Sustaining healthy diets: The role of capture fisheries and aquaculture for improving nutrition in the post-2015 era

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 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. Mirroring the call for a diversification of agricultural research and investment beyond a few staple grains, it is anticipated that productivity gains for a few farmed aquatic species will not suffice. Capture fisheries and aquaculture have a complementary role to play in increasing fish availability and access, and must be promoted in ways that support measurable nutrition and health gains. This paper argues that the lack of a nutrition-sensitive policy focus on capture fisheries and aquaculture represents an untapped opportunity that must be realised for ensuring sustainable healthy diets for all.     

Integrating fisheries,food and nutrition – Insights from people and policies in Timor-Leste

The important role of fish in food and nutrition security is becoming more widely acknowledged by the fishery sector and within food policy. Integration of fish and food policy, at national, regional or global levels, is required to ensure the contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to human health is supported through governance arrangements. We explore this aspect of food policy integration in Timor-Leste, where malnutrition is a critical health problem. Consumption of fish is low by international standards and only a small proportion of the population engages in fishing. We used a mixed method approach involving desktop policy analysis, interviews and social network analysis to explore interactions among sectoral instruments and organisations. Our results show generally good integration of food security into fisheries policies, but a lack of integration of fish into food policies. Policy network analysis revealed evidence of collaboration and cooperation between sectors, however, consideration of fish and food concerns was not well embedded across all organisations. We discuss challenges and options for future integration of fisheries into sustainable food systems in Timor-Leste and more broadly, including the need for greater political will and resources, combined with clearer targets and actions within instruments.     

Current constraints and future possibilities for Bangladesh fisheries

Fisheries are an important source of animal protein, foreign exchange earnings and employment generation in Bangladesh. This paper examines the current status of fisheries in Bangladesh, for each of the major sub-sectors — inland open waters, inland closed waters (aquaculture), and marine fisheries. Production has been on the increase for all types of fisheries, but the productivity of rivers and estuaries is variable, there are many constraints on expansion, and it is difficult to identify significant achievements from government policy efforts. A host of factors are responsible for the under-utilisation of fishing areas, including resource limitations, poor implementation of fisheries laws, the limited spread of fish farming technology, low financial capacities and ineffective extension practices. These constraints are discussed for the three sub-sectors, and some possibilities for future improvements are suggested.     

Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria

While the poverty implications of off-farm income have been analyzed in different developing countries, much less is known about the impact of off-farm income on household food security and nutrition. Here, this research gap is addressed by using farm survey data from Nigeria. Econometric analyses are employed to examine the mechanisms through which off-farm income affects household calorie and micronutrient supply, dietary quality, and child anthropometry. We find that off-farm income has a positive net effect on food security and nutrition. The prevalence of child stunting, underweight, and wasting is lower in households with off-farm income than in households without. Using a structural model, we also show that off-farm income contributes to higher food production and farm income by easing capital constraints, thus improving household welfare in multiple ways.     

Capacity development in food and nutrition in central and Eastern Europe: A decade of achievements

This article summarizes the activities performed by the Network for Capacity Development in Nutrition in Central and Eastern Europe and Balkan countries (NCDNCEE) in the past decade. The article gives a retrospective of the achievements and challenges in building capacity in nutrition research.Recognizing the lack of capacity and incoherent nutritional situation in CEE/BC, the United Nations University (UNU), Food & Nutrition Programme and the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) encouraged the formation of NCDNCEE in 2005, which became CAPNUTRA in 2012.The network’s aim was to initiate and support tailor-made activities for capacity development in food & nutrition in research and training in CEE/BC. To identify the challenges and needs of nutrition research in the region, the network performed inventories on existence of food composition databases, food systems elements, dietary surveys, micronutrient recommendations, application of dietary assessment methods and grey literature. Further on, the network focused on the development of food composition databases and concomitant data management software, the Diet Assess & Plan platform for food consumption collection, dietary intake assessment and nutrition planning. These and other elements form the Balkan Food Platform, which underpins harmonized nutrition research in CEE/BC. Among key actions promoted by the platform are EFSA-supported dietary surveys conducted in four Balkan countries, on children and adults, in which food consumption data are collected and analysed in a harmonized way. Cooperation with FAO and active participation in international research projects enhanced the exchange of information and knowledge and brought international recognition to the CAPNUTRA network.     

Change and diversity in smallholder rice–fish systems: Recent evidence and policy lessons from Bangladesh

Efforts to unlock the genetic potential of both rice and fish, when combined with improvements in the management of rice–fish systems, can potentially increase agricultural productivity and food security in some of the poorest and most populous countries in Asia. In Bangladesh, estimates suggest that the country’s potential rice–fish production system encompasses 2–3 million hectares of land. But despite three decades of research on biophysical and technical aspects of rice–fish systems, this potential has not been fully realized due to insufficient attention given to the social, economic, and policy dimensions of rice–fish system improvement. This paper provides a characterization of the diverse and changing nature of rice–fish systems in Bangladesh to shed new light on the economic viability of different rice–fish systems and recommend policy and investment options to accelerate the development of appropriate rice–fish technologies. Data are drawn from a novel subdistrict-level survey of fishery officers, a household/enterprise survey, focus group discussions, and a meta-review of the literature on aquaculture in the country, all of which were conducted in 2010–2011. Findings indicate that concurrent rice–fish systems, alternating rice–fish systems, and collectively managed systems offer considerable potential for increasing productivity and farm incomes in Bangladesh. Findings also suggest that while innovation in these rice–fish systems is being driven by households and communities, there is need for more supportive government policies and investments to enable further innovation. Policymakers need to develop effective regulations to promote feed and fish quality and quantity, for example. More rigorous analysis of the intended and unintended impacts of these policies and investments is also necessary.     

Improving developing country food security through aquaculture development—lessons from Asia

This paper provides a framework for examining aquaculture’s linkages to food and nutritional security by elucidating key hypotheses concerning the role of aquaculture in household food and income systems in developing countries. Taking examples from developing Asia, where aquaculture showed a steady growth over the last decade, the implications of aquaculture development are examined from the standpoint of its impact on employment, income and consumption. Analysis revealed clear evidence of positive income and consumption effects of aquaculture on households. However, employment effects are still not significant. The context of targeting small-scale and subsistence-oriented farmers as a means of improving food security in the developing countries has also been analyzed by identifying key socio-economic and policy factors affecting aquaculture adoption and its impact on the poor. The paper concludes that national policies for aquaculture development will need to concurrently address the food security and poverty questions more sharply than has been done at present, by providing institutional and infrastructure support for access to resources such as land and water and to markets by poor households. Finally, more empirical evidence should be collected on the varied opportunities aquaculture would provide to improve the income, employment and food consumption levels within households.     

Does trade openness contribute to food security? A dynamic panel analysis

Despite significant progress in the fight against hunger during the last decades, food insecurity remains a major problem in many countries, especially developing ones. In this study, we use a large cross-country data to investigate the impact of trade openness and other factors on food security, measured by dietary energy consumption. We employ a system GMM approach to account for unobserved heterogeneity, correlated individual effects and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables. The empirical results reveal that trade openness and economic growth exert positive and significant impacts on dietary energy consumption, and also contribute to improvements in dietary diversity. The results are robust to the inclusion of additional variables capturing specific agro-climatic constraints (e.g. weather-related) and regional/country characteristics and to the sample composition. Most geographical regions are found to have significantly higher food security levels compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. Additional results indicate that besides calorie consumption, trade openness also improves dietary diversity and diet quality-related aspects of food security.     

Food accessibility,diversity of agricultural production and dietary pattern in rural China

The market-oriented reform in China in the past 4 decades has greatly reshaped the consumption pattern in rural areas. In particular, farmers’ diets are more likely to depend on food market development such as food accessibility. This study investigates the role of food accessibility in the transition of dietary pattern in rural China by using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data (1997–2011) and whether food accessibility helps alleviate the deviation between farmers’ dietary pattern and the recommended dietary pattern according to China Food Pagoda 2016. The primary results indicate that food accessibility contributes to improvements in quality. In particular, food accessibility increases the consumption of oil and decreases the consumption of cereal, potatoes, and beans; fruits; vegetables; and salt. Further estimation finds evidence that along with increasing food accessibility, fruit is converging to the recommended dietary pattern in China Food Pagoda 2016, and the deviations of legumes, nuts, and oil are increasing. We also observe that the impact of food accessibility on dietary quality is stronger for those not engaged in agriculture production. Our study provides valuable implications for rural development and nutrition security in the developing world.     

Farming fish for profits: A small step towards food security in sub-Saharan Africa

In addition to volatile fluctuations due to seasonal or regional factors, food security has two main components; access and availability. This paper presents a diagrammatical model to indicate how aquaculture, particularly private sector aquaculture, can contribute to these components of food security in sub-Sahara Africa. Food accessibility is increased when commercial aquaculture generates employment. Without such employment the poor might never translate their need for food into effective demand. Food availability is increased, either immediately when aquaculture output is sold in the domestic market, or later when the foreign exchange earned from aquaculture exports is used to import food.     

Filling a dietary data gap? Validation of the adult male equivalent method of estimating individual nutrient intakes from household-level data in Ethiopia and Bangladesh

Many researchers use data from Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (HCES) to estimate individual food and nutrient intake when individual dietary data are not available. They assume that food is allocated within households according to members’ proportional energy requirements relative to an adult male (called an adult male equivalent, or AME). This study sought to validate AME-based estimates of individual consumption of calories, protein, iron, and animal source protein (ASP) across 10 age-sex categories, using data from Bangladesh and Ethiopia containing both household and individual-level consumption data. The study also assessed the accuracy of adjusting for meal partakers and physical activity levels (PAL), and compared energy-weighted AMEs to nutrient-specific AME predictions.Energy AME-based predictions of nutrient intake were generally accurate within ten percentage points of individually reported intakes, but were less accurate for infants 6–23 months and children in Bangladesh than for other demographic groups. AME predictions were more accurate: (1) in Ethiopia than in Bangladesh, (2) for predicting intake of the three nutrients rather than ASP, (3) for estimating nutrient intake rather than adequacy, (4) using energy-weighted AMEs rather than nutrient specific weights, and (5) using moderate PAL for youth and adults rather than high PAL. Adjusting for meal partakers did not consistently improve the AME-based predictions. Energy based AME estimates from household data can produce a useful proxy of average intake for certain population subgroups, however individually measured dietary assessment remains the best approach to identify groups at risk of nutrient inadequacy.     

Could marine resources provide a short-term solution to declining fish supply in SADC inland countries? The case of horse mackerel

Food insecurity, usually manifested as protein deficiency, is a growing problem in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region. In the land-locked countries where fish is an important component of the dietary protein, one of the factors contributing to this phenomenon is the declining per caput supply against growing populations. In such instances, national production from capture fisheries or aquaculture has not kept pace with population growth. Meanwhile, some of the maritime states in the region such as Namibia, South Africa, Angola and Mozambique have abundant under-utilised fish resources which, if brought into production, could help in reducing this imbalance, provided that the economic, technological and marketing constraints pertaining to exploitation of the low-value species in question can be overcome. Of the species in question (horse mackerel in Namibia and South Africa, round herring in South Africa, anchovy in Mozambique and sardines in Angola), horse mackerel from Namibia holds the best promise of being easily brought into play in the short term. A precedent exists whereby entrepreneurs from Zimbabwe and also from Malawi and Zambia have been importing horse mackerel from Namibia since the early 1990s. But in order to boost production substantially for export human consumption, the support and facilitation of the governments concerned would be vital. This should be in the areas of appropriate research and studies necessary to overcome the constraints, development of infrastructure and putting in place enabling policies.     

Land consolidation,specialization and household diets: Evidence from Rwanda

Despite rapid population growth, increasing land pressure and urbanization, farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa have not intensified their production in a sustainable manner and farming systems remain predominantly subsistence-oriented. In response, developing country governments increasingly implement programs that promote crop intensification and more commercially-oriented agricultural systems. Rwanda’s Crop Intensification Program (CIP), launched in 2007, is one such example. However, despite its apparent success in raising production of several priority crops, there are legitimate concerns about the food and nutrition security implications for households that are encouraged to consolidate their land, specialize in their production, and increasingly rely on markets for their food needs. Using recent household survey data and a propensity score matching difference-in-differences method, we find that participation in land consolidation activities had ambiguous consumption effects: it positively impacted on consumption of roots and tubers, but had a negative effect on meat, fish and fruits consumption and the potential availability of vitamin B12 in participants’ diets. This calls for a review of CIP implementation practices to enhance the program’s food and nutrition security outcomes, with improvements in market functioning and market access being potential starting points.     

Agricultural inputs and nutrition in South Asia

There are a number of potential pathways leading from agricultural input decisions to nutrition outcomes of farm households. These have special resonance in less developed areas of South Asia given widespread undernutrition problems, market failures and restricted access to land and other key assets and inputs, as well as ongoing debates around the implications that the green revolution has held for nutritional outcomes. A number of initiatives, including the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) project have been undertaking research that addresses these linkages. The objectives of this paper are to systematically review the recent evidence on linkages between agricultural inputs and diet and nutrition outcomes of farm households in South Asia, place relevant LANSA research within the context of this review, and draw implications for policy, practice and the future research agenda. We focus on land and livestock assets and the set of productivity enhancing inputs in the form of irrigation, seed and agrochemicals. We report on a systematic review of recent evidence based on observational data on the links between these agricultural inputs and assets and diet and nutrition outcomes of farm households in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Nepal. We find that the literature has slowly but steadily grown since previous reviews conducted in the early 2010s, but that there is still a long way to go. Review results suggest that while there is no indication that land ownership or size by themselves have clear associations with farm household dietary or nutrition outcomes, land productivity is more clearly associated with improved outcomes. Yet the literature linking specific inputs such as improved seeds or irrigation with nutrition remains very thin. The literature appears strongest for the case of links between livestock keeping and dietary and nutrition outcomes. This is particularly the case with animals reared for milk, with the evidence indicating milch animal ownership improves household milk intakes and thereby influences the growth of children. Priorities for future research include the formulation and testing of more specific hypotheses relating to input-nutrition linkages and more strenuous efforts to improve causal identification in this literature.     

Interventions in agriculture for nutrition outcomes: A systematic review focused on South Asia

Research on the potential impact of interventions in agriculture on nutrition outcomes is of particular relevance in South Asia where agriculture-related activities are a major source of livelihoods for large sections of society and where the population suffers from one of the highest global burdens of malnutrition in all its forms. This systematic review aims to assess the strength of the available evidence that agricultural interventions have an impact on intermediate and final nutrition outcomes in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. We searched five literature databases and reference lists of previous systematic reviews to identify peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2017, detailing impacts of household- or farm-level agricultural interventions on nutritional outcomes in South Asia. We identified six intervention studies (reported in nine papers) conducted in Bangladesh (two studies), India (two studies) and Nepal (two studies). The majority of studies examined the impact of provision of seed, plants and training to increase home garden fruit and vegetable production with or without integrated poultry provision and training. Other studies evaluated the impact of livestock or aquaculture provision and training. Study designs and quality were mixed; heterogeneity across studies precluded formal meta-analysis. Interventions had a positive impact on intermediate outcomes on the pathway from agricultural intervention to nutritional or health status including dietary quality and dietary diversity of households and individuals (reported in seven papers). The evidence on the impact on final nutritional outcomes was mixed: one paper reported that home gardens with poultry reduced the odds of anaemia but there was no convincing evidence of an impact of agricultural interventions on child anthropometric measurement (reported in four papers). In recent years, the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research programme consortium has significantly expanded research on agricultural interventions for nutrition outcomes by conducting and commissioning a suite of formative and feasibility studies that have extended both the range and geographic location of interventions under study. This expanding body of research should, in the future, enable the identification of cost-effective interventions to enhance the impact of agricultural interventions sustainably to improve nutrition outcomes especially in women and children in South Asia.     

Alternatives to calorie-based indicators of food security: An application of machine learning methods

Identifying food insecure households in an accurate and cost-effective way is important for targeted food policy interventions. Since predictive accuracy depends partly on which indicators are used to identify food insecure households, it is important to assess the performance of indicators that are relatively easy and inexpensive to collect yet can proxy for the “gold standard” food security indicator, calorie intake. We study the effectiveness of different variable combinations and methods in predicting calorie-based food security among poor households and communities in rural Bangladesh. We use basic household information as a benchmark set for predicting calorie-based food security. We then assess the gain in predictive power obtained by adding subjective food security indicators (e.g., self-reported days without sufficient food), the dietary diversity score (DDS), and the combination of both sets to our model of calorie-based food security. We apply machine learning as well as traditional econometric methods in estimation. We find that the overall predictive accuracy rises from 63% to 69% when we add the subjective and DDS sets to the benchmark set. Our study demonstrates that while alternative indicators and methods are not always accurate in predicting calorie intake, DDS related indicators do improve accuracy compared to a simple benchmark set.     

Subsistence production,markets, and dietary diversity in the Kenyan small farm sector

Undernutrition and low dietary quality remain widespread problems in poor population segments, especially among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Hence, the question how smallholder systems can be made more nutrition-sensitive is of particular relevance for research and policy. Recent studies analyzed whether increasing farm production diversity may help to improve nutrition. Most existing studies found a positive but small effect on dietary diversity on average. The underlying mechanisms were not examined in detail. This article tests the hypothesis that the effect of farm diversity on nutrition is small because production diversity is positively associated with dietary diversity obtained from subsistence production but negatively associated with dietary diversity obtained from the market. This hypothesis is confirmed with data from Kenya, using different indicators of production diversity and dietary diversity scores at household and individual levels. The results underline the important role of markets for smallholder diets and nutrition. Hence, strengthening markets and improving market access should be a key strategy to make smallholder systems more nutrition-sensitive.     

Can household-based food consumption surveys be used to make inferences about nutrient intakes and inadequacies? A Bangladesh case study

Household Consumption and Expenditures Surveys (HCES) are increasingly being used to make inferences about individual food consumption, despite the fact that they collect food data at only the household level. Usually the analysis assumes that the household’s food is distributed among its members in direct proportion to each member’s share of the household’s total energy requirements; what is referred to as the adult male equivalent (AME) approach. Using the 2011–2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey—which collected consumption data for all members of rural households using combined 24-hour recall (24HR) and food weighing methods—this study directly compared probability-based average estimates of intakes, intake gaps, and the prevalence of inadequacies as estimated by the 24HR and those calculated using the AME approach for energy and each of four micronutrients: vitamin A, iron, zinc, and calcium.At the population level, for iron, vitamin A, and calcium, more than 97% of all individuals had the same estimated prevalence of adequate or inadequate nutrient intakes using 24HR and AME-based estimates. In the case of energy and zinc, roughly 77 and 83% of the sample population had identical adequacy statuses, respectively. The magnitude of inadequacies (the nutrient gaps) differed by 8 percentage points for energy and less than 3 percentage points for the four micronutrients. Disaggregating intakes and inadequacies by age groups revealed that the vast majority of variance between the two methods was highly concentrated in the first few years of life. Children 3 years of age and younger constituted 7.5% of the population but had 13.1% of the inconsistencies in intake adequacy status. 54% of children 3 and under had at least one pair of inconsistent prevalence estimates. While there are important differences in the levels of estimated energy and micronutrient intakes using 24HR and the AME-based estimates for children 3 and under, the results are remarkably comparable for the rest of the population.     

Women’s empowerment and nutrition status: The case of iron deficiency in India

In this paper we study the relationship between women’s empowerment in agriculture and their iron deficiency status in Maharashtra, India. This is the first time the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has been used in association with explicit measurement of medical biomarkers for women’s iron deficiency status. Using primary data for 960 women we find that the log odds of a poor iron status in women decline as women’s empowerment levels in agriculture improve. Further, this decline is seen in the presence of multiple dietary diversity measures (dietary diversity score, share of rice and wheat in the diet, total iron intake and iron intake from iron-rich food groups – all for 24-h and 30-day recalls) suggesting that in addition to dietary pathways women’s empowerment can play a role in addressing micronutrient deficiencies like those of iron in a vulnerable sub-group of the population. It also reinforces the need to move away from the ‘staple grain fundamentalism’ that has characterized agricultural policy in India, towards more nutrition-sensitive food systems.     

Food counts. Measuring food consumption and expenditures in household consumption and expenditure surveys (HCES). Introduction to the special issue

This introductory paper presents the results of an international multi-disciplinary research project on the measurement of food consumption in national household surveys. Food consumption data from household surveys are possibly the single most important source of information on poverty, food security, and nutrition outcomes at national, sub-national and household level, and contribute building blocks to global efforts to monitor progress towards the major international development goals.The paper synthesizes case studies from a diverse set of developing and OECD countries, looking at some of the main outstanding research issues as identified by a recent international assessment of 100 existing national household surveys (Smith et al., 2014). The project mobilized expertise from different disciplines (statistics, economics, food security, nutrition) to work towards enhancing our understanding of how to improve the quality and availability of food consumption and expenditure data, while making them more valuable for a diverse set of users. The individual studies summarized in this paper analyze, both theoretically and empirically, how different surveys design options affect the quality of the data being collected and, in turn, the implications for statistical inference and policy analysis.The conclusions and recommendations derived from this collection of studies will be instrumental in advancing the methodological agenda for the collection of household level food data, and will provide national statistical offices and survey practitioners worldwide with practical insights for survey design, while providing poverty, food and nutrition policymakers with greater understanding of these issues, as well as improved tools for and better guidance in policy formulation.