And the hard task lies ahead

It was amazing, a striking convergence of a wide range of dedicated professionals – from plant scientists to policymakers. Such a diverse gathering underpinned the importance of improving the nutrition of the world’s poor.

But I gathered from the International Food Policy Research Institute’s conference in New

For these experts and policy makers, the hard task lies ahead. Credit: IFPRI

Delhi that it is a complex problem with no simple solutions. It is always good to meet and share ideas, and even prescribe some solutions in a building as luxurious and imposing as the Taj Palace Hotel but what next?

It will need the bringing together of experts in agriculture, nutrition, health and policy to understand their complementary roles. They have largely worked in isolation, like antagonists.

“People do not live in isolation. Let us all become professional silo breakers,” Francesco Branco, Director, Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, World Health Organization aptly captured it.

Agriculture alone cannot achieve better quality food for the poor. And, therefore, health must be considered as an element in agriculture.

“Combating under-nutrition will require contributions from the fields of agriculture, health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President, Global Development Program. What a wide range of people to be involved!

Leveraging agriculture to improve health and nutrition will be challenge. Bringing the three together to New Delhi revealed that a lot of work needs to be done in and enhancing coordination as well as improving joint planning, management and evaluating programmes.

For Africa the task is even much bigger. I couldn’t agree more with Boitshepo Giyose, Advisor on Food and Security, New Partnership for Africa Development when she said, “Nutrition is non-sectoral. It is a new journey and the work has only begun. We should strive to have Africa free of hunger.”

Governments are starting to come to grips with the reality but they do not know what to do, according to John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). A government is the custodian of a people’s security including their food security.

In New Delhi they mixed and shared admirably but the hard task lies ahead. Over to you ladies and gentlemen. I am wishing you all the best.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

“Stop giving away your land …”

Per Pinstrup-Anderson of Cornell University in United States. Credit: IFPRI

They used force to conquer territories in the colonial days. Now, they are using negotiation to obtain large tracts of land to do farming in Africa. But, hold on a minute: how well fed are African people that they can rent out productive land in countries like Ethiopia to middle-income countries to cushion them against the anticipated food deficit and fluctuations in the global food market?

Per Pinstrup-Anderson, a professor of food, nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University in the United States was categorical: “Stop giving away your land and support your small-holder farmers”.

If a country cannot invest in agricultural research, and the provision of public goods such as roads and functioning markets, hunger and malnutrition, with severe health consequences, will still be room-mates of smallholder farmers in Africa.

Woe for Africa! Most farmers there cannot access technologies that have been tested and shown to match their situation. Their soils are fast being depleted of nutrients. They lack post-harvest technologies for safe storage and safe transportation to markets.

And, without the right policy framework, efforts aimed at bringing experts together to address the challenges to linking agriculture to nutrition and health may be just a mirage. Without such a framework it will not be possible to do what this conference aims to do: leverage the three for the good of the poor in developing countries according to Pinstrup-Anderson.

Shockingly, the developing world is still stuck with a paradigm employed in the 1950s in Asia, which emphasised increased production. Governments must wake up to this: small scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa need infrastructure and farming technologies that would make them produce more on an existing piece of land. They need irrigation technologies, better seeds and nitrogen fixing methods to make soils richer in nutrients.

“Invest in agricultural research and collaborate with other leading institutions like the CGIAR to address people’s needs,” said Pinstrup-Anderson.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

The higher they rise, the harder they find it to collaborate

Experts in the fields of of agriculture, nutrition and health need to collaborate beyond conferences. Credit:IFPRI

I thought they worked together easily. But the further they climb the academic ladder and the more responsibilities they take on, the scarcer their interactions become.

And nothing, at this meeting, illustrated it as vividly as today’s session on Addressing Agriculture-Associated Diseases.

This international conference, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is aimed at initiating conversations between experts in agriculture, nutrition and health, since they have complementary roles. Rajul Pandya Lorch, of IFPRI, calls it finding synergies for the three to leverage agriculture, nutrition and health.

“Our experience is that farmers appreciate collaboration but scientists work in isolation,” said Kabba Joiner, a health consultant from Burkina Faso.

There are few areas where experts work together. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, taught me that one of them is in climate change.

“This is one of the few areas with a multi-sectoral approach,” he said.

John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says that disciplines only come to consensus when there is a serious crisis. Then, you see some semblance of collaboration. Otherwise, in normal, day-to-day activities, even within an institution, it is difficult to find it.

Very few research institutions, he said, share facilities. They are full of compartmentalisation. “From the young at universities we need to get people out of their silos. The young also quickly learn to pick it up,” said McDermott, adding “we are best friends at big meetings like this but then it ends there”.

Even with intradepartmental collaborations, like those between malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS departments in the ministry of health, working together is like undertaking the energy-sapping stunt of climbing a tall mountain from the rear, according one delegate from Ghana.

“The higher you go, the more impossible working together becomes,” he said. That is the dilemma that experts in agriculture, nutrition and health face – yet their roles are complementary.

Dominique Charron, Programme leader at the International Development Research Centre, prays that experts will change from collaborating only at meetings.

McDermott finds few successes, among them the 2008 avian flue pandemic when animal and human health experts came together. But still, he says, it is doable

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

Integration, integration, integration

Rajul Pandya Lorch: We need innovations and technologies that will increase production but also ... address safety and nutritional value

Where is the problem of food insecurity, health and nutrition at its most severe? The developing world, particularly Africa, bears the brunt. And where are the solutions?

Calls were made as the conference began for a radical shift in agricultural policies and research to link increased production to health and nutrition. This holds the key to better livelihoods for the poor majority who wholly depend on agriculture in the developing world.

Rajul Pandya Lorch, fead of the 2020 Vision Initiative and Chief of Staff at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said the meeting should address policy, linkages and research gaps.

She wants scientists in the three areas to stop working in isolation, as their branches of expertise are intertwined in real life situations – and that is a serious gap that must be bridged.

“These are some of the things we will look at in the meeting. We do not only need innovations and technologies that will increase production but also to use science to address safety and the nutritional value of the foods produced,” she said.

An integrated approach is needed to address gaps in the whole food value chain – from pre-production technologies to infrastructure and markets that are accessible, and affordable, to the poor.

But the conference, inaugurated yesterday by Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, has a huge task to deliberate on so many issues in the next two days.

Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman of India’s University Grants Commission, expects it also to deal with this fact: the availability of food does not guarantee good nutrition or the health needs of the people. Science must be one of the pillars in agricultural policies to address quality and safety.

It is for this reason that IFPRI director-general, Shenggen Fan, thinks agricultural research needs to be viewed in tandem with nutrition and health.

“They need to design agricultural policies and investments for health and nutrition and not production alone,” he said, adding that agricultural science must focus not only on production but also address health, nutrition and diseases that are linked to agriculture like malaria and avian flu.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

SciDev.Net to blog from New Delhi agriculture conference

Credit: Monsanto

Next week, I will be attending an international conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and to be held in New Delhi from February 10-12, 2011.

Leaders in agriculture, nutrition and health from across the globe will gather to deliberate on how to create a more integrated system that mobilises agriculture to improve people’s nutrition and health.

The event will be opened by Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and be guided by an advisory committee that includes John Kufuor, former president of Ghana and M.S. Swaminathan best known as the father of the green revolution in India

The conference will examine linkages between agriculture, nutrition and health and explore opportunities for improving nutrition and reducing health risks along the whole value chain.

I am looking forward in particular to hearing how individual countries are faring in their efforts to make these linkages, and what we can learn from them.

I will be blogging throughout the meeting, and tweeting from @scidevnet. Meanwhile check out our SciDev.Net spotlight, The Challenge of Improving Nutrition, and serve you with the conference deliberations as it progresses through this blog.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net