To significantly improve nutrition and food security, nationally representative and standardized dietary intake data from high disease and undernutrition countries would be indispensable. An assessment of such data vis-a-vis the data on coverage of other nutrition interventions within these countries would be central to for the development of concerted plans and action to improve nutrition and food security outcomes. Such information would help the governments of high-burden countries to understand the ‘state of the nation’ or baseline status of their populations, and help prioritize and target actions required to address malnutrition.
Another necessary step towards the eradication of hidden hunger at scale is the improvement of foods most widely eaten by poor people around the world. Staples like wheat, maize, rice, cassava, beans, and sweet potato provide needed dietary energy; however, they are often lacking in essential micronutrients, particularly after milling and other industrial processing methods. There are several effective strategies to improve micronutrient status of populations. Among those commercial food fortification and supplementation are the most effective ones, yet they are often inaccessible to the most vulnerable farming households in rural areas and/or unsustainable for most countries without passing additional costs to consumers (in the case of fortification), or without significant help from international donors (in the case of supplementation). Biofortification, a process by which the density of vitamins and minerals is increased in food crops through plant breeding, agronomic practices, or by genetic engineering is a complementary strategy to fortification and supplementation, as it targets rural households, who may not have easy access fortified foods and/or supplements. Moreover, unlike supplements, which are targeted to certain segments of the population, biofortification improves the daily supply of essential nutrients for all household members. Since biofortified crops are also bred to be high yielding and resistant to pests, diseases, and climate change, they also bring with them the added advantage of improved harvests. In short biofortification pragmatically links agriculture and nutrition.
Biofortification programs are targeted at countries with persistent micronutrient malnutrition and high consumption of locally grown staple foods. National biofortification programs are sustainable because after crops have been developed and officially released for planting, improved seeds and planting materials are delivered in direct partnerships with governments and through the already existing delivery platforms Biofortification is a truly intersectoral and interdisciplinary approach that involves a wide range of stakeholders: the public and private sectors, plant scientists, nutritionists, economists, civil society, and more, depending on particular context or each target country. Improving the vitamin and mineral nutrient content of foods that people already produce and consumer in significant quantities through biofortification is not only culturally acceptable but also politically attractive, and the cost-effectiveness of this approach justifies the investment.
Alongside the promotion of dietary diversity, nutrition education, women’s empowerment, and other essential actions, biofortification is an approach governments are integrating into their policies to achieve their commitments to the Scaling Up Nutrition and 1,000 Days movements.
A WHO Cochrane review committee is currently reviewing the scientific evidence and country experiences of scaling up biofortification (Read more: http://www.who.int/elena/titles/biofortification/en/). We are hopeful that biofortification will soon become one of WHO’s globally recommended complementary strategies to tackle malnutrition, and more specifically to tackle micronutrient malnutrition (also known as hidden hunger) caused by lack of essential vitamins and minerals.
Finally, we are very encouraged by the inclusion of fortification in the Framework for Action adopted by the Second International Conference on Nutrition. Biofortification is one means of fortification by which foods can be enriched sustainably, letting ‘nature do the work’ for the most part.
Erick Boy
HarvestPlus
Dr. Erick Boy-Gallego