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Nutrition, Food Security and Agriculture - An IFAD View Kevin Cleaver Assistant President, IFAD Rome, 26 February 2007 IFAD’s mission is to reduce rural poverty. IFAD recognizes that malnutrition contributes to poverty Global food and nutrition problems Type Causes People affected Hunger Deficiency of calories and protein 0.9 billion Underweight children Inadequate intake of food and frequent disease 126 million Micronutrient deficiency Deficiency of vitamins and minerals More than 2 billion Overweight to chronic disease Unhealthy diets; lifestyle Increasing also among the poor Source: Based on data from FAO 2005a, UN/SCN 2004, Micronutrient initiative and UNICEF 2005. Adapted from IFPRI, 6 December 2005 Global trends in underweight children (children 0-4 years) – 1980-2005 Data source: de Onis et al (2004). Prepared by World Bank, HNP, November 2005 Progress slow in addressing hunger Hunger in the Developing World Millions of hungry people 900 Developing world 824 815 800 797 700 630 600 673 651 Developing world without China 500 1990 Source: FAO 2005a 1995 2002 Is the hunger problem caused by stagnation in agriculture production? World cereal production, 1990-2005 Source: FAOSTAT 2005. Adapted from IFPRI. * Estimated Who are the hungry? Hunger is increasing in Africa, decreasing in Asia; Millions of hungry people by continent (source: UN hunger task force) North Africa & Middle East Latin America 40 60 200 Sub Sahara Africa 155 What do the hungry do? 230 South Asia 115 East Asia Rest of Asia Source: World Bank Cleaver 50% Farmers Marginal Land 22% Landless Rural Poor 20% Urban Poor 8% Pastorists/ Fishers Malnutrition • • • Poverty Leads to a >10% potential reduction in lifetime earnings for each malnourished individual GDP losses >2-3% Malnutrition (stunting) in early years linked to a - 4.6 cm loss of height in adolescence - 0.7 grades loss of schooling - 7 month delay in starting school (improved nutrition can be a driver of growth) Source: Alderman et al (2003) But: • Poverty also leads to malnutrition. The hungry are largely the poor. IFAD works on both routes: mostly on income growth for the poor; but also on nutrition Causes of Child Malnutrition Child nutrition, survival and development Outcomes Inadequate dietary intake Insufficient access to food FOOD Inadequate and/or inappropriate knowledge and discriminatory attitudes limit household access to actual resources Political, cultural, religious, economic and social systems, including women’s status, limit the utilization of potential resources Disease Inadequate maternal and childcare practices Poor water/ Sanitation and inadequate health services CARE HEALTH Quantity and quality of actual resources – human, economic and organizational – and the way they are controlled Potential resources: environment, technology, people Source: The State of the World’s Children, Adapted from World Bank HNP, November 2005 Immediate causes Underlying causes at household family level Basic causes at societal level Solutions to halving hunger Annual investments needed to reach the MDG goal of halving hunger Source: Rosegrant et al, 2005. Adapted from IFPRI. IFAD contributes to agriculture and rural development IFAD has granted and lent about US$ 7 billion for hundreds of agriculture and rural development programmes in developing countries. Project size varies from USD 200,000 grants to US$ 50 million loans IFAD targets the very poorest rural populations Has a special focus on women, who are often the poorest and increasingly left in rural areas by husbands and male family members who migrate to cities or abroad for work Has special programmes for indigenous peoples (often the poorest of the poor) Is an early supporter of community-designed and -managed rural development Finances nutrition interventions Is food security best assured through food aid, through school feeding or through agriculture/income development? • Food aid as solution for malnutrition and hunger - Pro: in emergencies food aid is best way to save lives. Agriculture development comes too late or never - Con: Food aid is a disincentive to invest in agriculture and private marketing. It reduces farmers’ income • School feeding programmes - Pro: easiest and fastest way to get food to children when they have nutrition problems - Con: intervention from pregnancy to the first two years of life is more effective in dealing with under-nutrition in children. School feeding is too late • Agricultural production expansion - Pro: Provides food for consumption and income for poverty reduction - Con: There is no con Another way of looking at this: the poverty effect of a 1% productivity gain in agriculture, industry and services in India 0.7 Agriculture Elasticity (-ve) of poverty to labor productivity 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 Services 0 -0.1 -0.2 Source: Thirtle et all, 2002 Industry % change in malnourished children depends partly on public investment in agriculture, 2020 (IFPRI) L ow inve stm e nt H igh inve stm e nt B ase line pr oje c tion S/E A sia South A isa A fr ic a -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60