Sustainable Farming Systems for Food and Nutrition Security
The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition call on all countries to end hunger and prevent malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. This is quite a challenge, and it is a challenge with sustainable agriculture and food systems at its very heart. The current situation does not look good however. The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report estimates that in 2016 the number of chronically undernourished people actually increased to 815 million (up from 777 million in 2015).
Sustainable Development Goal 2 also sets the world targets that agricultural productivity and the incomes of small-scale food producers should double by 2030. At the same time food production systems should be sustainable, reduce their impact on ecosystems and be resilient to environmental change. But here again we are facing major challenges. The latest evidence from advanced global crop models suggests, for example, that global yields of wheat, rice, maize and soybean will decline substantially with the predicted increase in global temperatures in the coming years.
Research has only recently begun to address the links between agriculture, food security and nutrition, and the environment. In Asia, for instance, the Sustainable and Healthy Diets in India project led by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine calculated for the first time greenhouse gas and water footprints of food production in India and estimated the dietary changes required to meet future declining groundwater availability. These are among the first research efforts in South Asia to quantify the links between environmental sustainability and food and nutrition security at a time when, because of rapid urbanisation, transitions in diets and increasing populations, the food system is under increasing pressure.
Another example is the LANSA programme, which is working with local communities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and to identify farming system interventions that address community nutritional inadequacies, reduce environmental impacts and also increase resilience to environmental stressors. These are important first steps in the generation of novel evidence to help meet current and future agricultural system challenges.
A recent review found that there are a large number of studies on the impacts of agricultural interventions on nutrition in South Asia. But, more research is required to help reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment, and build the resilience of local farming systems to current and future environmental change – this will be critical to ensuring food security and good nutrition for all.
Against this background, the discussion aims to strengthen LANSA research understanding on sustainable farming systems for nutrition security. The discussion also provides opportunity to showcase experiences and on-going research from low and middle-income countries on the links between agriculture, nutrition and the environment.
Questions for the 3-week discussion include:
- Are you documenting the impact of the farming system on the environment?
- Are you conducting any research on the impact of agriculture and environment on food and nutrition security?
- Have you had any experiences of linking research and policy regarding sustainable agricultural systems for nutrition?
- What interventions do you think are needed to increase the agriculture sector resilience to environmental stressors, especially among smallholder farmers?
Our focus is specifically on low and middle income countries where the impacts of environmental stress on food and nutrition security are projected to be the most severe.
We hope that you find this topic and these questions stimulating, and invite you to share your experiences.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Lead Facilitator:
Alan Dangour, Professor in Food and Nutrition for Global Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Nutrition-sensitive Agriculture Pillar lead for LANSA Consortium
Co-facilitators:
Aliza Pradhan, Agronomist and Coordinator of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation Farming System for Nutrition study in India under LANSA
Md. Sirajul Islam, Programme Head of Agriculture and Food Security Programme, BRAC Bangladesh and Agriculture Expert for Agricultural Value Chain Study under LANSA
Topics
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We are working in few farming systems in Karnatak State of India and in sub-Saharan Africa to see how the farming system can be modified to contribute to achieve food and nutrition security. We look at how the changes in the cropping patterns and introducing new innovations can help in making the farming system more sustainable and at the same time contribute to food and nutrition security.
One of the problems in linking research and policy in the context of sustainable agricultural system - is that there is confusion even among the researchers on the terminology - some talk about farming system, others talk about agricultural system, and some others talk about food systems. Informed people do not correct this interchangeability in the same discussion, including this forum (see the title of this forum and the third question: can we stick to one concept and define it in the beginning of this forum to make the discussion meaningful- just a suggestion to the facilitators). The extension professionals are confused let alone the policy makers who have little knowledge on agriculture and nutrition. Let us first stick to one - farming, agricultural, or food system. Then let us define sustainable farming system - against which we can compare what is happening in our study area context. This will be useful for this discussion.
Resilience is highly connected to the farming systems under frequent shocks. Not all farming system face such shocks. So jumping on resilience straight from the objectives of food security and nutrition through sustainable farming system would be rather illogical in a set of beginning questions for this discussion. Resilience is a contextual question depending on the nature of shocks and the nature of food security it affects - and where. In the south Asian context resilience can come from increasing water use efficiency for the farming systems - a quick win but not fully taken seriously due to institutional rigidity. Where as in Southern Africa - fight against frequent droughts require resilience strategy that should go hand in hand with crop diversification and building productive assets after shocks. Weak institutional capacity and poor governance remain major challenges in building resilience in Africa.
We should also remind ourselves that the farming system research for improving nutrition is not new - a paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s which died out slowly, as we brought in the livelihood approach to food security and nutrition in the 2000s which again died out as we are bringing in the resilience approach - in the 2010s. Shifting paradigms is itself a problem in the research and development community. There is no guarantee that the current resilience paradigm will not die out as well in few years if the fundamentals of taking these approaches to scale are not addressed. We should discuss this further.
Good Morning All
Thank you very much for accepting my application to be a member also a great opportunity to expose our micro-economic agriculture program. Haiti Cholera Research Funding Foundation Inc is a Global Humanitarian 501 C 3 Non-Profit Organization also ECOSOC Special. 2017
Question # 4. What interventions do you think are needed to increase the agriculture sector resilience to environmental stressors, especially among smallholder farmers?
To answer to the question
A) Major disasters have the potential to disrupt economies and go beyond the local damage to infrastructure.
B) Most business must rely to some extent on goods and services originating from other parts of the world, and most geographical area of the world will have different levels of natural disaster risk.
1) Uninsured loss of a dollar that will be unavailable for investment and business growth.
2) Assistant affected employees to recover for their own wellbeing
3) Human cost as fatalities and injuries caused by natural disasters can disrupt businesses.
In conclusion our goal is to train the local population to know to discern the value of their own agriculture and this will allow them understand the necessity and importance of growing food to meet the needs of another country.
Pierrette J Cazeau, MBA, MHA, Post-Doctoral
Global Public Health Diplomat
President/Founder & CEO
www.hcrff.org
Dear all !
Welcome to the ediscussion.
My name is Aliza Pradhan, I am an agronomist and coordinating the Farming System for Nutrition Study in India under the research consortium "Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA).
This FSN study envisages the introduction of location-specific agricultural remedies for nutritional maladies by mainstreaming nutritional criteria in the selection of farming system components. The study is underway in two study sites; Koraput (Odisha) and Wardha (Maharashtra) where our crop interventions are focusing on increased area and productivity of nutrient rich crops such as pulses (Pigeon pea, black gram, green gram, bengal gram) and millets (finger millet, sorghum) among small and marginal farmers so that there will be increased availability of nutrient rich food per household. In addition, being climate smart crops these will help in building resilience to future environmental changes.
I will be cofacilitating the ediscussion and I will be very interested in knowing your thoughts/ experiences/feedback as well.
Best
Aliza
I am delighted to join you all in this discussion, thanks to the SDG 2030 agenda for this opportunity, and FAO and other several organizations like SUN, BCFN Foundation, and Food Tank for getting flooded with so much information and calls to action in achieving sustainable food production and consumption.
It’s a well known fact that the impacts of farming system on health of both the environment and humans appear wide-ranging across the socio-political-economic and cultural systems of the world. To my knowledge, documentation of these impacts across the value chain of the system is quite often lacking, even in the developed countries. The life-cycle approach to study the impacts, in particular on biodiversity, water and climate with reference to every major food crop and food system is absolutely essential to promote food sustainability. The south Asian countries, that growing with the biggest undernourished populations in the world need to double or triple their current efforts to achieve the zero hunger challenge goal by 2030 by keeping the food system sustainability at the central place.
In India, MSSRF- a partner in the LANSA program is involved in understanding the impacts of food production on the environment, especially on water, carbon and biodiversity in some of the hunger spots of the country. We adopt a three pronged approach-research to understand the real causes; capacity building of the key-actors including policy advocacy, and on-the ground model building in promoting location specific and sustainable farming systems for nutrition and livelihoods. The first and foremost aspect in making the FSN intervention effective is a trans-disciplinary approach where scientists, professionals, and practitioners from different disciplines related to food production and consumption working in tandem with the knowledgeable, but resource poor farming community men and women. All the interventions of MSSRF are taken with this approach, and also with an integrated framework of 4Cs that to ensure the sustainability dimension. The first ‘C’ is that of CONSERVATION where thrust is given to promote only biodiversity friendly farming practices at the level of genes, species and ecosystems; the second ‘C” is on promoting the CULTIVATION practices where adequate genetic diversity of the targeted crop is protected at on-farm and ensured the soil biodiversity enhancement with low-external input agricultural practices; the third ‘C’ is with regard to educating sustainable CONSUMPTION literacy with regard to nutrition and healthy food habit where food waste and food loss avoided, and finally the COMMERCE ‘C’ for promoting sustainable food markets.
We invite you to visit our websites www.mssrf.org and www.mssrfcabc.res.in to know more about our interventions. Also submitted a readinh on the family farming heritage where the need and plan for some aspects of sustainable food production and consumption is discussed.
Thank you!
Anil Kumar
Response for Q1: UNICEF as organisation has no mandate to document impact of farming system on environment, however, as lead agency for Multi Sector Nutrition Plan (MSNP) in Nepal, it influences policy decisions based on understanding over the global development in this areas in order to link agriculture intervention, environment and its impact in nutritional outcomes.
Response to Q 2: Not yet
Response to Q3: Multi Sector Nutrition Plan (MSNP) with component of agriculture is developed base on the available research/ study at global and national level. However, sustainable agriculture system for nutrition is new area for country context in Nepal. Thanks to Agriculture and Health pathway to Nutrition (AHN) academy held in this year in Nepal, this new issue entered into Nepal for further discussion.
Response to Q4: Mountainous country like Nepal is facing big challenge due to climate change. Frequent landslide and flood is increasing day by day, mainly due to deforestation and climate change. Cropping pattern are the most affected one due to agriculture production is not at the same level as it was last two decades ago. Lands are fragmented due to property transfer system among the family members from one generation to another. With the urbanisation, cultivable land is squeezing rapidly. Due to the condition mentioned above, small farmers are running away from the farming system and mostly migrated abroad for the cheap labor work. There is ample opportunity to do sustainable farming in the field of herbal medicine in Nepal, which can be cash crop for the poor families. However, investment in this area and capacity building effort is less in this area.
This activity is now closed. Please contact [email protected] for any further information.