Global forum on food security and nutrition

Bibhu Santosh Behera, Ouat Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Respected All FAO/UNEP friends and all members of globe

Hi I am Bibhu Santosh a Young Scientist of Gender mediated Agriculture and Climate Smart Extension.I am pleased to share my Research to Society for upliftment and Devt. of Rural artisans.

I think this may helpful for every one.

Yours Loving

Bibhu

Attached document “A Gender Comparative Study on Communication System among the Farmers and Farm Women in Keonjhar District of Odisha” in Annex 5

Guo Cheng, Sichuan University, China

The Double Burden of Poor Nutrition in China:

Roles of Fathers and Grandparents for Children’s Diet Quality

Over the past two decades, China has met its first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Particularly impressive progress has been made to improve the nutritional status of Chinese children. From 1990 to 2010, the prevalence of stunting and underweight caused by malnutrition in children below 5 years old were decreased by about 70%. Meanwhile, the improvement in nutritional status resulted in a general acceleration of growth and development of children. China has employed a number of strategies to help achieve this progress, mainly including scaling up political commitment, increasing resources and taking urgent actions on nutrition.

Since 1990, the Chinese government has promulgated the Outline Program for the Development of Children in 1990-2000, 2001-2010 and 2011-2020, respectively, to implement the principle of giving priority to children. Under the guidance of this policy, various programs and activities for improving children’s nutritional status and health have been implemented, especially in rural areas. For example, with the launch of Nutrition Improvement for Children in Impoverished Areas Program, the National Health and Family Planning Commission started promoting a nutritional parcel (a soybean-based micronutrient-fortified food supplement with a demonstrated effect on the reduction of anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies) among children aged 6-24 months. To date, with the allocated government funds, around 4 million children in 341 poverty counties have enjoyed the benefits of this nutritional parcel. Another fruitful activity is the China Nutrition Improvement Plan (2011), which covered children in 699 impoverished counties, provided free daily school meals for 26 million children. Except for nutrition interventions, the National Health and Family Planning Commission has issued a new version of the "Chinese dietary guidelines (2016)" recently, which includes specialized guides to infants, children and adolescents, respectively, to meet their needs of physiological characteristics and nutrition.

In spite of the remarkable achievements in improving children’s nutrition, new threats to children’s health continuously arise in China. For example, with the rapid development of economy, nutritional shifts in recent decades are driving the obesity epidemic in Chinese children. China, now, has been one of the developing countries struggle with the so-called ‘double burden’ of the undernutrition and over nutrition. A recent work carried out by our group suggests that the diet quality of Chinese children, in general, was not very cheerful. Under consumption of soybeans, fish and shrimp, eggs, vegetables and fruits, and overconsumption of fried foods and meats were becoming growing threats to Chinese children. Notably, this study has proposed an impact of paternal, rather than maternal, education level on the children’s diet quality, suggesting the important role of fathers which had been ignored before, in children’s nutrition. It is conceivable that fathers can exert great influences on children’s eating since fathers play a major role in the traditional Chinese family. Another novel finding of this research was the relevance of family size for children’s diet quality, which indicated the grandparents’ impacts in the three-generation family.

Taken together, the persistent undernutrition and the increasing over nutrition among Chinese children demand sustained targeted efforts to promote optimal nutrition. Future priorities should be given to the special roles of fathers and grandparents in improving children’s nutrition.

Amin Uddin, Helen Keller International, Bangladesh

Helping homestead gardeners mitigate the impact of soil salinity

Homestead food production (HFP) is an effective way to help poor families increase access to nutritious food and new sources of income. HFP enables women to access fresh vegetables for themselves and their children directly, instead of relying on a male family member to purchase them, and proceeds from household gardens are usually controlled by women and thus more likely to be used for education, healthcare and other activities which directly benefit women and children. Helen Keller International (HKI) has implemented HFP programs throughout Bangladesh since the early 1990s. As part of the global Project Laser Beam initiative, the Mondelez Foundation supported HKI to increase women’s asset base and food security through HFP, improve nutrition, address gender barriers and intra-household communication and strengthen farming groups.

However, a changing climate requires that new practices be integrated into strategies to promote HFP, particularly in the vulnerable areas of southern Bangladesh which face frequent floods and cyclones where southwestern Bangladesh bordering the Bay of Bengal, is particularly vulnerable to floods and storms. The soil salinity is worst during dry periods. The spring of 2012 was particularly dry, with no rainfall during the month of May according to the local farmers and the Department of Agricultural Extension. With support from the Mondelez Foundation, HKI surveyed the impact of soil salinity on household gardeners in Shymnagar, Satkhira district during this period and rolled out strategies to help families continue vegetable production.

About half of households were already implementing practices to cope with soil salinity. Among these, 38% were using organic compost and 34% were planting crops in pits which were first leached with water. However, households with the knowledge and means to adopt these practices tended to be among the better off; poor households who are more reliant on their gardens for food and income had fewer coping mechanisms and were thus most affected by the salinity.

Challenges: However, introducing this practice requires a relatively high level of expertise by program staff in order to demonstrate the correct method of soil management and planting for various types of crops. Composting & mulching is a practice that poor household have found more difficult to adopt. It is therefore worth developing tools and techniques to promote composting in areas where vegetable cultivation is a priority strategy to increase nutrition and income for poor households.

Results: PLB provided training to households, both men and women, to increase garden production and produce more varieties in small water-prone areas, introduced poultry-rearing practices to increase production, formed marketing committees with links to market actors, built business skills to market agricultural products, and educated mothers through nutrition education. Data were collected from project participants as a panel survey at baseline (n=207) and end line (n=197). Participants were pregnant women with more than 2 decimals of land.

A significant reduction in inadequate diets was observed among target women at baseline, 76% (n=158) of women had an inadequate diet (all participants were pregnant at the time of the baseline). By the end of the project, this number had dropped to only 23% (n=45) among the same survey sample. There was also a significant increase among women who consumed >5 food groups per day.

Amin Uddin, Director- Food Security & Livelihood, Helen Keller International, Bangladesh.