Download or read book Improving diet quality and micronutrient nutrition Homestead food production in Bangladesh written by Lora Iannotti, Kenda Cunningham, Marie Ruel and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Improving Diet Quality and Micronutrient Nutrition written by Lora Iannotti and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical yet often overlooked component of food security is diet quality. Even households who have access to sufficient amounts of food and calories may still lack essential micronutrients, increasing their risk for both short- and long-term health and development consequences. Interventions that address poor diet quality and related deficiencies of vitamin A, zinc, iron, among others, are important for achieving full food security in vulnerable populations. The homestead food production (HFP) program, introduced in Bangladesh by Helen Keller International nearly two decades ago, promotes an integrated package of home gardening, small livestock production and nutrition education with the aim of increasing household production, availability, and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods and improving the health and nutritional status of women and children. Implemented by NGO partners and the Government of Bangladesh, HFP has expanded its reach into over one half of the country's subdistricts and is now operating in several countries of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence shows that HFP in Bangladesh has improved food security for nearly 5 million vulnerable people in diverse agroecological zones. This has been achieved through: increased production and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods; increased income from gardens and expenditures on micronutrient-rich foods; women's empowerment; enhanced partner capacity; and community development.

Download or read book Homestead Food Production HFP in Bangladesh written by Mostak Ahmed and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper deals with diet quality and micronutrient nutrition as an essential yet overlooked component of food security- i.e. safe and nutritious food. Vitamin and mineral deficiency (VMD) is at the core of massive malnutrition in the world today. 'Hidden hunger' is a chronic lack of micronutrients which is basically a problem of balanced and healthy diet, affecting two billion people worldwide from reaching their physical and mental potential. Several strategies to combat VMD have been undertaken in Bangladesh on both a short and interim measures. However, agricultural intervention through dietary diversification has been found to be the most viable strategy in the long-term and on a sustainable basis. There is sufficient evidence to believe that higher intake of locally available fruits and vegetables on a regular basis might reverse the VMD. The Homestead Food Production (HFP) program in Bangladesh promotes an integrated package of home gardening, with the aim of increasing the health and nutritional status of women and children. This paper presents major finding derived from an empirical study of HFP in the northern Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), Bangladesh, involving 120 households represented by ethnic women of child-bearing age. The underlying objective is being to provide an effective approach to sustainable nutrition solution in the country. The Chittagong Hill-Tracts is a classic example of an underdeveloped region with an overwhelmingly rural, low income agro-based economy, seeking to achieve basic goals of development in both social and economic terms. There is ample evidence to show that HFP program in Bangladesh has improved food security for more than 5 million vulnerable people in diverse agro-ecological zone. In the study area, the HFP program has significantly improved the food security status of the sample population in terms of production, diversification, consumption and sale of nutritious foods.

Download or read book Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture gender and nutrition linkages A cluster randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh written by Ahmed, Akhter and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2022-04-06 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing body of evidence indicates that agricultural development programs can potentially improve production diversity and diet quality of poor rural households; however, less is known about which aspects of program design are effective in diverse contexts and feasible to implement at scale. We address this issue through an evaluation of the Agriculture, Gender, and Nutrition Linkages (ANGeL) project. ANGeL is a randomized controlled trial testing what combination of trainings focused on agricultural production, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization were most effective in improving production diversity and diet quality among rural farm households in Bangladesh. We find that trainings focused on agriculture improved production diversity in terms of greater production of fruits and vegetables grown on the homestead, eggs, dairy, and fish; adding trainings on nutrition and gender did not significantly change these impacts. Trainings focused on both agriculture and nutrition showed the largest impacts on diet quality, with evidence indicating that households in this arm also significantly increased consumption out of homestead production for fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy, and fish. Findings indicate that agricultural training that promotes production of diverse, high-value, nutrient-rich foods can increase production diversity, and this can improve diet quality, but diet quality impacts are larger when agricultural training is combined with nutrition training. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality.

Download or read book Food systems for healthier diets in Bangladesh Towards a research agenda written by de Brauw, Alan and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2020-01-03 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national food system of Bangladesh has made substantial progress since experiencing famine in 1974, soon after independence. After the famine, the government placed a strong emphasis on policies required to attain grain self-sufficiency; since attaining self-sufficiency, the production system, policies related to it, and resulting diets have begun to diversify. Nonetheless, undernutrition remains a problem, and fruit and vegetable consumption are inadequate for most people relative to international recommendations. Moreover, as the food system has begun to transition towards a modern one, challenges related to food safety and perceived food adulteration have begun to rise. Further, increased processed food intakes are potentially associated with existing rising overweight and obesity status. Both government interventions and innovations are needed to help shift the national food system to improve nutrient-dense food availability, particularly among the poor, and to limit the increase in processed food consumption.

Download or read book Women s Empowerment and Nutrition written by Mara van den Bold and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

Download or read book Women s empowerment in agriculture and dietary quality across the life course Evidence from Bangladesh written by Sraboni, Esha and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using nationally representative survey data from rural Bangladesh, this paper examines the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and indicators of individual dietary quality. Our findings suggest that women’s empowerment is associated with better dietary quality for individuals within the household, with varying effects across the life course. Women’s empowerment is associated with more diverse diets for children younger than five years, but empowerment measures are not consistently associated with increases in nutrient intake for this age group. Women’s empowerment is positively and significantly associated with adult men’s and women’s dietary diversity and nutrient intakes. Different empowerment domains may have different impacts on nutrition, but other characteristics, such as maternal schooling and household socioeconomic status, may play a more important role for younger children. The importance of maternal education in the dietary quality of young children, and the relatively greater importance of women’s empowerment for older children and adults, imply that policies designed to empower women and improve nutritional status should be informed by knowledge of which specific domains of women’s empowerment matter for particular nutritional outcomes at specific stages of the life course.

Download or read book Improving Diets and Nutrition written by Brian Thompson and published by CABI. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nutrition-sensitive, food-based approaches towards hunger and malnutrition are effective, sustainable and long-term solutions. This book discusses the policy, strategic, methodological, technical and programmatic issues associated with such approaches, proposes “best practices” for the design, targeting, implementation and evaluation of specific nutrition-sensitive, food-based interventions and for improved methodologies for evaluating their efficacy and cost-effectiveness, and provides practical lessons for advancing nutrition-sensitive food-based approaches for improving nutrition at policy and programme level.

Download or read book Poverty Food Consumption and Economic Development written by Maneka Jayasinghe and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-12 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the relationships between economies of scale in food consumption and a number of socio-economic and demographic characteristics of households and household behavioural choices since food is the major share of household expenditure for poor households. The characteristics considered comprise household size, location, income, and gender of the head of household while the behavioural choices considered comprise the decision to consume home-grown food and the decision to adopt domestic technology to aid food preparation and consumption. The book proposes two theoretical models to rationalize the role of the consumption of home-grown food and the adoption of domestic technology in enhancing economies of scale in food consumption. Econometric models are also used to empirically test the validity of the two theoretical models while adjusted poverty estimations are derived numerically using the estimated equivalence scales. Although data used in applying these techniques are based on four Household Income and Expenditure Surveys conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in Sri Lanka, the methodology can be used for similar analysis in relation to any other country.

Download or read book Rich food for poor people Genetically improved tilapia in the Philippines written by Sivan Yosef and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rice production responses in Cambodia written by Bingxin Yu, Shenggen Fan and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation written by Tim Magee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative field guide argues that in order to combat climate change we must work 'from the ground up' using dynamic community projects. A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation is arranged in a step-by-step progression that leads readers through problem assessment, project design, implementation, and community take over. Based on years of experience in 129 different countries, the field guide provides students and professionals with all the tools needed to develop and deliver their own projects.

Download or read book Dietary quality and nutrition in Myanmar Past progress current and future challenges written by Mahrt, Kristi and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2023-02-17 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decade prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Myanmar was in the midst of a dietary transition driven by rapid economic growth and urbanization. In this study, we first use national survey data to compare household diets in 2015 to the healthy diet recommendations of food-based dietary guidelines adapted for Myanmar, as well as estimated nutrient consumption relative to recommended intakes. We use these food group and nutrient consumption gaps to estimate a new measure of multidimensional dietary deprivation developed by Pauw et al. (2022), and a novel extension of that index to nutrient deprivation. Both deprivation indices are strongly negatively correlated with total household expenditure. We then use food demand estimation to estimate income and own price elasticities, which reveal strong preferences for animal-sourced foods, but weaker preferences for vegetables and pulses. Expenditure data also point to strong demand for oils/fats – a problem observed throughout developing Asia (Pingali and Abraham 2022) – and for food away from home, which partially explains the rising burden of overweight/obesity in Myanmar. Moreover, since most nutrient-dense foods are income- and price-elastic, estimated income elasticities suggest that recent declines in household income and increases in food prices in Myanmar will result in declining dietary diversity. We show that this is indeed the case utilizing household phone surveys conducted in recent years. We first use a food vendor survey to show that the cost of a healthy diet increased by 61 percent between September 2021 and September 2022. Next, we analyze a rural Dry Zone panel survey implemented 10 times over 2020-2021 and find that maternal and child dietary diversity both declined significantly as Myanmar’s economic situation deteriorated. Then, in a nationally representative phone survey conducted quarterly in 2022 over a period of rapid food inflation, we find further deterioration in diet quality among adults, but no deterioration among children 6-23 months of age, suggesting parents may be trying to insulate their children from the worst effects of the crisis. Finally, we conclude the paper by discussing policy and program options in very difficult political circumstances. Malnutrition is a multidimensional problem requiring multisectoral solutions, but at present the breakdown in the provision of even basic services makes significant progress highly unlikely, and reversing the recent deterioration in dietary quality and nutrition will surely require resolution of Myanmar’s political crisis. In the interim, we discuss three potentially effective types of interventions: (1) rice fortification to reduce micronutrient deficiencies; (2) homestead food production to improve dietary quality in farm households and rural and peri-urban communities; and (3) nutrition-sensitive social protection for vulnerable mothers and young children, with transfers ideally accompanied by nutrition education interventions.

Download or read book Agriculture and Rural Development in a Globalizing World written by Prabhu Pingali and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rapid structural transformation and urbanization are transforming agriculture and food production in rural areas across the world. This textbook provides a comprehensive review and assessment of the multi-faceted nature of agriculture and rural development, particularly in the developing world, where the greatest challenges occur. It is designed around five thematic parts: Agricultural Intensification and Technical Change; Political Economy of Agricultural Policies; Community and Rural Institutions; Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health; and Future Relevance of International Institutions. Each chapter presents a detailed but accessible review of the literature on the specific topic and discusses the frontiers in research and institutional changes needed as societies adapt to the transformation processes. All authors are eminent scholars with international reputations, who have been actively engaged in the contemporary debates around agricultural development and rural transformation.

Download or read book Improving the proof Evolution of and emerging trends in impact assessment methods and approaches in agricultural development written by Mywish K. Maredia and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assessing impacts of public investments has long captured the interest and attention of the development community. This paper presents the evolution of different methods and approaches used for ex ante appraisal, monitoring, project evaluation, and impact assessment over the last five decades. Among these tools, impact assessment (IA) conducted retrospectively comes closest to providing the proof of development effectiveness. It is defined as the systematic analysis of the significant or lasting changes in people's lives brought about by a given action or series of actions in relation to a counterfactual. There are three basic types of retrospective IAs: macro-level IAs that focus on the contribution of developmental efforts to an impact goal aggregated at a sector or a system level; micro-level impact evaluations (IEs) concerned with estimating the average effect of an intervention on outcomes at the beneficiary level; and micro-level ex post impact analysis concerned with total effects of a development effort after the outputs are scaled-up. Ex post IAs have evolved and expanded over the decades in both breadth and depth of analysis in response to evolving development themes and methodological advancements. The increased emphasis on learning from evaluations has also seen responses from both quantitative and qualitative camps of the evaluation community. The paper argues that generation of robust knowledge that feeds into making developmental policies and investment decisions requires a hierarchical and cumulative approach to "improving the proof" through rigorous and a variety of impact assessment methods applied incrementally at the project, program and system level. Subjecting as many development interventions as resources allow to rigorous impact assessment based on a common framework can help build a critical body of evidence on impacts of development interventions, which can then be subjected to meta-analyses to help assimilate results across different studies and build a knowledge base on what works and what does not.

Download or read book Pearl millet and sorghum improvement in India written by Carl E. Pray, Latha Nagarajan and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2009 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spread of modern varieties and hybrids of pearl millet and sorghum that began in the mid-1960s has had an important impact on small farmer welfare in India. The success and sustainability of these improved cultivars resulted from three types (or periods) of interventions by the Indian government: (1) increased investments in crop improvement by national and international agricultural systems during the 1970s; (2) development of efficient seed systems, with the gradual inclusion of the private sector in the 1980s; and (3) the liberalization of the Indian seed industry in the late 1990s. In addition to increased overall production levels of sorghum and millet, there have been substantial yield gains in semi-arid regions as well as improved cultivars adopted in some of the poorest areas of India. The innovations of new, hybrid technology have not been limited to the Green Revolution crops; they have also had significant impact on the productivity of small-farmer households growing dryland crops, such as millet and sorghum in India.

Download or read book Millions Fed written by David J. Spielman and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2009 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity has made enormous progress in the past 50 years toward eliminating hunger and malnutrition. Some five billion people--more than 80 percent of the world's population--have enough food to live healthy, productive lives. Agricultural development has contributed significantly to these gains, while also fostering economic growth and poverty reduction in some of the world's poorest countries.