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Food SecurityThe Science, Sociology and Economicsof Food Production and Access to Food ISSN 1876-4517 Food Sec.DOI 10.1007/s12571-015-0444-y

Agricultural policy for improved nutritionin Africa and Asia: evidence to guide theUS Governments investments in foodsecurity

William A.Masters, Brooke Colaiezzi,Katherine Dennison, Jeff Hill, ElizabethJordan-Bell, Ahmed Kablan, MelanieThurber, et al.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Agricultural policy for improved nutrition in Africa and Asia:evidence to guide the US Governments investments in foodsecurity

William A. Masters & Brooke Colaiezzi & Katherine Dennison &Jeff Hill & Elizabeth Jordan-Bell & Ahmed Kablan &Melanie Thurber & Lorraine J. Weatherspoon & James Oehmke

Received: 6 January 2015 /Accepted: 20 February 2015# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and International Society for Plant Pathology 2015

Introduction

In November and December 2014, the Office of AgriculturalResearch and Policy in USAIDs Bureau for Food Securityconvened a scientific roundtable to assess the available

evidence on how agricultural policies can best improve ma-ternal and child nutrition, towards fulfillment of the UnitedStates Governments (USG) Feed the Future (FTF) Initiativeand other programs targeting food security in Africa and Asia.Preparations and implementation of this roundtable brought

This article represents the views of the authors and not necessarily thoseof USAID, Feed the Future or the United States Government. The articlereports on a roundtable process funded through the USAID Feed theFuture Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Nutrition (award# AID-OAA-L-10-00006). In addition to the authors, roundtableparticipants were Gilles Bergeron (FANTA), Jennifer Chow (USAID),Richard Greene (USAID), Ellen Harris (United States Department ofAgriculture), Anna Herforth (independent consultant), David Klurfeld(USDA), Kathryn Kolasa (East Carolina University), Mercy Lungaho(CIAT-PABRA), MauraMack (USAID), JohnMcDermott (IFPRI), MaryMurimi (Texas Tech University), Prabhu Pingali (Cornell University),Lori Post (Yale University), Daniel Bruce Sarpong (University ofGhana), Kalidas Shetty (North Dakota State University), Alison Steiber(Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), Anne Swindale (USAID), JessicaTilahun (SPRING), Patrick Webb (Tufts University), TassewWoldehanna (Addis Ababa University), Margo Wootan (Center forScience in the Public Interest), and Felicia Wu (Michigan StateUniversity). The authors are grateful to them and to Marisol Pierce-Quinonez for their many contributions to the roundtable results summa-rized here.

W. A. Masters (*) : B. ColaiezziFriedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University,150 Harrison Ave., Boston, MA 02111, USAe-mail: william.masters@tufts.edu

K. Dennison : J. Hill :A. Kablan : J. OehmkeBureau for Food Security, United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), Washington, DC 20523, USA

E. Jordan-BellBureau for Global Health, United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), Washington, DC 20523, USA

M. ThurberOffice of Food For Peace, United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), Washington, DC 20523, USA

L. J. WeatherspoonDepartment of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Michigan StateUniversity, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Food Sec.DOI 10.1007/s12571-015-0444-y

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together a distinguished group of policy practitioners and re-searchers from US and African universities, development or-ganizations, civil society, and government agencies, to identi-fy specific opportunities for agricultural policies to help Feedthe Future and other partner countries meet their nutritionalgoals, especially reduced stunting of children under 5 years ofage. The roundtable process led up to a 1-day conference inWashington DC on December 11th, 2014, whose results aredescribed in this report.

Objectives and background

The roundtables evidence review sought convergence to-wards a short list of policy levers that are likely to be effectivein a wide range of settings, while also identifying areas ofdivergence where evidence suggests success in some settingsbut not others. The policy instruments of interest were definedas legislation, regulations and institutional arrangements af-fecting agriculture and food systems across national or subna-tional regions. Evidence was considered regarding all impactson nutrition, both intended and unintended, and all types ofmalnutrition related to child stunting and other global healthobjectives. Four main areas of policy were explored during theroundtable discussion: 1) agricultural production and nutri-tional quality, 2) post-harvest handling, processing and foodsafety, 3) markets, nutrition security, and food access, and 4)cross-cutting issues such as gender, climate and resilience.The policies in question typically affect entire geographic re-gions, defined in terms of agroecological zones or administra-tive regions, but have differential impacts on individual resi-dents depending on each persons specific circumstances.

Discussion at the roundtable meeting was conducted underthe Chatham House rule, so outcomes reported here cannot beattributed to any specific individual or institution. Ultimatelythis evidence is intended to be used as an input in furtherdiscussions of USG agricultural-nutrition policy support un-der Feed the Future and other programs. The timing and de-sign of the roundtable capitalizes on the multisectoral nutritionstrategy of USAID (2014), contributing to the worldwidemovement for Scaling UpNutrition (2014) in pursuit ofWorldHealth Assembly targets (WHO 2013) and the post-2015 Sus-tainable Development Goals (United Nations 2014), in thecontext of the Framework for Action adopted at the secondInternational Conference on Nutrition in November 2014(FAO 2014).

The roundtable process was designed to complement nu-merous past and ongoing efforts to assemble and disseminaterigorous evidence on how agricultural change can best help toimprove international nutrition, beginning with the first Lan-cet Maternal and Child Nutrition series in 2008 and its follow-up in 2013 and other systematic reviews (Webb and Kennedy2014), as well as assessments from private groups such as the

Copenhagen Consensus (2014) and the Global Panel on Ag-riculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (2014), internationalorganizations such as the World Bank (2007), the Food andAgriculture Organization (2013), and the International FoodPolicy Research Institute (2014), and nutrition agendas in-cluding a focus on the thousand day window from pregnancyto a childs second birthday, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN)global movement, and theMalaboDeclaration onAgriculturalTransformation from the African Union (2014).

To inform Feed the Futures support for partner countriesefforts to implement more nutrition-sensitive agricultural pol-icies, this roundtable considered a wide range of scientificperspectives to bridge the different kinds of evidence typicallyused to evaluate agricultural as opposed to nutritional inter-ventions (Masters et al. 2014). As illustrated in Table 1, theevidence base about agricultural policy differs from that usedin nutrition programming, calling for the diverse scientificperspectives represented by the roundtables 31 participants.This distinctive group followed the agenda listed in the annexto this paper to assemble and weigh the available evidence oneach policy lever. The resulting dialogue led to five points ofconvergence around agricultural policies that were judged tohave a preponderance of evidence showing high likelihood ofsuccess in a wide variety of settings, and three areas of diver-gence on policies with evidence of success in some settingsbut not others.

Points of convergence

The roundtable identified five objectives for agricultural pol-icy that, if sought by FTF partner countries, can cost-

Table 1 Agricultural and nutritional interventions typically rely ondifferent kinds of evidence

Agriculture Nutrition

Typical program andpolicy objectives,intermediate resultsand primary aims

Productivity, incomeand ending poverty

Diets, disease andending malnutrition

Typical evaluationmethods andevidence used toguide interventions

Randomizedcontrolled trials(RCTs) onexperiment stationsand on farms;economicmeasures of marketimpacts

Randomized controlledtrials (RCTs) incommunity andclinical settings;epidemiologicalmeasures of healthimpacts

Typical scope ofinterventions andtargeting

Agroclimatic zonesand market areas

Beneficiary householdsand at-riskindividuals

Source: Adapted from Masters et al. (2014), BAgriculture, nutrition, andhealth in global development: typology and metrics for integrated inter-ventions and research.^ Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,doi:10.1111/nyas.12352

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effectively reduce child stunting through systemic changes atscale. Each objective lists a number of high impact areas that,if targeted, would propel the country toward achieving theobjective.

1. Productivity and income. A first objective by which agri-cultural policy can best improve nutrition is throughhigher real income, with improvements in farm productivityand marketing to lower the real cost of all kinds of food.Areas of high impact that facilitate this objective, givenclimate change and other stresses, include improvementsin soils and water for plants and animals; crop and livestockimprovement for the uptake and delivery of soil nutrients topeople; market development for agricultural inputs, farmproducts and land, labor and capital; and safety nets to pro-tect the most vulnerable, especially women and children.

2. Dietary diversity. A more specific objective for agricul-tural policy to improve nutrition is through dietary diver-sity, with improvements in production and marketing thatincrease households access and individuals intake ofvarious legumes, vegetables, fruits, and animal-sourcedproducts. Increasing the number of food groups in dietarypatterns can be protective against both undernutrition andexcess consumption, and involves both increased produc-tion diversity and greater proximity to more frequent mar-kets offering affordable diverse foods.

3. Reduced contamination. A third objective in pursuit ofimproved nutrition is sanitation and food safety. The ag-ricultural policies that can best contribute to this objectivelead to practices that improve water quality and food safe-ty pre- and post-harvest, including market institutions andregulatory systems and enforcement that help ensure thesafety of fresh and packaged foods purchased off the farm.Relevant efforts include adoption and enforcementof food safety regulations, sanitation campaignsand quality assurance programs, as well as infra-structure investments in national laboratories, electri-fication and transportation.

4. Nutritional quality. A fourth objective is policies to en-hance the nutritional value of foods that have been madeavailable and accessible through pursuit of the previousthree objectives. High impact agricultural policies thatalter food composition include biofortification and fortifi-cation with specific nutrients, as well as labeling, qualityassurance and other mechanisms to help households ob-tain increasingly nutritious foods from a variety ofsources.

5. Gender dynamics. A fifth objective is improved genderdynamics, both within households and in society at large.Agricultural policies can improve nutrition by alteringmen and womens time allocation to help meet nutrientneeds during pregnancy, breastfeeding, child care and ed-ucation; and empowerment through communication and

decision making on resource management including moreeffective use of land, capital and other resources.

Points of divergence

Beyond the points of convergence listed above, the roundtablefound three areas of policy in which the evidence is divergent,suggesting effectiveness in some situations but not others.

(a) Information. There were divergent opinions on the roleof nutrition information and guidance through policiesthat advocate for healthy consumption patterns. Thoughnutrition education is clearly needed in settings whereknowledge is a limiting factor, food environments canlead even well-informed consumers to make unhealthychoices.

(b) Mechanization. The nutritional and livelihood implica-tions of large farms and agricultural mechanization wasanother topic that elicited divergent opinions fromroundtable participants. Larger size farms may be ableto sell large volumes of uniform-quality foods for formalmarkets, but labor supervision costs lead family farms tobe more economically efficient for most crops. Agricul-tural enterprises that are larger than family farms areconcentrated in livestock production, and in crops thatrequire immediate processing such as sugar, tea, oil palmor cut flowers.

(c) Farm-level production diversity. Policies and programsaiming to improve nutrition by increasing the number ofdifferent crop and animal species raised on each farmwasa third area of divergence. Production diversity on a giv-en farm can harness ecological synergies among cropsand livestock to raise productivity and improve resil-ience. Production diversity may also improve consump-tion diversity, especially in settings with limited marketaccess. But given heterogeneity in resource endowments,policies that facilitate exchange can lead to even highersystem-wide productivity and resilience, and improvenutrition by giving households greater access to morediverse and nutritious foods.

Implications for feed the future

The evidence reviewed in this roundtable addresses agricul-tural policies that can improve a wide range of influences onmaternal and child nutrition. Many of these policies reinforceeach other, and also complement a variety of other interven-tions such as rural infrastructure, education and health ser-vices. Through these complementarities, development

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successes can achieve rapid improvements that exceed thesum of what each individual policy would achieve on itsown.Muchmore data than are now available would be neededto quantify these effects, including data on factors such aschanges in the affordability of a diverse and nutritious diet.

New research and additional data collection can help Feedthe Future, USG and other donors and partner countries useagricultural policy to improve nutrition outcomes, but existingevidence already provides some guidance regarding how ag-ricultural policies can contribute to rapid nutrition improve-ment and reduced child stunting. The points of convergenceand divergence found in this roundtable can inform US re-sponse to partner governments requests for technical assis-tance and other resources in pursuit of improved nutritionthrough agricultural policies, and thereby accelerate theachievement of global goals for sustainable developmentand child health in the years ahead.

References

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Copenhagen Consensus (2014). Nutrition. www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus/nutrition

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Masters, W., Webb, P., Griffiths, J., & Deckelbaum, R. (2014).Agriculture, nutrition, and health in global development: typologyand metrics for integrated interventions and research. Annals of theNew York Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1111/nyas.12352.

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