Global forum on food security and nutrition

51.Simeon Onya, Michael Okpara University of Agirculture, Umudike, Abia State, Nigeria (third contribution)

You can not talk about nutrition without first addressing the problem of food insecurity. The vulnerable group (both women and children) in the poverty riddened society hear no language of balance diet; they are after getting their daily meal to survive first. Hence, agricultural programmes of the country should be reviewed and government should be able to develop the political will to achieve increase food production, organise food policy that will incorporate small scale farmers into government programmes. A sustainable solution that encourages and create incentives for people to produce more food for themselves is also advocated; this, i think can be achived through subsidizing the basic inputs ( such as fertilizer, improved seeds and seedlings) and timely dessemination of innovative technologies to the small scale farmers that are scattered all over the country.

52.Victor Owino, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Austria

In order to maximise the impact of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, food security and food production systems, and availability of methodological capability to monitor progress and evaluate programme effectiveness will be very important. The IAEA can make contribution by providing comparative advantage in the deployment of objective, specific and sensitive nuclear techniques to evaluate nutrition and nutrition-sensitive programmes. The following specific issues will require attention.

1. 
   Ensure improved soil quality – replenish lost nutrients including, through inter-cropping in addition to known methods that work.
   
2. 
   Guarantee water availability for cropping, livestock and fishery
   
3. 
   Address land availability and farming systems
   
4. 
   Design safer food processing and  storage,  and affordable distribution systems, especially so in the case of landless populations
   
5. 
   Identify and promote crops and livestock that work and are acceptable in specific contexts keeping in mind circumstances related to shifts in food preferences, gender sensitivity  and climate change
   
6. 
   Ensure that food production guarantees dietary diversity and that food processing and preparation at the household level maximise nutrient bioavailability from foods
   
7. 
   Create factors that enable farming and food access such as subsidies to farmers and price subsidies on basic  foods
   
8. 
   Empower farmers, including women to enable better bargaining for farm produce prices; encourage cooperatives around focal crop/livestock production/fisheries  and communal approach to food production, pricing and marketing
   
9. 
   Include income generation activities to avoid food being sold for subsistence e.g. in some African contexts cotton was a key cash crop that was grown alongside food and households did not need to sell food to meet their basic needs
   
10. 
    Design behaviour change communication and social marketing strategies to help communities adopt new dietary patterns or revert to hitherto abandoned indigenous eating practices
    
11. 
    Ensure gender equity in all aspects
    
12. 
     Develop capacity and methods/tools to objectively monitor and evaluate the impact of 1-11 above and conduct good social research to understand why people eat the way they do and understand the underlying causes of dietary behaviour changes.
    
13. 
    Multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral working teams will be needed at levels to achieve the above
    

53.Erick Boy-Gallego, HarvestPlus/IFPRI, United States of America

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