MP4overview

= **MP4: Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health** =



In recent years, the world’s poor and hungry have been hard hit. The recent food and financial crises heavily impacted food security, pushing the number of hungry people to more than 1 billion. Progress in combating maternal and child malnutrition has stalled in many high-burden areas, leading to long-term and irreversible negative effects on the cognitive and physical abilities of many people in developing countries, and on those countries’ economic productivity. Maternal and child undernutrition contributes to more than one-third of child deaths and 10 percent of the global burden of diseases. Zoonotic diseases are causing unprecedented concern, threatening pandemics and placing an especially heavy burden on the world’s most vulnerable people. Agriculture-related health losses are massive, accounting for up to 25 percent of all disability-adjusted life years lost and 10 percent of deaths in low income countries. The economic toll of these health losses is also huge: as an example, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) cost an estimated US$50 billion; a major influenza pandemic could cost more than US$1 trillion. The cost of malnutrition to economic development is estimated at $ 20-30 billion annually. Without the right investments, programs, and policies to address these challenges, the human and economic costs will continue to be enormous. Agriculture plays a key role in the interplay between nutrition and health: It is the primary source of calories and essential nutrients, it is a source of income for 80 percent of the world’s poor, and it is essential for human life, health, and culture. On the other hand, livestock and wild animals are also the source of the great majority of human infectious and emerging disease. As a result, agricultural development is fundamental for sustaining the nutritional and health status of billions of people. However, many challenges (such as population growth, urbanization, and climate change) threaten the availability of water, land, and other natural resources needed to sustain the world’s population, and these must also be addressed

Business as usual is no longer sufficient. As a result of agricultural intensification, agriculture-associated diseases could spread further and new ones could develop rapidly. The failure of agriculture to provide access to nutritious foods and high-quality diets could aggravate the widespread problem of micronutrient deficiencies. Diets centered on cheap, calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods rather than vegetables, fruits, and animal-source foods could deepen the emerging epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases in countries undergoing economic and nutrition transitions.

A focus on agricultural development and growth presents enormous opportunities: If the agricultural intensification needed to feed a growing world population can be managed in a sustainable way, the health and nutrition of vulnerable populations can be vastly improved. Better food safety, water quality, and control of occupational, zoonotic, and emerging diseases can reduce disease risks and improve health and nutrition. Greater access to more nutritious and diversified diets can accelerate progress in reducing malnutrition and diet-related chronic diseases and infections. Improved nutrition and health, in turn can reduce poverty for the 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. A greater focus on the role of women in agriculture, as potential mediators of household and individual food and nutrition security as well as on the intra-household food allocation could accelerate progress in improving the nutrition and health of women and young children. The key is to act now, just as the health, nutrition, and agriculture communities are beginning to recognize that they cannot do it alone and that only by working together will they have a chance to meet their common goals of reducing poverty, malnutrition, and ill health.

The importance of agriculture for nutrition and health is recognized now as never before. This will allow MP4 to enhance old and create new long-term partnerships among agriculture, health, and nutrition researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners to: (1) strengthen their capacity in developing, adapting, evaluating, and using new methodological tools and approaches to link agriculture, nutrition and health in research, policy, and practice; and (2) design and implement integrated, gender-responsive, multisectoral programs and policies that cut across the traditional sectoral divides, evaluate them, and generate lessons learned from these experiences.

The research program will tackle this complex agenda by focusing on two broad research components: maximizing the potential of agriculture to improve nutrition through better dietary quality; and promoting safe agricultural and food systems practices that reduce infectious and chronic disease risk. The two research areas will be brought together under a common framework to build on the synergies between agriculture, health, and nutrition. The research program focuses on two target populations: 1) populations that are directly involved in or exposed to agriculture intensification; and 2) marginalized, vulnerable, and/or ultra poor populations (communities, households and individuals with the highest rates of chronic hunger, undernutrition, and infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS). The latter group also includes populations that have traditionally been excluded from development, such as pastoralists, ethnic minorities and people affected by conflict. For these groups, joint agriculture-health-nutrition solutions will be linked to broader social protection programs.

By forging new partnerships in programs in which agriculture has a profound impact on human health and nutrition, MP4 is expected to significantly improve the livelihoods of the poor, especially women, as measured by increased incomes and food security, and by enhanced diet quality, health, and nutrition. This partnership agenda will have a strong focus on building capacity of key actors along the impact pathways. On the macro scale, MP4 has the potential to increase the health and nutrition benefits of agricultural research, programs, investments, and policies. These benefits can feed back to agriculture, creating stronger, more effective, and sustainable agri-food systems that promote better health and better-nourished producers and consumers.

The overall goal of this research program is to contribute to the CGIAR impacts of improving food security, enhancing environmental sustainability, and reducing poverty through agricultural interventions that improve human health and nutrition. Poor health and nutrition are inextricably linked to poverty. Specific objectives include:

1. Maximize the impact of agriculture on food security, diet quality, and nutrition through: a) nutrition-sensitive agriculture to improve the availability, access to, processing, and consumption of nutrient-rich and diverse foods for the poor, especially for women and young children, b) biofortification to increase access to and intake of nutrient-rich staple foods.

2. Develop new gender-responsive approaches to control agriculture-associated diseases in marginal and vulnerable populations that suffer from neglected diseases including food borne infections and intoxications, and water-associated, zoonotic and occupational disease.

3. Assess and mitigate the agriculture-associated health risks involved in intensifying agri-food systems through improved food safety, water quality, agricultural practices, and the control of infectious (zoonotic and emerging) diseases to enhance environmental sustainability, reduce poverty, and increase food security.

4. Improve agricultural development planning and policymaking to achieve better health and nutrition, promote sustainable intensification of agri-food systems, and support marginal and vulnerable peoples in developing countries. To achieve these objectives, research in the program will promote, coordinate, and undertake cutting-edge research on the interactions between agriculture, nutrition, and health, to better catalyze nutritional, health, and agricultural outcomes. Emphasis will be placed on forging partnerships and strengthening the connectivity between agriculture and health organizations to exploit synergies in research, policy, and practice. The value added of this approach will be to effectively meet the increasing demands of health, nutrition and agriculture professionals and policy makers to contribute evidence, tools and approaches to improve health and nutrition through agriculture.