Green Revolution and grey nutrition?

Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA), a research institution, has long been playing an important role in the field of nutritional research in South Asia.
LANSA has been campaigning for research to find out how agriculture and agri food systems, policies and strategies can be better designed to reduce malnutrition. This is essential in the wake of the experience of extraordinary economic growth with massive malnutrition.  
Two eminent scientists have reinforced evidence from Bangladesh. "Agriculture, Nutrition and the Green Revolution in Bangladesh" is an interesting and insightful article by Derek D. Headey and John Hoddinott of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Cornell University, respectively. The paper appeared in the journal, Agricultural Systems.
The impacts of the Green Revolution (GR) in Bangladesh have been documented from various angles by different researchers both at home and abroad.  Mostly led by late Mahabub Hossain, the researches have revealed positive impacts of GR such as self-sufficiency in rice led by increased yield, improved calorie consumption of households, employment, net returns, food security etc. By and large, GR is believed to have paved the way for poverty reduction in Bangladesh.
 However, pessimists point out the adverse micronutrient consequences of reduced biodiversity in mono-cropping systems, lower consumption of pulses, coarse grains and fish and also the harmful health and nutritional impacts of excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides. To them, the green is overshadowed by the grey.
The pros and cons of Green Revolution raised by both the groups have apparently bypassed the most important issue of examining the impacts of growth in cereal yields on changes in individual nutrition outcomes or diets. The paper by Derek and Hoddinott seeks to fill the knowledge gap by exploring the nutritional impacts of rice productivity growth in Bangladesh. They reckon that Bangladesh is an ideal case study for several reasons paraphrased as follows:
First, Bangladesh is a relatively late adopter of Green Revolution technologies, meaning that much of its productivity growth occurred during more recent periods of improved statistical surveillance. From 1997 to 2011 (the period of analysis) yield growth of rice averaged 3.6 per cent per annum on the back of increased adoption of improved varieties and the rapid expansion of irrigated dry season rice crop. Second, productivity growth in Bangladesh coincided with substantial improvements in pre-school nutritional status. In 1996/97, rates of pre-school stunting and mild wasting were 53 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. In this paper, the authors made the rare attempt to  explore links between rapid productivity growth in rice production, dietary diversification and changes in the world at that time, although by 2011, rates of moderate stunting and mild wasting had both fallen to around 40 per cent.
Third, Bangladesh has a relatively rich array of nutritional and agricultural data. The dearth of such data has undoubtedly been a constraint to exploring the impacts of agricultural growth on nutrition in other Green Revolution countries.
The authors tend to show that diets in Bangladesh are remarkably undiversified, and have only diversified slowly during this period of rapid rice intensification. They also find that increases in rice yields have a large and statistically significant association with child weight gain. This phenomenon could at least be partially explained by increased food consumption for young children due particularly to timely introduction of complementary foods in the critical early years of child development. They are of the view that this potential impact of yields on child weight gain is important 'bonus' for Bangladesh as the country still has one of the highest rates of child wasting in the world.
The results from the research by the authors drive home a few potentially important policy implications though further evidence is still needed to corroborate the linkages hypothesised in this paper. First, they provide strong evidence that delays in introduction of complementary foods - and most likely, in adequate calorie intake of children - are related to low levels of agricultural productivity and household economic status (assets). Hence, public investments in staple food production would appear to be an important tool for overcoming those constraints in addition to safety net programmes for poor households, as well as the kinds of behavioural change communications programmes typically favoured by nutritionists for improvement of complementary feeding.
Second, it is clear from different types of data that diets have been diversified very little over a period of rapid productivity growth in the food staple. A major challenge in Bangladesh is to understand the constraints to dietary diversification and policy options for accelerating diversification. Examples of potential policy levers include a reorientation of Bangladesh's agricultural R&D portfolio towards more micronutrient-rich crops and livestock products. There has also been  an increased focus on diversifying production via agricultural extension programmes, behavioural change and communication interventions to nudge parents into healthier feeding practices and nutrition-sensitive social safety nets to improve the purchasing power of the poorest households (perhaps conditional upon participation in nutritional programmes). There have been interventions to alleviate many marketing bottlenecks that inhibit both domestic production and domestic and international trade of perishable nutrient-rich foods in particular (e.g. lack of cold storage, inadequate infrastructure, regulatory burdens to trade). "Assessing the effectiveness of these types of policies and programmes in accelerating diversification towards healthier and more nutrient-rich diets would seem to be an important area for future research."
The writer is a former Professor of Economics at
Jahangirnagar University.
[email protected]