Global forum on food security and nutrition

5.Thomas Herlehy, Independent Agricultural Consultant, USA

1. The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition could make a significant difference in improving nutrition and food security of the people in Africa by highlighting and documenting the nutritional status of the population there, especially farming households in rural areas.  While infant mortality rates are slowly declining in most, if not all, African countries (with the notable exception of Somalia, and perhaps others where data may not be available), more attention should be given by governments, especially policy makers, about the under-nutrition or malnourished status of their children.  Since future economic development depends so much on future generations and their ability to lead healthy lives, contributing to the growth of the economy and making intellectual contributions to solve local problems, nutrition must come to the foreground for policy makers.  More attention needs to be given to reduce and eventually eliminate stunting and poor brain development in the children of Africa.  Publicizing the issue, documenting the issue, working with Ministries of Health, Agricultural and Education, the UN, especially the FAO, can help shine a strong light on this perplexing and pernicious issue and work with all stakeholders to resolve it.

2. Among the critical activities that need to be included in the Work Program for the implementation of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition in order to reach the 2025 global nutrition targets are: First, promote the broad and deep disemination of bio-fortified crops as alternative crops to what is currently being grown, for example, promote iron-fortified beans, Vitamin A enhanced maize and sweet potato, zinc-fortified rice, and so forth.  These are crops which HarvestPlus and the CGIARs like CIP, have developed and which are being tested locally and, in some cases, like Zambia with Vitamin A maize, are being scaled out now. Second, develop and broadly publicize among the vast majority of people what good nutrition really means in terms of a well-balanced diet with protein, minerals and vitamins from animal sourced foods, fruits and vegetables, legumes and other crops.  This should be done using multiple forms of media, such as television (for urban consumers) radio (for all consumers), through mobile phone platforms, including through SMS text and VOIP activities, newspapers, and so forth.  Such nutritional information activities must also be done as part of schools' curriculum, so that children learn what a good, balanced diet is and why it is so important to their improved health, welfare and intellectual development.

3. In order to accelerate and improve the quality of commitments from the various actors, widepsread publicity, using data-driven monitoring and evaluation, of improvements must be done.  Governments and international and local NGOs can play a critical role in working on such a national even continent-wide nutritional information campaign.  The private sector, especially seed companies, must be encouraged to work with HarvestPlus and the CGIARs to commercilize and make broadly available to farmers the seeds and vines of bio-fortified crops.  Food processing companies should be encouraged to use bio-fortified crops in making foods and beverages for mass consumption, including as part of school feeding programs in pre-schools, elementary and middle schools.

I look forward to following this dialogue.  But more importantly, I look forward of being part of the solution to the malicious and persistent problem of malnutrition and under-nutrition in children in Africa.  Thank you.

6.Kate Godden, United Kingdom

I would like to see stronger collaboration between the nutrition and agriculture communities over the coming decade.

In many countries the SUN (scaling up nutrition) movement has been part of this for the past 5 years or so but further strengthening of linkages will serve to foster nascent mutual understanding and trust.  Good nutrition is now seen as a driver for economic development and is directly relevant to small scale farmers and their work productivity - there is an inherent benefit to both communities demanding multi-sector responses.

Intervention wise it would be great to see more focus on female small holders and on dietary/crop diversity activities as these are most likely to improve nutritional status.  Biofortification can be a useful tool, but monitoring - particularly with any vitamin A fortified products - must be systematic (thus expensive) to prevent toxicity or other negative impacts.

Kate Godden,

Principal Nutrition Adviser, 

UK

7.Brenda Shenute Namugumya, Wageningen University, Uganda

UN Decade of action for nutrition should focus on fostering and strengthening multisectoral linkages and actions by stakeholders to improve nutrition outcomes. Focus on health specific or agriculture specific interventions alone may not result in sustainable change especially when malnutrition has been observed where there "seems" to be plenty of food as is the case in some regions in Uganda;  and also considering that most health systems in Africa arenot equiped to manage/treat all forms of malnutrition and their consequences. Social development, education, local administration, environment, trade, finance sectors among others have a crucial role to play, yet they are often not part of the policy processes where nutrition is discussed/addressed. 

Engaging with these sectors calls for: 1) Strengthen the mulitsectoral governance systems for nutrition to ensure all stakeholders/actors (nutrition experts and "catalysts") are on board and understand the nutrition agenda;  2) Build and strengthen capacity of cadres across the system (from top to frontline workers, and within academia and outside) to create a mass that will respond to the demand for nutrition services; 3) Advocate and lobby the different levels of governments to prioritise nutrition in the development agenda as well as in implementation (it is not enough to have policies in place, these need to be implemented); 4) Empower households/communities (put nutrition back into the hands of the people) to have a progressive pronutrition behaviour change; 5) Strengthen and invest in measuring of progress - what is working, how can this be scaled up, what is cost effective and within means of government.