

Board of Directors of IPA Foundation

Vice-President of European Pediatric Association

Academician of the Real Academia de Medicna

Role of agricultural colleges and higher education institutions to promote nutrition sensitive agriculture

Agricultural colleges play an important role in promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture through several mechanisms. Institutions of higher education provide a key entry point where nutrition-sensitive agriculture can be incorporated into curricula and into the training of agronomists and agricultural extension agents. Agricultural colleges are critical to not only building capacity but also designing programs that incorporate nutrition interventions tailored to goals and outcomes. These institutions are able to support nutrition-sensitive approaches through the training of agricultural extension agents and instilling competencies in both nutrition and agronomy. Agricultural colleges are also critical institutions whereby nutrition-sensitive agricultural approaches can be integrated into multiple programs and disciplines and facilitate collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and projects.

Universities have the capacity to support innovative nutrition-sensitive agriculture through robust evaluations of the efficacy of these programs in supporting household nutrition aims and policies. Institutions of higher education are also capable of promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture through policy-relevant research, dissemination of results, and rigorous impact evaluations.

Universities are a key factor in the continuation of knowledge acquisition - both technical and theoretical - enabling nutrition-sensitive agriculture to be incorporated into existing extension systems and agricultural policies. Agricultural colleges are central to the training and capacity building of practitioners and academics including agronomists, nutritionists, and economists creating a cadre of experts adept at linking nutrition aims to agricultural practices. University graduates pursuing education in agricultural extension are able to close the gap between agronomists and nutritionists. Universities are able to produce the next generation of experts with the skills and knowledge to design, implement, and monitor projects that incorporate nutrition-sensitive approaches and perspectives.

In Tanzania, a number of projects are underway and involve universities as critical stakeholders in achieving nutrition-sensitive agriculture programs. At the Innovative Agricultural Research Initiative (iAGRI), a USAID funded partnership of American, Tanzanian, and Africa-wide institutions, emphasis is placed on strengthening the training, collaborative research, and extension capacities of Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and the Tanzanian National Agricultural Research System. By investing in human capacity in the agricultural sciences, the project aims to improve Tanzania’s ability to produce the leaders, researchers, and applied scientists it needs to achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty.  

Through investment in higher education in agricultural science and technology, the human capital needed to implement, support, and rigorously monitor and evaluate nutrition-sensitive agriculture can be achieved. With strengthened human capacity in these areas, agricultural colleges are able to integrate nutrition into the curriculum of agriculture extension teams and more effectively link agriculture and nutrition goals.

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

Integration of Nutrition into Agricultural Education

The purpose of this note is to ascertain whether it is necessary to integrate nutrition into agricultural education, and if so, to explore how may one achieve that objective. I shall use a holistic approach, but it will be within the framework imposed by the logic of relevance to the two areas the current discussion specifies.

Let me begin by asking the question, how may one justify agricultural education? Is it because agricultural education enables those who plan and administer agricultural activities perform their work more effectively? Or is it because it enables those who actually engage in agriculture to produce more, and hence earn more?

If one should answer ’yes’ to those two questions as one generally does, it inevitably entails that agricultural activities are undertaken for the sole purpose of earning a profit. Other things being equal, this in turn, entails that agricultural production is only governed by the demand for produce at local, regional or global levels.

This may look innocuous, and indeed in the opinion of many, praiseworthy. However, in real life where many a resounding theory is as tangible as a fata morgana, belief in it is directly responsible for malnutrition and/or inappropriate nutrition among the people.

In the 1980ies, increased peanut production for export in West Africa greatly diminshed its availability to the local people, for whom it had been a major source of protein for generations. This led to wide-spread protein defficiency especially among children, which is well-documented. Likewise, in many Asian and South American countries, undue emphasis on cash crops rather than on the food crops and livestock has led to a similar result, or to the rising cost of wholesome food. Eg. Tea, coffee, cocoa, etc, are some of such crops.

I use the term ’wholesome food’ advisedly. It may be true  that growing cash-crops may enable a farmer to earn more, but the question is whether an appropriate diet would be available to one at an affordable cost when farmers  will limit themselves to grow what  will enable them to earn most?

Obviously, this is impossible. And if one wishes to eat appropriately, a considerable portion of a cash-crop grower’s profits would have to be spent on food. Moreover, it has the same insidious impact on the eating habits of everybody in a given locality.

Now the dietry stage is set for the entrance of Iago! It proclaims in colourful photos, catchy tunes, and sonorous monosyllables that it is ’cool’ and modern to consume some brand of industrial  feed or drink just as the celebrity X or Y does. What’s more, the stuff is comparatively cheap not only with reference to price, but also nutritive content, and taste.

Everyewhere in the world, obesity and malnutrition has become a serious threat to public health, and human well-being. This is in part, due to current public ignorance of nutrition, and its failure to understand that one’s intake of food ought to be commensurable with one’s actual nutritional needs and never with current fashion.

I think now it becomes clear that unless agriculture of a community is guided by its actual nutritional needs, it would be impossible to avoid either malnutrition or its inappropriate counterpart. When this has been done, a community may employ its surplus  agricultural capacity on suitable cash-crops, for it would be strange to give priority to the latter in order to import the former.

Thus, integration of nutrition into agriculture is fully justified, because it is the sole justifiable scientific frame of reference within which a community could engage in agriculture to its real benefit.

I shall next take up the question of integration. It is possible to distinguish between two aspects of nutrition one needs to integrate into agricultural education. Even though nutrition is one of our fundamental needs, what is justifiably constitutive of it and how it is satisfied, varies according to age, activity level, and climatic conditions.

For instance, growing children have a greater need for proteins and some minerals than an average grown-up. Those who dwell in colder climes may require more carbohydrates and fats than those who  live in tropics. A hard-working lumber-jack in a Canadian forest needs many more Kilo Joules a day than say, a politician.

Meanwhile, agriculture has been with us for several millenia, and the agricultural communities have developed the art with reference to their peculiar climatic and geographic conditions so that they may meet their nutritional needs as well as possible. After many generations, the food culture of a community begins to instantiate how its members may best satisfy their nutritional needs.

Unfortunately, this very important aspect of a community’s food culture is often neglected by nutritionists and in agricultural education.  I can quote some instances where communities gave up some parts of their food culture for invalid reasons,  and their substitution by foreign eating habits necessitated growing inappropriate crops and/or raising inappropriate live stock. Not only were those more very expensive to produce, but were also sometimes the cause of obesity. Eg. Supplanting rice with wheat, depreciation of yams, taro and similar root crops, introduction of sheep and cattle as a source of protein to Andean hill farms.

Therefore, I think agricultural education ought to be revised so that it does emphasise the importance of the traditional crops and live stock  of a given area, and strive to improve and enhance them. Of course, this does not rule out introduction of new crops or even live stock, but that must be done with a great deal of caution.

It is crucial that we change the current basic tenet of agricultural education,  viz. Enabling those who are engaged in it to make the largest possible gain, into more reasonable one. That is, agricultural education should be concerned with enabling those who are engaged in it to make an reasonable gain by producing appropriate foods required to adequately meet the real nutritional needs of a community.

Improvement of crops and live stock through research etc., is one of the important means of ensuring that one may make a reasonable gain by engaging in agriculture.

Sound eating and drinking habits  are not givens, and they have to be acquired by learning.  Their soundness depends on whether those habits are adequate to meet one’s nutritional needs. Now, the producers of food and drink are only a convenient sub-set of consumers of those items.

Hence, nutrition should be an integral component of school education for all, and at a more comprehensive level in agricultural education,  for it provides the sole justifiable frame of reference that could guide agriculture as an endeavour that benefits all.

Best wishes!

Lal Manavado.

If we imagine the entire world is one ecosystem, Soil Health (soil microorganisms) plays an important role in supply of Food chain. Soil health depends on our Agricultural practices, Technologies we are using, utilization of Natural Resources etc. I believe Livestock is the only solution for integrated sustainable Agriculture. In India Crop-Livestock system is the predominant and its very good system for Agriculture in the entire world. Unfortunately, India moving far away from Crop-Livestock System. As per FAO, soil health is plant health and Human health and its continuation I say Livestock Health is Soil Health.

Education Institutes should work on People, Livestock and Environment relation with soil health. Depending on Agro climatic conditions they should work.

For Example, in India availability land is big challenge, with limited land we have to produce food for human and Livestock at the same time population of Livestock and human increasing. Here crop-livestock system will solve the problem. Produced grains are utilized by human and crop residues, Grain by products utilized by Livestock. Here Education Institutions should start their role, they shoal develop dual purpose crops, synergetic cropping system, drought resistant crops.

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood in India though the contribution of agriculture to national GDP is getting reduced to 15% by 2020. Sixty % of India’s population now lives in rural areas where agriculture is the main stay. There is immense indigenous and traditional knowledge on agriculture-plants, soil, water, plant protection, uses and marketing. Agriculture is taught both formally and informally. Formal education starts at 10th class level in the form of occasional courses, diploma courses and polytechniques in agricultural engineering. At University level B.Sc. (Agriculture), B.Sc. (Horticulture), B.Sc (Home Science and Food science and Nutrition), B.Tch (Agri.Engineering), B.Sc (Agro-Forestry) and B.Sc (Food Processing) are offered with good employment potential. With realisation for the need for a nutritious diet, nutrition security has become a national policy issue. Self-sufficiency in nutritious food is promoted by encouraging nutrition gardens/kitchen gardens/backyard gardens/vertical farming, integrating poultry-fishery-horticulture in farming system has become a necessity. Women play a major role in nutrition security. A number of training courses are offered to even illiterate women by informal education. India as a sub-continent with 1200 million people, the scale of coverage has to be enlarged. English is read and spoken only by a minority. Books in local languages are needed. My recent edited book HORTICULTURE FOR NUTRITION SECURITY published by NIPA New Delhi covers a few of above aspects. In any case there is realization among policy makers that nutrition security is equally important to Food Security. India is the second country next to Brazil which passed the Food Security Act-2013 to make food as a right to its citizens.

Please find attached the following relevant paper on "Strengthtening Human Capacity to Scale Up Nutrition" by Bread for the World Institute / Helen Keller International.