Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia
Nutrition
How to design agriculture and food-related policies, programmes and interventions to improve nutrition.
Nutrition
In much of South Asia, women make up a majority of the agricultural workforce, but what effect does working in agriculture have on the nutrition of these women and their children?
Nutrition
Harnessing the farm-to-market value chain to deliver nutritious foods to those who need it most
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
Showing 81-90 of 100 results
Value chain analysis in India to identify nutrition-sensitive interventions for improved maternal diets in India
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017Micronutrient insufficiencies are a serious public health problem among women of reproductive age in Low and Middle Income Countries including India, adversely affecting maternal health and economic productivity, and child growth and educational outcomes. Fruit and vegetables are important sources of micronutrients and consumption of these foods is lower than recommendations. Value chain analysis involves understanding how actors (farmers/ producers, wholesalers and vendors) make decisions about what produce they grow and sell....Gender Differences in Adolescent Nutrition: evidence from two Indian districts
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017India is going through a silent crisis as millions of adolescents and adults, both male and female, across the country and over generations face the burden of undernutrition. India’s score in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) computed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was 28.5 in 2016. While this has improved from 36 in 2008, it still falls in the “serious” category....Assessing food value chain pathways, linkages and impacts for better nutrition of vulnerable groups
Food Policy, 2017In addition to targeting health and other areas related to undernutrition, a key priority is also the transformation of the agriculture and food sector. While patterns of crop and livestock production are widely expected to affect nutrition and the health of vulnerable groups, the evidence base for a positive impact, albeit growing, is still limited and sometimes inconclusive.This article offers insights into assessing the effectiveness of post farm-gate agri-food value chains at improving the nutrition intake of vulnerable groups....Agriculture, Food Systems, and Nutrition: Meeting the Challenge
Wiley Online Library, 2017Malnutrition is a global challenge with huge social and economic costs; nearly every country faces a public health challenge, whether from undernutrition, overweight/obesity, and/or micronutrient deficiencies. Malnutrition is a multisectoral, multi-level problem that results from the complex interplay between household and individual decision-making, agri-food, health, and environmental systems that determine access to services and resources, and related policy processes....Review of Agri-Food Chain Interventions Aimed at Enhancing Consumption of Nutritious Food by the Poor: Bangladesh
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2017Bangladesh is primarily an agrarian nation. Most of the people of the country directly or indirectly depend on agriculture. Rural people are more involved in this sector compared to urban people. Agriculture is the single largest producing sector of the economy. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development and food security....Child Under-weight and Agricultural Productivity in India: Implications for Public Provisioning and Women’s Agency
Review of Radical Political Economics, 2015The well-known pathways that link agriculture to child nutrition are food, quality of food, and care of feeding. Further, agricultural productivity growth contributes significantly to poverty reduction and reduction in child undernutrition. Care of children and feeding practices depend upon women’s knowledge, and hence women’s education and their freedom to act are closely related to child nutrition.A recent global hunger index indicated a 12 percent decline in child underweight rates....Fragile Environment, Seasonality, and Maternal and Childhood Undernutrition in Bangladesh
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2016Spatial distribution of poverty in Bangladesh shows that poverty is concentrated in ecologically unfavourable areas. Recently, the issue of spatial distribution of undernutrition has emerged as a matter of concern as well, considering the growing evidence of the strong persistence of existing inequalities.Therefore, whether ecological differences have affected nutritional outcomes is becoming an important issue for research.This paper aims to understand whether spatial and seasonal variations affect maternal and childhood undernutrition in Bangladesh....Does Agriculture Promote Diet Diversity? A Bangladesh Study
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2016It is now widely recognised that intake of sufficient dietary energy does not ensure adequate intake of protein and micronutrients necessary for leading an active and healthy life. Legumes, animal products, fruit and vegetables are important sources of minerals and micronutrients....Stakeholder Perceptions of Agriculture and Nutrition Policies and Practice: Evidence from Afghanistan
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia, 2016Like in other countries in the South Asian region, malnutrition is a serious problem in Afghanistan: the latest national statistics confirm high rates of stunting among vulnerable groups such as children under the age of five (nationally 40 per cent and in certain provinces over 70 per cent)....Adapting Agriculture Platforms for Nutrition: A Case Study of a Participatory, Video-Based Agricultural Extension Platform in India
PLoS ONE, 2016Successful integration of nutrition interventions into large-scale development programmes from nutrition-relevant sectors, such as agriculture, can address critical underlying determinants of undernutrition and enhance the coverage and effectiveness of on-going nutrition-specific activities. However, evidence on how this can be done is limited. This study examines the feasibility of delivering maternal, infant, and young child nutrition behaviour change communication through an innovative agricultural extension programme serving nutritionally vulnerable groups in rural India....