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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Why agriculture should impact on nutrition and health by Jimoh Babatunde

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recently in New Delhi, India gathered more than 900 participants for an international conference to examine ways that agriculture can enhance the health and nutritional status of poor people in developing worlds.

Scholars, Politicians and activists during the conference tried to exploit the nexus between agriculture, nutrition and health.

Most people would say that agriculture is for growing food, and on one level, they are right. Agricultural performance, after all, is measured in terms of production and productivity. The point of agriculture doesn’t stop there, however.

At a deeper level, the purpose of agriculture is not just to grow crops and livestock, but to grow healthy, well-nourished people.

Farmers produce a wide range of goods, including cotton, coffee, and energy crops, but one of their ultimate tasks is to produce food of sufficient quantity (that is, enough calories) and quality (with the vitamins and minerals needed by the human body) to feed all of the planet’s people so that they can lead healthy, productive lives.

Agriculture thus effectively includes goals related to human health and nutrition, but in one of the papers presented by John Hoddinot, a Deputy Director in IFPRI, United States of America, it was said that agriculture, nutrition  and health have long occupied separate realms. “

Analyses of agricultural production seldom recognise that health status affects productivity, nor do they recognised that agricultural goods and processes have health consequences.”

It was revealed that at policy and programmatic levels, agriculture and health operate in separate silos, seldom considering the consequences of their actions on sectors outside their own.

The conference was all about finding solution to the big gap existing among the three areas as it was agreed that no single sector or institution can deliver without the other, so the need for the linkage between agriculture, health and nutrition.

Hoddinot explained that “the separation is strange given that agriculture and health and nutrition is tightly wedded.”

For Agriculture to contribute to human nutrition and health there are lots of factors that come into play, like an infrastructure, the status of women (including their educational level), and land distribution. All these  may contribute to how well agricultural growth translates into nutritional improvements.

Like the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh said during the opening ceremony of the conference on  ‘Leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health’ “ experience has also shown that rapid growth in GDP in general and, even agriculture in particular, though necessary, is not sufficient to produce desirable nutritional and health outcomes among the socially and economically disadvantaged groups of the community.

The Prime Minister added that there are other causes that needed  to be addressed, “We need to address the issues of absorption of nutrition, health and hygiene, which in turn depend on many other factors such as the availability of clean drinking water, sanitation and also on the education and status of women in society.”

For Corinna Hawkes and Marie Ruel, close to one billion people are currently   suffering  from hunger and food insecurity, “ defined as not having enough calories to live a healthy life.”

They argued that while the number is staggering, “the number of people with poor access to nutritious foods rich in essential micronutrients_such as fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, dairy products, and biofortified staple foods_is even more daunting.

“ Deficiencies in micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, and zinc affect the survival,  health, development, and well_being  of billions of people; low fruit and vegetable consumption  is also associated with increased risk of chronic diseases.  Increasing poor people’s consumption of nutritious foods is  therefore  essential to solving malnutrition in all its forms.”

Childhood malnutrition is one issue that was seen as hampering the health needs of developing world, Derek Heady argued that  increased food production seems to be the most important linkage between agricultural growth and nutrition.

“ Tests show that increased agricultural growth has a very large effect on average calorie availability,  especially when initial calorie availability is low. However,  nonagricultural growth seems to have larger effects on  dietary diversity.

This is consistent with the idea that poor  economies first fulfill their basic calorie requirements  through domestic food production (since many food staples  are basically non_tradable), before rising incomes eventually  lead to more diverse diets.”

But other speakers argued that productivity does not necessarily translate into improved health and nutrition, either for producers  or consumers.

Arimond and colleagues  identified five pathways through which agricultural interventions can affect nutrition:  increased food for own consumption; increased income;  reductions in market  prices; shifts in preferences; and shifts in control of resources within households.

As the participants agreed that there was a need to forge an effective links between the sectors in order to overcome sectoral divides, there was unanimous agreement that there is need to invest much more in learning about the links and the best ways to exploit.

Kwadwo Asenyo-Okyere and others in their paper on two way links between health and farm labour said farm labour, agricultural productivity, and health are mutually interdependent.

They explained that the  health and the productivity  of rural households determine the health of the agricultural  sector.

“Research on mitigating the health threats to farm  laborers in agricultural communities is essential to  promoting  regional and global development, reducing the incidence of  disease, strengthening  households’ ability to cope with the effects of ill health, and mitigating its impacts on productivity.”

On Bridging the gap between the agriculture and health Sectors, Joachim Von Braun, Marie Rue  and Sturt Gillespie in their paper said  the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in principle  provide an opportunity for overcoming sectoral divides  and forging effective links between agriculture and health.

“Both agriculture and  health are important for most of the MDGs, and positive synergies could link agricultural and  health  policy, programming, and research in ways that would  benefit both sectors and advance the MDGs  as a whole.”

But, they argued that ,   these links have not materialized in satisfactory ways, noting that successful collaboration between sectors has occurred in some areas.

They listed the following instances the agriculture and health sectors have successfully collaborated for their mutual benefit

Homestead food production. The linkages between agriculture and nutrition are particularly strong and direct for farmers and agricultural laborers. The work of Helen Keller International (HKI) on homestead food production in four Asian countries offers an example of agriculture’s positive contributions to good nutrition.

The HKI program aimed to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable members of low-income households in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, and the Philippines by promoting small scale production and consumption of micronutrient-rich crops and small animals. As a result of the program, households are producing and consuming more micronutrient-rich foods; they are earning increased incomes from the sale of high-value products; and mothers, infants, and children have better micronutrient intakes.

Biofortification. Biofortification-the process of breeding food crops that are rich in essential micronutrients-is another agricultural strategy with proven benefits for health and nutrition. Orange-fleshed sweet potato (rich in vitamin A), for example, represents a successful agriculture and health partnership that has had well-documented impacts on vitamin A intake and status of young children in Mozambique.

Irrigation and malaria control. Irrigation brings higher agricultural yields and incomes but can heighten the risk of malaria transmission, thus decreasing agricultural productivity. Successful partnerships between agriculture and health have allowed implementation of preventive measures to control malaria while modifying or manipulating agricultural water systems.

Options include location-specific drainage techniques, intermittent wetting and drying of rice fields, alternation of rice with a dryland crop, and use of livestock as “bait” for mosquitoes.3
Agriculture and HIV/AIDS response.

The majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS depend on agriculture, and their livelihoods are undermined by the disease in many countries. There is tremendous scope for agricultural policy to become more HIV-responsive and further both health and agricultural goals.

For example, to overcome the lack of land and labor often facing AIDS-affected households, the Livelihoods Recovery through Agriculture Programme, implemented in Lesotho in 2002 by CARE and the Ministry of Agriculture, promotes production of crops with high nutritional content on small plots of land close to the home. Fifty-three percent of participants reported that they had stabilized or increased their food production.

Dr. Oyedele Oyedeji , the Registrar of Nigerian Institute of Animal Science, who was at the conference,  said “What I am taking away from this conference is that in Nigeria, we need a forum where these three segments must be meeting on an annual basis, may be for a start joint meeting for agriculturists, health officials,  medical personals and when we say health not medical doctors alone all those in the team nurses,  laboratory scientists and  now with the nutritionist.”