Almost half of all children in South Asia are reported to be stunted. It is also assumed that agriculture has the potential to be a strong driver of under-nutrition reduction. But unfortunately, although agricultural sector serves as the main source of livelihood for over half of South Asia's population, its potential to reduce under-nutrition is currently not being realised. Like a slip between the cup and the lip, there has always been a gap between increased food production and nutritional improvement across South Asia. The Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium seeks to understand how agriculture and agri-food systems can better be designed to improve nutrition in South Asia.
In 2013 and 2014, LANSA carried out interviews with stakeholders who are deemed influential and knowledgeable in agriculture-nutrition policy in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The purpose was to gain a better understanding of institutional and political factors surrounding nutrition sensitivity of agriculture in the region. With that end in view, semi- structured interviews were carried out in the countries under review. A total of 56 stakeholders representing international organisations, research, the government, civil society, donors, and the private sector participated in presenting their perceptions. We will almost reproduce the findings from a paper produced by Mara van den Bold, Neha Kohli, Stuart Gillespie, Samar Zuberi, Sangeetha Rajeesh, and Barnali Chakraborty.The paper is based on stakeholders' perceptions about enabling environment of nutritional outcomes in three countries.
The researchers reckon that most stakeholders perceive production, income, and food prices are the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition. In fact, this is the traditional model of the nexus between agriculture and nutrition through production, employment generation (income) and prices. But, sordidly, a much smaller proportion highlighted the role of women in agriculture and how this impacts their health, use of time, and control over resources. This seemed to inform their views on how conducive the policy environment is in their respective countries to nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and how this enabling environment can be improved.
Across the three countries, there were clearly mixed views among stakeholders on whether the policy environment is conducive to strengthening agriculture-nutrition linkages. "While nearly half of all stakeholders emphasised that nutrition-sensitive agriculture is gaining political traction, exemplified by high-level events, relevant policies, and improvements in agricultural technologies (such as bio-fortification), as well as nutrition-sensitive programming, another half believed that the general policy environment continues to emphasise staple crops and that a lack of inter-sectoral coordination prevents nutrition from being adequately addressed".
Several key challenges were highlighted across countries, such as inadequate nutrition literacy and technical capacity, from policy makers to extension workers to communities, lack of political leadership on nutrition and a related lack of accountability, as well as influence by powerful private sector lobbies that dominate the political agenda, insufficient coordination between relevant sectors on nutrition issues, infrequent collection and limited availability of quality data on both agriculture and nutrition (in the same surveys), ineffective communication of evidence to policymakers; and insufficient technical capacity among extension workers, civil servants, and even researchers.
Across the three countries, interviewees highlighted the need to improve collaboration among sectors from ministries to extension workers and to raise evidence-based awareness among policymakers and in communities about the importance of nutrition. Influence and pressure from the media and civil society can positively influence accountability mechanisms (as mentioned by stakeholders in India and Bangladesh), and this resource has not been mobilised enough in the region.
Despite challenges, there are ways in which all countries are taking steps toward an increasingly nutrition-sensitive policy environment. For example, as the researchers point out, Pakistan has taken steps to develop an inter-sectoral nutrition strategy. Bangladesh has developed several relevant policies and programmes, such as the National Nutrition Council and the Country Investment Plan on Agriculture, Food Security, and Nutrition, and several Indian states have established nutrition missions and are working on improving the nutrition sensitivity of agricultural programming. Several high-level events and initiatives have also served as ways to raise the profile of nutrition and its relevance to other sectors, such as the National Nutrition Survey in Pakistan and the World Food Summit in Bangladesh.
Based on stakeholder feed-back, the researchers highlight several issues as being particularly important for improving nutrition sensitivity of the agricultural sector in the three countries under review:
* Ensuring systems are in place that facilitate coordination among different departments, especially those related to health, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), nutrition, and agriculture,
* Ensuring simultaneous, regular and integrated collection and analysis of appropriate and high-quality data on agriculture, nutrition, and health and carrying out thorough evaluations of agriculture-nutrition policy processes to further understand how policies are shaped and how they can be best informed by relevant research, effectively and succinctly communicating research findings in a timely manner to policymakers (e.g., by policy briefs, face-to-face meetings, and nutrition champions),
* Strengthening strategic, operational, and technical capacities at all levels, especially with regard to technical knowledge, communication, and networking skills and design and operationalisation of nutrition-sensitive programmes. There is a particular need to expand nutrition literacy, from policymakers to extension workers and communities, as well as widen and deepen knowledge of agriculture and nutrition pathways (especially the pivotal role of women) and
* Finally, improving the use of existing financial resources for nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
By and large, lack of horizontal and vertical coordination seems to constrain a nutrition-friendly agricultural infrastructure in all of the countries under consideration. It is high time that with deep political commitment, the integration is ensured.
The writer is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University. abdulbayes@yahoo.com