'Availability of food' and 'Access to food' have always been subjects of discussion on food security. It took a long time to grasp that the former does not necessarily imply the latter. However, the belated realisation is what matters most for food security is 'entitlement', as Amartya Sen said. It is perhaps premised on the empirics that many famines around the world have occurred even when the aggregate food supply was not short of demand. On the other hand, confusion also looms large regarding the nexus between good agricultural production and improved nutritional status of the population, especially of children.
The attempt to link agricultural production with food availability - and food security - is a very old one. No stone seemingly has gone unturned in every society to see that food production match the aggregate demand. The concern for attaining equilibrium in this respect appears more appealing, especially, on the heels of heightened Malthusian misalignment between the growth rates of population and food production.
Like many other countries in the world, Bangladesh has also succeeded in pursuing proper policies to augment supply of its staple foodgrain rice. From 10 million tons in the 1970s, the country now produces more than 30 million tons of foodgrains. However, the good news was accompanied by a bad one. The developed mono cropping system signalled demise of crop diversification and hence a balanced dietary pattern. It is thus no surprising that malnutrition among children in Bangladesh - though declining over time - is one of the highest in the world. Linking agriculture with nutrition became a cornerstone of policy palliatives in recent years.
Leveraging Agriculture with Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA), funded by DFID, is a new research programme. It tries to figure out how agriculture and agri-food systems, policies and strategies can better be designed to reduce malnutrition, seek solutions that will improve nutrition outcomes for young women and children in South Asia - a region experiencing extraordinary economic growth along with the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, and where the link between the major source of livelihoods, agriculture and nutrition is seriously missing. LANSA aims to produce evidence relevant to decision-makers and other stakeholders with emphasis on research communications, facilitating knowledge and learning between outcomes.
A seminar held recently in Dhaka on the nexus between agriculture and nutrition carries fair amount of weight as far as policy research is concerned. Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, and chief guest on the occasion Moinuddin Abdullah emphasised the need for evidence-based policy suggestions.
Akhter Ahmed of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) made some important observations. In Bangladesh, according to a study of his organisation, rice alone accounts for about 71 per cent of food energy (calorie), 60 per cent of protein, 62 per cent of zinc and 44 per cent of iron, thus, indicating the overwhelming dominance of rice in diets of Bangladeshis. The adage says Mache Vate Bangalee (Bengalis with fish and rice) but it is only rice that fills the stomach. At disaggregated level, the richest one-fifths derive roughly two-thirds of calorie intake from rice compared to about four-fifths for the poorest one-fifths. Likewise, protein constitutes about half of the total nutrient intake for the former compared to two-thirds for the latter. In other words, very rich or very poor, Bangladeshi diet is rice-centric. The lack of diversity in food basket could be the cause of the malaise called pervasive malnutrition. Second, in Chittagong and Sylhet with higher per capita income, fuelled by remittance, only one-tenths of the women are empowered in agriculture.
This can be pitted against regions like Barisal and Rajshahi, with relatively low per capita income but having higher proportion of empowered women (about 30 per cent). Using IFPRI's 2011-12 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) data and econometric modelling exercise, the researchers found that: (a) agricultural diversity increases household and child dietary diversity, and hence, diet quality, as an income effect; (b) women's empowerment in agriculture improves household, child and maternal dietary diversity, and (c) women's empowerment increases agricultural diversity. Thus, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project of the Ministry of Agriculture will address the above-mentioned issues.
The take-home lesson from the seminar seems to be that to improve upon nutritional status, agriculture has to play the pivotal role and more researches need to be undertaken as is done by LANSA.
The writer is a former Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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