Agriculture and Nutrition Resource Review

This modeling study estimates the change in the number of deaths attributable to climate-related changes in weight and diets for six scenarios of climate and socioeconomic variables. Most climate-related deaths were projected to occur in south and east Asia.The projections reveal that adoption of climate-stabilization pathways would reduce the number of climate-related deaths by 29–71%, depending on their stringency.

Bangladesh experiences high hunger rates, especially seasonally. Short duration varieties and direct seeding of rice were introduced to farmers in Northwest Bangladesh during the monsoon season to overcome seasonal hunger. These technology options allow early harvest, which increases household food security and livelihood opportunities during and beyond the hunger season. This article details the study and the effects of the technology options.

The Sustainable Development Goals agenda makes achieving food security and ending malnutrition a global priority. Within this framework, the importance of fisheries in local and global food systems and its contribution to nutrition and health, particularly for the poor are overlooked and undervalued. This paper reviews current fish production and consumption from capture fisheries and aquaculture, highlights opportunities for enhancing healthy diets, and outlines key multi-sectoral policy solutions.

This article describes the rural Cambodian diet with a particular emphasis on the role of fish. Despite the widespread consumption of nutritious fish, multiple factors contribute to malnutrition among women and children, including poor health status, low dietary diversity, and a lack of nutrition education. The article provides policy and program recommendations to address these needs.

A growing body of research on value chain approaches to nutrition has highlighted challenges in developing commercially viable business models that can deliver affordable, available, appropriate and acceptable foods. This report builds on that research to explore how market systems approaches can provide an analytical framework and an alternative way of thinking about solutions to the constraints that inhibit markets from supplying nutritious foods.

Given the range of drivers of nutrition—spanning multiple sectors of agriculture, social protection, health, WASH, and education—tackling undernutrition demands a multisectoral response. Closer collaboration between WASH, nutrition and agriculture colleagues can help address a major source of disease-causing pathogens in some contexts. This report explains why WASH is important for nutrition and outlines practical steps for making the WASH sector more nutrition-sensitive.

To address the continuing injustices faced by women across the globe, this year’s theme for International Women’s Day (IWD) was “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.” This blog captures the many resources from organizations that are working to advance gender equity, amplify women’s voices, and support women farmers

This guide, the first in a series on how climate change impacts farm families, is written for agronomists, extension field agents, and program managers. It suggests general extension approaches and practices for assessing agricultural risks and vulnerability to climate change and working with farmers to adapt.

Since the food crisis of 2008, the world has struggled to address unexpected, rapid rises and falls in global food prices, which have sparked political unrest and increased economic risks across the food system. Price volatility has also become a major concern for governments as they seek to ensure consumers’ access to healthy diets.This policy brief identifies policy interventions that can anticipate and mitigate the negative dietary and nutritional outcomes of price volatility and market uncertainty.

This photo essay explores livelihoods in Bangladesh in detail, focusing on a woman farmer who learned how to improve sanitation in her community through a community video program. With success in India and Niger, USAID is teaching this video education approach to partners in Senegal and Guinea.

Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is one of the three cross-cutting themes within the Feed the Future initiative, along with environment and gender. As global consensus coalesces around the CSA approach, Feed the Future is integrating CSA throughout its portfolio. This webinar centered around USAID’s new CSA framework. This framework informs the design and implementation of agriculture and food security projects and activities moving forward.

This webinar addressed an important question for economic development in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries: if agriculture is to promote nutrition, do we need to take women’s time into account? LCIRAH and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recently funded a systematic review study aimed at understanding the role of time use in the agriculture-nutrition pathways. Sara Stevano presented and discussed the rationale and key findings of the systematic review, and critically reflected on how time use data is important for understanding the linkages between agriculture and nutrition.