Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia

The Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research programme consortium aims to enhance the impact of agriculture on maternal and child nutrition in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Nearly half the children in South Asian are chronically undernourished (stunted) and despite agriculture being the main livelihood for nearly half the population in the region, its potential for reducing undernutrition has not yet been realised.

The LANSA international research partnership focused on policies, interventions and strategies that can enhance agriculture to improve the nutritional status of children in South Asia.

This collection of LANSA publications describes our innovative research to discover how agriculture and food-related policies, programmes and interventions can be better designed to improve nutrition.

Image credit: Harvested Bell Peppers | IFPRI-IMAGES | Flickr | CC BY NC ND 2.0

In this collection

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Showing 71-80 of 100 results

  • Agriculture-nutrition linkages and child undernutrition in India

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2016
    The South Asian region and in particular India, has one of the highest rates of child undernutrition in the world, and is home to around 40 per cent of the global total of children who are stunted. Child stunting has been shown to have severe lifelong economic, health, and cognitive disadvantages and costs. Despite improvements in some states in recent years, the levels continue to be high....
  • Women in agriculture and nutrition in Odisha, India

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    The Odisha State Policy for Girls and Women (2014) is a comprehensive document that seeks to create a state where girls and women are equal partners in development. It specifically focuses on: health and well-being, through ensuring survival, health and nutrition; and equal opportunities in all spheres of life, through livelihood support and promotion apart from equal opportunities for participation and leadership in all spheres of life.There are seven focus areas that provide a framework for operationalisation....
  • Farming systems for improved nutrition: A formative study

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    International literature accords immense importance to agriculture interventions in order to achieve better health and nutrition. It stresses the importance of women’s engagement, diversified production and consumption, and incorporation of other health and nutrition services into the agriculture extension services....
  • Agriculture and Nutrition in Pakistan – Pathways and Disconnects

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2014
    Results of the latest nationwide nutrition survey show that Pakistan has persistently high rates of undernutrition despite respectable rates of economic growth. Amongst economic sectors, agriculture could have positive impacts on nutrition outcomes, but only through nuanced approaches. Exploring possible links between agricultural growth and nutrition improvement in the country reveals that land, gender relations, individual behaviour and preferences, as well as political priorities and organisational effectiveness, act as disconnects between agriculture and nutrition....
  • Situational analysis of pulse production and consumption in India

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    Encouraging the production and consumption of pulses is in line with the second Sustainable Development Goal’s three-fold objective to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. This paper discusses the importance of encouraging the production and consumption of pulses, given their nutritional benefits. It gives a situational analysis of the production, consumption and prices of pulses. Further, it describes the various government programmes that have been initiated in India since 2000-01 to increase the production of pulses....
  • Establishing integrated agriculture-nutrition programmes to diversify household food and diets in rural India

    Springer Netherlands, 2017
    Agriculture is the predominant livelihood for 70 % of the population living in rural India, and food expenses occupy a major proportion of their household budget. Rural household diets suggest that agricultural growth has contributed to increasing calorie intake with very minimal effect on the intake of protein and micronutrients. This in turn causes weak positive impact of agriculture on household dietary diversity and nutrient adequacy....
  • Household approaches to factors affecting nutrition: a study of two Indian districts

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    A number of factors affect a household’s nutritional status: food production; access and availability of food; care in the home; health, water, sanitation and hygiene practices; women’s agency and empowerment; and women’s role as primary caregivers. This paper explores these factors at the household level by interviewing 100 women across four rural villages in Bijapur, Karnataka and Sabarkantha, Gujarat....
  • Connecting agriculture to better nutrition in South Asia: Innovation as a process of socio-technical change

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    In South Asia, undernutrition remains a widespread problem, in spite of strong economic growth in countries such as India, which continues to struggle with stubbornly high rates of maternal malnutrition and child stunting....
  • Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in fragile contexts

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    Fragility, resulting both from violent conflict and/or severely adverse environmental conditions linked to climate change, fundamentally alters the linkages between agriculture and nutrition outcomes....
  • The Policy Environment for Food, Agriculture and Nutrition in India: Taking Stock and Looking Forward

    Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017
    India's policy environment has undergone a substantial overhaul since 2014, when a new government came in. This paper discusses recent changes in, and the current state of, food, agriculture and nutrition policies in India at the national and state levels. It provides an overview of the current policy framework, together with recommendations for the future, based on best practices in nutrition policy and the dynamics of the Indian economy and policy environment....

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