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Nutrition sensitive agriculture to achieve better nutritional outcomes

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 72, pages 1296–1299 (2018)Cite this article

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Seven decades after the end of the last great war and the establishment of the UN system, almost every country in the world today faces serious nutrition-related challenges, be it from undernutrition or overweight and obesity. According to the 2017 Global Nutrition Report, ‘88% of the 140 countries studied face a serious burden of either two or all the three forms of malnutrition used as indicators for broader trends: childhood stunting, anaemia in women of reproductive age, and overweight adult women’ [1]. Undernutrition is a major challenge to human and economic development. It is estimated that over 800 million people globally are food insecure and are unable to get enough food to meet their dietary needs and nearly 2 billion people do not meet their needs for vitamins and minerals. More than 200 million children under 5 years of age are acutely or chronically undernourished. Children under 5 years of age suffer from stunting caused by diets of insufficient quality and quantity, inappropriate care and feeding practices in early life, and high rates of infectious disease in infancy and childhood. Childhood undernutrition is associated with over a third of child mortality globally. Many children are born undernourished because their mothers are not food and nutrition secure and are themselves undernourished. Micronutrient malnutrition or ‘hidden hunger’ is an important dimension of malnutrition and is caused by the lack of adequate vitamins and minerals in the habitual diet. Micronutrient deficiencies are common in populations that consume poor-quality diets with little dietary diversity. Globally, 2 billion people suffer deficiencies of micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc and vitamin A which hence assumes importance from a public health perspective.

The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016–2025) was launched to inject new energy into efforts to improve people’s nutrition worldwide. With the recognition that the problem of malnutrition is persisting despite the knowledge accrued, policies and practices targeted and with considerable resources made available over decades, we need to invest in additional means to achieve this goal. Clearly the time has come for a broader approach to interventions covering other sectors that contribute to the persisting problem of malnutrition worldwide and foremost among these, the subject of this review, is a focus on agriculture.

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  1. Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA), M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India

    Prakash Shetty

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Correspondence to Prakash Shetty.

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Shetty, P. Nutrition sensitive agriculture to achieve better nutritional outcomes. Eur J Clin Nutr 72, 1296–1299 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-018-0208-9

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