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

1.    Improve food reserve centres by provding quality housing facility, store room.

(i).     Practice organic farming opposed to conventional farming

(ii).     Empowering small scale farmers to have capital equipment e.g oxen triddle pumps, tractors etc

(iii)    Farmers to use recommended hybrid seeds

(iv)    Establish markets and selling depot

2.    Africa has more potential for research because it has to graduate from old systems of farming to modern.

3.    To sit down with country government to design and a unique plan that will accelerate implementation agriculture policies.

4.    I would also want to note here that the super goal in agriculture has resulted in good health people reduced mortality rate in both human and domestic animals

In Africa most farmers used to abandon land on assumption that it has lost soil nutrient so they practiced shifting cultivation which resulted in cutting and clearing more land for farming, but now they are able to practice crop rotation.

 

Designing Complete Nutrition Gardens and Vitamin Gardens

For areas with adequate land near dwellings for Complete Nutrition Gardens:

Complete nutrition gardens(CNG) provide all the calories and nutrition that a person needs while increasing soil fertility and minimizing water use.  If each country designs and tests CNG for the various regions of their country and the preferred foods of their area, families can be provided with a plan that will make it possible for them to meet their nutritional needs.  Initial research has focused on annual food plants, minimizing garden space, and the same diet year round in order to get the gardens going as quickly as possible.  This is a good place to start since it improves local nutrition as quickly as possible.  For inspiration see research by Albie Miles:

http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html

To increase the diversity and resiliency of the food system, it would be beneficial to use the same framework and add the following components to the CNG system:

CNG plans for each growing season in the region

Permaculture and Edible Landscaping

A graduated plan that allows people to steadily add perennial food plants each year until they have all they need while still maintaining space and light for the annual food plants

Edible Landscaping of public places

Easy(hens for eggs) and more challenging livestock(goats and cows for milk, cheese)

Double Insulated unheated greenhouses and winter harvest techniques

Beekeeping

Natural and Low Tech food storage and preservation techniques

CNGs that incorporate the above techniques to spread the gardening, harvesting, and food preservation workload more evenly through the year

For areas with small plots of land around dwellings, allotments/community garden plots,  patio or balcony container gardening, roof top gardening

Where there is a substantial portion of land but not enough for a CNG for each family member,  families could be encouraged to grow a percentage of the CNG that fits on their land.

Where people have very small gardening spaces, the research and garden designs could focus on crops that provide nutrition which complements the local grain and legumes diet.  Look for foods that provide flavor and nutrition, are very productive, are diverse in color, can be preserved easily with low tech methods such as drying, or which need to be consumed shortly after harvest.  Items such as garlic, sweet or hot peppers, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes, and leafy greens could be key ones with which to begin.  Where people are endangered by malnutrition, the quickest way to change their lives is through the planting of the colorful small round radishes.  The radishes and their leaves can be eaten beginning three weeks after planting.

If people are using containers, raised beds, or Salad Tables, ensure that they are using food safe containers and untreated/nontoxic wood.

To promote research by both the public and professional agriculturalists, consider having a contest to see what people can produce in a small Vitamin Garden such as 4 foot by 25 foot (100 square foot) or a 10 square meter(1.2m x 8.34m) plot.  To encourage accurate data collection, enter participants into the contest based on reporting data at regular intervals rather than on total yield.  For inspiration see Rosalind Creasy’s 100 square foot garden which produced over 235 pounds of produce from one summer planting season.  By including spring and fall plantings, the gardener could harvest triple the amount or more.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/Square-Foot-Gardening-Food.aspx

To reduce the amount of land used for growing cooking fuels, and so that more land is available for growing food in any size plots, promote the duel use of solar cooking and fuel efficient stoves.

For more resources follow the link [Ed.]

 

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) Support an action plan to promote the production of crops naturally rich in micronutrients and particularly fruits and vegetable, paying major attention to their availability all year round ( seasonality, transport, post-harvest/storage and market management), with a careful balance between national/local production and importation.

2) Encourage such agricultural production trough incitative measures in terms of financial returns  for the producers and in terms of rural development

3) Support an action plan to promote the consumption of food naturally rich in micronutrients and particularly fruits and vegetable, strongly connected with the production plan.

Pay major attention to the affordability and price of the products. Don't consider biofortification as a panacea. Pay more attention to food products naturally rich in micronutrients

4) Support all actions in favor of a better information and education of the consumers, with adapted messages for targeted groups, for better and more balanced diet . For developing countries, consider mal-nutrition ( lack of micronutrients) as important as under nutrition (lack of calories) taking into account the explosion of NCDs. Avoid confusion between over-nutrition and mal-nutrition, etc....

5) Encourage integrated multistakeholders actions linking consumption to production and agriculture to nutrition, health, natural resources management, transports,....

2. To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?

- relation between the type of production ( conventional, integrated, organic,...;) and the nutritive quality of food

- the nutritive quality of underutilized crops , particularly fruits and vegetable with an aim of better valorization of the current genetic diversity

- objective evaluation of comparative advantages of food products naturally rich in micronutrients (particularly F&V) and biofortification

- psycho - sociological studies for better information and sensibilisation of consumers

3. What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?

Encourage actions such as PROFEL/PROFAV , which are conducted jointly by FAO, WHO, GlobalHort,...

http://www.fao.org/agriculture/crops/news-events-bulletins/detail/en/item/92762/icode/?no_cache=1

http://www.globalhort.org/media/uploads/File/PROFEL/Current%20Status%20of%20Fruits%20and%20Vegetables%20Production%20and%20Consumption%5B1%5D.pdf

http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/FAO-WHO-FV.pdf

Dear everyone,

 

I would like some small ideas:

Generally, whole nutrient and health issues  are  under Ministry of health. However, that oriented and mentioned FAO here is various nutrient sources  in agriculture products seen like  as basic inputs  to supply everything for mankind from foods, including energy, nutrient, drugs, ect .  Then, the nutrient programmers  should be considered as key indicates to assess the  success of national  programmers and also be integrated in other ones. In personal  knowledge, there may be  3 ways recommended to obtain the purposes:

1.    At community level, diversity of crop species needed to just  improve livelihood and also secure to food and nutrients;

2.    At crop breeding programmers,  every crop should be studied  towards multi use purposes such as multi-nutrient components. For examples, sweetpotato, potato

3.    At national nutrient and health programmers, fresh,  green and various food values are first indicates  

Best regards,

KIEN

Making Investments Work for Nutrition

The following contribution is based on my understanding that the food security (adequate calorie), nutrition (nutritionally balance diet) and safe food (from health and mental/cultural prospective) are different issues of food policy. This discussion is focused on the second one.

Q 1. If you were to advise a director of planning for agriculture, what would you suggest as the most important things to consider in order to make investments work for nutrition?

A.  From my understanding and experience the most important thing to consider in order to make the investment work for nutrition is adequate understanding of ROOT CAUSES or SOURCES of nutritional problem.  The problems can result from different sources:

• • Insufficient means (income to afford or land to produce) nutritional food.
• • Lack of access to nutritional food despite some means to buy.
• • Inadequate knowledge on nutritional requirements for particular health condition.
• • Inadequate knowledge on nutritional availability in locally and regularly available food.
• • Cultural problem in diet (cultural barrier to change diet or access the nutritional diet).
• • Personal behavior (taste preference, unable to manage or laziness).

Many Nepali farmers can produce sufficient vegetable in their land but insufficient consumption of vegetable is still a common nutritional problem. Generally people eat vegetable related products to make tasty/appealing of main staple food. They hardly know the quantity of vegetable they need in their diet to make their diet adequately nutritional.  In such situation investment in awareness creation and extension/education should be done first and then investment to enhance nutritional production.

B.  It requires development of institutionalized systems to make investment work for nutrition. If the work focuses to showing results quickly and caring little for ground reality and longer term problems similar to the work of international donor funded projects its effect might be temporarily. Printing the nutritional promotion slogans in vests or other clothes can give flash solution and may work temporarily similar to the development of international donor advised and funded projects. It is not a reliable and long lasting solution.     

C.  Local agroclimatic conditions, institutions and farming systems are other factors important to be considered to make the investment work for nutrition.

Q . 2. What gaps do you see in research to deliver effective results for nutrition?

Rural socioeconomic situations, institutions, farming systems, agro-ecological conditions and other causes of nutritional problems, the important determinants for nutritional food production, are changing over time. The changes of them vary with place or communities.  In most of the nutritional problems countries or regions the problems and opportunities associated with the factors are interpreted and explained either based on values or opinions of powerful people (mostly expatriates or consultants of international donor agencies) or based on poor quality information. There are no quality studies or information to understand the problems and opportunities associated with the determinants, and deliver effective results for nutrition.  

Q.3. How can institutions work together at country level to deliver effective results for nutrition?

Institutions are varying in resource holding for research investment, capacity of working, position of providing ground level information and ability to influence in policy or public decisions. If the institutions work forming partnership considering their strength to make effect in all important areas they deliver effective results for nutrition. However, international institutions do not work usually in this manner. I would like to share current case of Asian Development Bank (ADB). The bank assured Nepal government to support development of national agricultural plan. Then it developed a plan for the country using its consultants without discussing with stakeholders and government officials. It is very surprising how the foreign consultant know the current agricultural related problems and prospect in Nepal where socio-institutions are undergoing rapid changes.  Stakeholders and government officials have put strongly objection on this practice the ADB has been behaving imperiously and responding hardly to them.  How the national agricultural plan developed in universal planning template of ADB can work to deliver effective results for nutrition in Nepal which has a great variation of socioeconomic and agro-ecological condition across the country.  I would like to cite an old case of the bank which advised Nepal government to reduce livestock of poor farmers while developing forestry sector master plan 1988.  The government followed the plan and poor farmers and particularly remote communities have been main victim of the bad advice. The ADB consultants who had little knowledge of reality of Nepali farming conditions, had greatly guided the plan development.

The international institutions similar to ADB (e.g. the World Bank and IMF) commonly behaves domineeringly to institutionally weak countries despite the management of the agencies know their behaviors are professionally illegal. The government officials of developing countries cannot strongly object the illegal actions of the materially and symbolically powerful agencies to maintain working relationship.  Inviting management representatives of those agencies to participate in this and discussing their bad official manners/ practices would make some contribution to delivering effective results for nutrition.  I request current moderator to invite them and continue discussion on their counterproductive institutional practices.

 

Thanks for reading my opinions.

Bhubanswor Dhakal

 

 

I have two short responses that I hope will be considered by the discussion forum as useful appraoches to making agriculture work for nutrition:

1) include horticulture whenever agricultural development is considered -- fruits and vegetable are a good source of vitamins, micro-nutrients and phyto-nutrients at reasonable cost

2) pay more attention to reducing food losses and postharvest waste -- a lot of money, labor and natural resources are wasted on agricultural production if the foods are not eaten by people

 

Dr. Lisa Kitinoja

The Postharvest Education Foundation

USA

Website homepage: www.postharvest.org

For the future of food security and nutrition, global climate change from now on

is everything for everybody

For the science referred to below, please see www.climatechange-foodsecurity.org

The 11,000 year period of relative climate stability in which agriculture developed is over

— Lester R. Brown, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, September 2012

1. If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?

Invest in an emergency increase of world grain stocks to ~110 days of consumption to create a buffer against extreme weather. Establish UN controlled 110-day grain stocks in all regions.

Invest in economic instruments to phase out the production of biofuels, that exacerbate the reductions of crop yields from drought and emit carbon.

Invest in the development of small holder mixed farming that recent research indicates is more resilient to climate change.

Invest in global climate change impacts food security education for the public of all regions, for agricultural institutions, policy makers, and government staff.

Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute provides the best readily available education materials for this. The Climate Emergency Institute (www.climateemergencyinstitute.org) has a full list of similar resources.

In particular, the most climate change vulnerable regions and populations have a clear right to know the terrible food losses they are committed to.

In the case of global climate change, if we don't have the accurate science and currently committed global warming as our basis for planning, with the best will in the world we will end up largely wasting our efforts and resources.

Central to this education is the long known fundamental relationship between an impact and the "realized" (or transient) along with the "committed" warming, which is due to several factors. For example, because of the ocean heat lag alone, the realized/transient warming is only about half the full committed equilibrium warming – and global warming lasts for thousands of years. To illustrate this, a 2.0°C warming (the policy target) is devastating for the most climate change vulnerable populations, but people have not been informed that to avoid this we have to limit warming this century to 1.0°C. Global warming is effectively irreversible and so we have to allow no margin of error for tipping crops into decline – based on committed warming.

Tragically, none of this is being applied, hence the urgent need, above anything else, for education on the science.

Regarding education priority, the impression that developed nations are not vulnerable to crop and food losses must be corrected. We are all now committed to suffer serious food production losses because we are committed to far above a 2.0°C warming. Policy commitment is a literal end of the world for food production 4.4C by 2100 (Climate Interactive)

For C3 crops (rice, wheat, soybeans, fine grains, legumes) in temperate regions, … models show decline at +1.25-2°C in global average temperature.

For C4 crops (maize, sugar cane, millet, sorghum), even modest amounts of warming are detrimental in major growing regions given the small response to CO2.

—NRC Climate Stabilization Targets, 2010, Impact Food

Save the Children Fund UK: "Identify and address the threats to nutrition from climate change and non-food land use: The global community, including the G8, the G20 and international nutrition governance structures, must identify and address the potential impact of climate change and increasing non-food land use on hunger and malnutrition."

2. To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?

Research is needed on adaptation in general and regionally. People and policy makers should be informed that we have no research demonstrating if and how agriculture can be adapted to the multiple adverse impacts of global warming and climate change.

The new buzzword, "climate smart agriculture," is giving the impression that we know agriculture can be successfully adapted to climate change. It is not responsible language.

Research is needed for regional crop reduction risk assessment under global warming and climate change, as there is no such resource.

A study of risk should be based on:

• the total minimum unavoidable global warming from all sources of warming

• the warming that the world is committed to by the combined national policy pledges filed with the UN

• decline in yields from the model results, which should be taken from the time crops tip into decline in addition to the decline below baseline

• the worst case range from the climate crop model results (not the mean) should be taken, to partially compensate for the large number of large impacts not captured by the models

3. What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?

Develop and take part in the rapid education program described above, on an emergency priority basis.

 

Let me start by saying that I have not fully followed the discussion on this topic so I may be repeating what has been said already. This notwithstanding, I want to make this comment. Studies in Nigeria and some other African countries showed that malnutrition is more severe in farming communities than non farming communities. The reason being that most rural subsistence farmers sell their farm produce to buy non-food items while they consume what does not meet market value. This scenerio underscores the importance of nutrition education and awareness creation at community level. There is the need to train Nutrition extension workers who will create awareness at the level of farming households on what and how feed adequately. This could make agriculture truly work for nutrition.

Prof. Ignatius Onimawo

 

Greetings to all of you, I feel that nutrition can be greatly improved if the mode of agricultural extension takes a new twist that is if extensionists could partner with nutritionists to help deliver dietary guidance in the production process to enable the farmers get the appropriate nourishment from the promoted crops and biorfortication.

Also, it is all about gradual mindset change of the farmers through sensitisation; because not all people that are malnourished do not have the food. In fact, I know of many farmers (especially where men control the resources) who deny thier children of milk and sell it to get  cash for buying some alchohol to drink at the expense of their childrens health.

To that cause, I feel that more research should be done on the linkages in Agriculture, Nutrition and health. The relationship between gender and control of agricultural inputs and output should also be studied and appropriate intervetions made.

Also, malnutrition may also be cyclic whereby a malnourished mother gives birth to a malnourished child, and during their prebirth visits, emphasis should be put on eating right in order to nourish the growing foetuses.

If sub-Saharan Africa is to benefit from advances in agricultural productivity in the 21st century, investments in the so-called “orphan crops” – sweet potato, cassava, and millet, for example – will be crucial for strengthening the poorest farmers’ livelihoods and improving nutrition.

The 1960s Green Revolution, which averted famine in India and Latin America through the deployment of high-yield crop varieties, is often hailed as one of the greatest humanitarian achievements of the 20th century. Yet this effort focused largely on globally traded staples, neglecting locally important crops. The outcome partly explains today’s global malnutrition crisis. The countries reached by the Green Revolution became massive producers of rice, wheat, or maize, but at the expense of the crop diversity necessary for well-rounded diets.