Special focus on nutrition-sensitive programming

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Links between
household
agricultural
production
and nutrition
Summary of research 1
Research
Location: Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania and
Nepal
What we know: It is generally accepted that agricultural development will improve household food
and nutrition security but direct evidence of pathways is lacking.
What this article adds: A special issue of e Journal of Development Studies, featuring eight
studies from Africa and South Asia, supports the hypothesis that household agricultural
production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns and nutrition. e analysis
reflects challenges in establishing a link, e.g. which variables, data and methods to use. e main
pathways of influence include income from agriculture; consumption of own production (or some
combination of these); and factors linked to gender (women’s social status and empowerment in
agriculture). Commercialisation of agriculture may not impact on or may negatively affect child
nutrition. Livestock production emerged as particularly linked to nutrition. Effects will be
determined by local conditions.
Global, national and local policies and
programmes for agricultural development
are recurrently justified based
on their alleged role in improving
food and nutrition security. However, strikingly
little evidence is available to prove that a direct,
household-level link between agricultural production
and improved nutrition exists. A recent
special issue of e Journal of Development
Studies systematically and empirically tests
whether a relationship between household agricultural
production and nutrition can be found.
Eight featured studies examine the relationship
between agricultural production (crops or livestock),
household dietary diversity, and children’s
(and in some cases maternal) diet and anthropometric
outcomes across countries in sub-Saharan
Africa and south Asia (Nigeria, Uganda.
Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania and
Nepal). e introductory article, featuring highlights
of each study and overall conclusions, is
summarised here.
Increased household income from any activity,
including agriculture, can alter the amount,
composition and quality of food consumed and
facilitate the purchase of health and nutritionrelated
goods and services. However, on the
basis of previous evidence, the authors assert
that the commercialisation of agriculture and
the resulting shi away from staples to cash
crops have not necessarily resulted in improvements
in children’s nutritional status and can
have negative nutritional consequences. Recent
research, looking specifically at child nutrition
outcomes, mirrors this view and shows that,
while income is important, the Millennium Development
Goal of halving the prevalence of
underweight children is unlikely to be met
through income growth alone. Where there are
market imperfections, agricultural production
by a household can influence household consumption,
depending on what is produced and
seasonal factors. e authors suggest that the
mechanisms by which these effects occur are
mediated by gender relations within the household,
including women’s social status and empowerment
in agriculture. Policies and programmes
that seek to use agriculture as a direct
means to improve food security and nutrition
that these household-level effects exist and that
their magnitude is economically meaningful.
e authors of this article summarise challenges
in establishing a link between agriculture
and nutrition at farm level. Firstly, there are
challenges in identifying the right set of variables
to analyse. Studies may <strong>focus</strong> on production diversity
or types of agricultural products, and on
nutrition inputs (e.g. dietary diversity or dietary
intake) and/or nutrition outcomes (e.g. anthropometric
measures). e selection of variables
may be limited if using data not collected specifically
to analyse the agriculture-nutrition link.
ere are also challenges associated with the
use of appropriate data and methods to establish
an agriculture-nutrition link. For example, national
data sets provide broader validity, but
tend to allow less detailed examination of local
issues compared to case studies. e benefit of
experimental data is that it is easier to establish
a causal relationship between agriculture and
e main pathways through which expanded
agricultural production can influence nutrition
1
Carletto, G., Ruel, M., Winters, P. & Zezza, A. (2015). Farmlevel
Pathways to Improved Nutritional Status: Introduction
at farm-level include income from agriculture;
to the <strong>Special</strong> Issue, The Journal of Development Studies,
consumption of own production (or some combination
of these); and factors linked to gender.
51:8, 945-957 www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/
of agricultural households implicitly assume 00220388.2015.1018908#.Vf_fXN9Viko
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