Remarkable food output fails to impact child nutrition: IFPRI

FE Report
Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in food grain production over the years, but its performance in improving child and maternal nutrition is less satisfactory.
Although agriculture has the potential to be a strong provider of nutrition, the potential is not being fully realised, said a study report conducted by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
"Lack of women's empowerment weakens the links between agriculture and nutrition,' said IFPRI Chief of Party in Bangladesh Akhter Ahmed while presenting his paper at an international workshop on 'Evidence-Based Policy Options for Food and Nutrition Security in Bangladesh'.
The IFPRI, a US-based international agricultural research centre, organised a daylong workshop at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel with a view to working out policy guidelines and methodologies to contain hunger and strengthen the country's food and nutrition security.
According to IFPRI research on 'Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS)', empirical evidence on the impact of agricultural growth on nutrition is limited. Although the ultimate goal of ensuring food security is to improve health and nutrition of people, it has failed to benefit child and maternal nutrition.
To overcome the problem, the paper highlighted the urgency for empowering women, encouraging their participation in production and marketing for income generation, and ensuring their nutritional status for improving food and nutrition security.
It also called for identifying actions and investments in agriculture that would lead to agricultural development for improved nutrition, encouraging crop diversification and production of crops with greater nutrition value for meeting the nutrition demand of the population.
According to a paper, submitted by Dr. Ricardo Hernandez, about two-thirds of the country's animal protein consumption is derived from fish while one-third comes from the meat.  The consumption of fish doubled over the last one decade from 1.8 million metric tones in 2002 to 3.6 million tones in 2012. Despite the transformation the researcher identified the sector as an underdeveloped, slow growing, and traditional one.
The fish value chain in Bangladesh is transforming very rapidly, in all segments and has relied heavily on private sector (formal and informal). The main problem remains cost of fuel and access to electricity.
In her paper, Dr Firdousi Naher pointed out that the country's seed markets do not function well partly because seed producers lack sufficient information and partly because policy-makers are not adequately informed about the constraints faced by seed producers.    

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