Save the Children

meeting 30 April, London

Hunger and Undernutrition Reduction: Overcoming Disconnects and Neglect

Lawrence Haddad Institute of Development Studies

Outline
Connecting agriculture and undernutrition Overcoming neglect of hunger and undernutrition

Why doesnt agriculture do more to reduce undernutrition?

In terms of the productive sectors, agricultural growth tends to be a more integral part of nutrition-sensitive development than nonagricultural growth, but the effect of agricultural growth on nutrition is conditional upon the size of the sector, the extent to which food insecurity is a problem, and the extent to which agricultural growth delivers increased food availability. The main exception to this statement is that the result does not appear to apply in India.
(An econometric study)
Headey 2011. Turning Economic Growth into Nutrition-Sensitive Growth . IFPRI.

Successes in fighting undernutrition

Headey 2011

Failures in addressing undernutrition

Headey 2011

Reasons for disconnects

Agriculture not a big enough sector Not generating enough income and employment for the poorest Not enough of an incentive for agriculture to focus on nutrition

Where there is a focus on nutrition, it is ineffective

Maybe it is having an impact, but we cannot isolate it due to weak impact culture in agriculture Poor enabling environment overwhelms agricultures efforts, e.g. womens empowerment, watsan, health, political priorities

Invest in Less Favoured or More Favoured Agricultural Land? It depends what the objective is

Systematic Review of Agricultural Interventions that do try to improve nutrition status

23 studies found
13 collected heights and weights of children 8 investigated differences between control and project 1/8 had a positive significant impact on stunting, 3/8 on underweight and 2/8 on wasting Half of the studies in which no significant different was found did not have large enough sample sizes to detect a difference if it existed!
Masset, Haddad, Cornelius, Isaza-Castro BMJ 2012

Invest in new technologies and farming methods to leverage better nutrition?

Prioritising the needs of women farmers

Does access to farm inputs favour men?

Number of studies

Source: Peterman, Behrman and Quisumbing, 2010. IFPRI Discussion Paper 975

But how to promote the power and influence of women within agriculture?
Within agriculture?
Extension agents?

National agricultural research systems?

Crop choice?

Outside of agriculture?
Village councils? The courts? Policy?

Making hunger and undernutrition harder to neglect

Outcomes
Real time mapping

Commitment
Measuring commitment

Leadership
Wait or Develop?

Undernourishment data: Crisis, What Crisis?

2007-08 Food price spike

Source: Oxfam (2010) Data cited from FAO Hunger Statistics (from 1969 to 2006); UN (2009)

Millions

Comparison of Household Survey and FAO estimates of food energy deficiency, 1990s
82 75 66 44 32 15 73 73 60 63 45 52 45 31 21

Spearman rank=0.43 (p=0.21)

44 47 44 43 40

Et hi op ia

m bi a

Gh an a

Gu in ea

Ta nz an ia

ya Ke n

Bu ru nd i

oz am

Household Survey

FAO

Food Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Estimates from Household Expenditure Surveys Lisa C. Smith Harold Alderman and Dede Aduayom. Research Report 146. 2003.

Ug an da

M al aw i

Za

bi qu e

Efforts to monitor hunger must be revitalised

http://www.rapidsms.org/casestudies/malawi-nutritional-surviellence/

Who is most committed to reducing hunger?

Country Government expenditure rank Policies and programmes rank HRCI (1 is best)

Denmark
Finland Belgium Ireland Norway France United Kingdom Australia Netherlands Spain Germany South Korea Japan Canada Greece Sweden Italy USA Austria Switzerland New Zealand Portugal

3
6 9 5 2 11 14 16 10 4 12 23 8 13 21 7 22 18 20 15 17 19

4
9 7 11 15 6 3 2 8 14 10 1 17 13 5 19 12 18 16 22 20 21

1
2 3 3 5 5 5 8 8 8 11 12 13 14 14 14 17 18 18 20 20 22

Source: IDS at www.hrcindex.org

Commitment and hunger status?

COMMITMENT Low HUNGER STATUS (GHI 2010) Moderate Serious Alarming Extremely Alarming

Low
Nepal Lesotho

Rwanda Mozambique Guinea Bissau

Zambia Bangladesh

Medium

Ghana China

Kenya Nigeria Senegal Malawi Guatemala Gambia Uganda

India

Burundi

High Brazil

Ethiopia Tanzania

Citizen Feedback: Are Anti-Hunger Efforts Working?

Randomised control trial of community-based monitoring of public primary health care providers in Uganda Citizen report cards reduced child mortality by 33 per cent The study documents large increases in utilisation and improved health outcomes

Cost per child death averted was $300, well below the average of $887 for 23 other interventions.
Bjrkman, M and Svensson, J. (2009) 'Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community Based Monitoring in Uganda, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 124: 2, pp 73569

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Accountability in the private sector

04/ 03/ 2012 11:19

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MejiaAcosta et. al. 2012

Leadership?

April 2012

Conclusions
Agriculture is potentially vital to hunger and undernutrition reduction - but it needs to be a more powerful force Several ways of making hunger and undernutrition harder to ignore suggested Strong political courage and leadership is needed to reduce hunger