Agriculture's vast potential to improve nutrition is just beginning to be tapped. New ideas, research, and initiatives developed over the past decade have created an opportunity for reimagining and redesigning agricultural and food systems for the benefit of nutrition. To support this transformation, the book reviews the latest findings, results from on-the-ground programs and interventions, and recent policy experiences from countries around the world that are bringing the agriculture and nutrition sectors closer together. Drawing on IFPRI's own work and that of the growing agriculture-nutrition community, this book strengthens the evidence base for, and expands our vision of, how agriculture can contribute to nutrition. Chapters cover an array of issues that link agriculture and nutrition, including food value chains, nutrition-sensitive programs and policies, government policies, and private sector investments. By highlighting both achievements and setbacks, Agriculture for Improved Nutrition seeks to inspire those who want to scale up successes that can transform food systems and improve the nutrition of billions of people.

Agriculture’s vast potential to improve nutrition is just beginning to be tapped. New ideas, research, and initiatives developed over the past decade have created an opportunity for reimagining and redesigning agricultural and food systems for the benefit of nutrition. To support this transformation, Agriculture for Improved Nutrition: Seizing the Momentum reviews the latest findings, results from on-the-ground programs and interventions, and recent policy experiences from countries around the world that are bringing agriculture and nutrition closer together. Drawing on IFPRI’s own work and that of the growing agriculture–nutrition community, this book strengthens the evidence base for and expands our vision of how agriculture can contribute to nutrition. By highlighting both achievements and setbacks, Agriculture for Improved Nutrition seeks to inspire those who want to scale up successes that can transform food systems and improve the nutrition of billions of people.

About 800 million people suffer from hunger, 2 billion from lack of micronutrients, and more than 2 billion from overweight and obesity. There is renewed interest in reshaping agricultural and food systems, at the global, regional and national levels, so that poor and vulnerable people have access to and are able to consume nutritious foods. This book examines direct and indirect effects of agriculture on nutrition, following the agricultural value chain to explore this complex relationship, from biodiversity and crop fortification, to program evaluation, to the impact of agricultural policies on consumers' choices and actions. It explores the role of various actors along the chain, including women and the private sector, and cross-cutting themes such as data and capacity building. Developing-country experiences and the knowledge and action gaps that remain in truly integrating agriculture and nutrition aims and related practices are considered. Key Features: - The evidence base of research on the relationship between agriculture and nutrition is considered - Includes the insights of some of the world's top researchers - Presents data from real-world settings that is highly relevant and timely to developing countries' current challenges

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.

Few challenges facing the global community today match the scale of malnutrition, a condition that directly affects 1 in 3 people. Malnutrition manifests itself in many different ways: as poor child growth and development; as individuals who are skin and bone or prone to infection; as those who are carrying too much weight or whose blood contains too much sugar, salt, fat, or cholesterol; or those who are deficient in important vitamins or minerals. Malnutrition and diet are by far the biggest risk factors for the global burden of disease: every country is facing a serious public health challenge from malnutrition. The economic consequences represent losses of 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) every year in Africa and Asia, whereas preventing malnutrion delivers $16 in returns on investment for every $1 spent. The world’s countries have agreed on targets for nutrition, but despite some progress in recent years the world is off track to reach those targets. This third stocktaking of the state of the world’s nutrition points to ways to reverse this trend and end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

Sustainable Intensification (SI) has emerged as one of the key strategies for dealing with the ‘monumental’ challenges facing the global food system. This paper reviews current thinking on SI and proposes a decision support tool to enable decision makers to assess the impacts of policy and technology based interventions on food production, food security, incomes and the environment.

Subsistence production: a sign of market failure. Commercialization cannot be left to the market. Household effects of commercialization. Nutrition effects of commercialization. Policy action needed.