How do food and agricultural

policies impact on linear growth?

Lawrence Haddad
Institute of Development Studies
UK
 Outline
• Conceptual pathways for agriculture
• Conclusions of key reviews
• Organising expectations
• How to overcome barriers to impacts
 What has been Agriculture’s Contribution to Reductions in
Child Undernutrition, 1970-95?

Per cap Food

Women's Availability
Education (26%)
(43%)

Women's
Relative
Status (12%)

Health
Smith and Haddad 1999 Environment
(19%)
 Conceptual Framework
Impact of agricultural
research
on nutrition

Generic
(any sector) Specific
(Agriculture only)

Income Food prices

Time allocation Own consumption
Decision making Processing
Nutrient Expenditure Plant Breeding
Health
 Main pathways by which agricultural research affects nutrition
status
Generic Effects

1. Increase income of farm households (productivity)

and other rural households (linkages) that are
malnourished
2. May alter time allocation patterns of women and
men--implications for care provisioning
3. May alter decision-making structures in household
4. May affect energy and nutrient expenditures
5. May affect the health and sanitation environment
Main pathways by which agricultural research affects nutrition
status
Specific Effects

6. Reduce food prices for malnourished net food

purchasers (rural and urban)
7. Increase food consumption from own produce
8. Reduce post-harvest losses of nutrients
9. Plant breeding to change nutrient bioavailability
of existing foods and Biotechnology to formulate
new foods
 “Impacts” from one systematic review
Positive effect/total project (negative effect)

Note: 30 projects, in peer reviewed publications 1985-2001, all included nutrition

monitoring. 17 here ranked best quality by authors
A review of the effectiveness of agriculture interventions in improving nutrition outcomes. Peter R
Berti*, Julia Krasevec and Sian FitzGerald Public Health Nutrition: 7(5), 599–609
 “From Agriculture to Nutrition”
World Bank 2007
• Documents a wide range of successful agricultural interventions
that have contributed to improved nutrition outcomes.
• the exact pathways by which impacts on nutrition have been
achieved are difficult to track
• impossible to determine from this literature the relative
importance of the different pathways from agriculture to
nutrition
• The key lessons learned ..are that agricultural interventions are
most likely to affect nutrition outcomes when they redirect the
focus beyond agriculture for food production and toward broader
consideration of livelihoods, women’s empowerment
 Can strong nutrition effects be identified
ex-ante or is this still elusive?
• “Directing agricultural research and development towards the
improvement of human nutrition has proven to be an elusive goal”.
Robert Tripp, 1990 (Food Policy, p.467).

• “The nutritional effect per dollar spent on agricultural research is

not the same for all agricultural research…… while agricultural
research may not be the first best approach for solving nutrition
problems, opportunities exist for enhancing the nutrition effects
associated with a given investment in agricultural research if
(agricultural) research with strong nutrition effects can be identified
ex ante” Per Pinstrup-Andersen, 1990 (Food Policy, p.475).
 
 Organising expectations and increasing ex-ante
likelihood of impacts
Weak food markets Strong food markets

 Biofortification  Reduce general gender

 Reduce gender asymmetries with respect to asymmetries in power to:
Gender agriculture o increase farm income
exclusion o food production will map more closely and overall rural
into food consumption needs. Focus on income
institutions that can help women o increase nutrition
articulate voice, promote accountability impact of farm
to those voices, and be responsive to income
those voices

 Ag extension and research more closely  Maximise farm income &

No linked to linear growth promoting diets make sure risk mitigation
Gender  Behaviour change on farm production to link and management
Exclusion it more closely to linear growth promoting mechanisms are in place
diets
 Biofortification  Undertake behaviour
 Ensure women involved in market change on diet and
strengthening interventions activity
 Significant Potential, Huge Constraints,
• Constraints
– Weak incentives for agriculture to pay
attention to nutrition
• Weak monitoring of nutrition outcomes
• No pressure from civil society
• Donors just as divided as the rest of us
• No-one’s going to lose their job
– Weak evidence base on how to do it
 CGIAR Impact Website
• 761 agricultural “impact” studies listed by the
CGIAR as having been published by its centres
in the past 14 years
– 67 listed impact as focusing on income
– 16 listed impact on “nutrition/health status”

• Lack of an impact culture in agriculture when

it comes to human welfare outcomes
 Number of times nutrition mentioned in a
CGIAR annual report
36

30

17 16
14
10 10 11
9
4

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
 Causes for optimism (or false dawns?)
• Impact “beyond food production “culture is strengthening
• Nutrition is on the rise
• CCTs have shown the way to embed nutrition in large
resource flows
• Innovations in commitment mechanisms
– Indices of commitment
– Monitoring using ICTs
– Nutrition audits
• New research agenda on the “how” of coordination and
coherence
– Institutional innovations
– Nutrition Strategy Diagnostics
– Leadership building