In a recent research dissemination seminar held under the auspices of the Research and Evaluation Division of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the Leveraging Agriculture on Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA), a few important papers related to nutrition were presented. One of the interesting papers focused on agricultural practices and nutrition. The link between agricultural practices and nutritional improvement may not be straightjacket. Rather, it could depend on a number of factors. Â
It is now widely recognised that intake of sufficient dietary energy, the most basic need for human survival, does not ensure adequate intake of protein and micronutrients necessary for leading an active and healthy life. Micronutrient deficiency causes impaired cognitive development, compromises immunity and increases vulnerability to infectious diseases and in severe cases, causes death.
Recent studies show that consumption of animal and fish products, which are heavy in protein and micronutrients, is more closely correlated with nutritional status than the energy consumption. Thus, to improve the nutritional situation, it is crucial that we addressed issues of dietary quality in addition to those of dietary quantity.
 Bangladesh has made commendable economic progress in recent years with an acceleration of growth rate from below 4.0 per cent in 1970s and 1980s to 5.0 per cent in the 1990s and a little over 6.0 per cent over the last decade. The reduction in population growth rate from 2.4 per cent in the 1970s to 1.2 per cent at present has boosted per capita income growth from 1.2 per cent to 4.0 per cent per annum. The growth has made tremendous impacts on poverty that fell from 58 per cent in 1990 to 32 per cent in 2010.
This is not the end of the positive turn of events - agricultural growth rate has accelerated from about 2.0 per cent per year in the 1980s to 3.0 per cent in 1990s and 4.0 per cent in the last decade. The existing intake of dietary energy - the most basic need for human survival--does not ensure adequate intake of protein and micronutrient necessary for leading an active and healthy life.
Concomitantly, there has been considerable diversification of agricultural income as evidenced by a reduction in crop income from 65 per cent to 56 per cent and a rise in income from fisheries from 12 per cent to 22 per cent.
But the progress in under-nutrition and malnutrition has not been commensurate with economic and agricultural progress. Persistence of under-nutrition is a serious public health problem reflected by the fact that 60 per cent of childhood deaths are caused by under or malnutrition. Deficiencies of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron, iodine and zinc are reported to be serious threats to health, particularly the problem of iron deficiency causing anemia, highly prevalent among pre-school children and adolescent girls. Four out of ten pregnant women in rural areas still suffer from anemia.
In Bangladesh, the nutrition issue tends to be addressed through its proximal or underlying determinants such as dietary intake, feeding practices, health status and so on. The role of broader determinants such as agriculture - that determines the composition of the diet and wider economic factors and socio-economic characteristics of households - and other non-food environments are relatively neglected.
It may be mentioned here that very few studies so far attempted to shed light on agricultural nutrition linkage (connecting or disconnecting ; whether involvement in agricultural production as well as more diversified agricultural production has any effect on household's diet diversity or not. In fact, there are seven pathways through which agriculture may influence nutrition.
The most direct pathway highlights agriculture as a source of food translating into consumption (via crops cultivated by households). Second, the monetary return comes via wages or marketed sales of food produced by agricultural workers. Third, the relationship between agricultural policy and food prices involving a range of supply-demand factors ultimately leads to prices of various marketed food and non-food crops. The fourth pathway emphasises how income derived from agriculture is spent on non-food items such as education, health and social welfare, indirectly leading to nutritional status.
The remaining three pathways relate to how agriculture intensifies different dimensions of women's status in relation to women's empowerment, their ability to influence household decisions, intra-household distribution of food, health, and care etc.
The results show that diet diversity and food consumption score has improved considerably in Bangladesh during 2000-2010 period. The energy intake has remained almost constant but there has been significant improvement in the intake of vitamin A, and iron. The decline in per capita rice consumption over the period has led to a reduction in calorie, protein and zinc but increased intake of animal products has compensated the decline in protein and iron. Vitamin A has increased from consumption of vegetables.
A multivariate regression model was estimated to find the factors associated with diet diversity and these are household income, land ownership, level of education of the head or spouse, infrastructure, electricity etc. Controlling the effects of these factors, the findings show that the household's engagement in agriculture and diversity in agricultural production positively effect diet diversity. Thus agriculture promotes diet diversity, food consumption score and nutrition outcomes. For example, and other things remaining the same, one unit increase in diversity index has induced 0.03 unit increase in the average dietary diversity at both national and rural level for the year 2000. The value of the coefficient becomes 0.01 and 0.02 at national and rural level respectively for year 2010. Thus agriculture and its diversity plays a pivotal role in leveraging diet diversity and hence in nutritional outcome.
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.Â
abdulbayes@yahoo.com