Introduction: Nutrition, Sustainable Agriculture and Development Issues
According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), nutritional security refers to âa situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe, and nutritious foods that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.â In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), increasing population growth and expanding demand for agricultural commodities are consistently mounting pressure on land and water resources, thereby posing huge challenges on the regionâs capacity to achieve nutritional security related to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDGs 2 and 4. Although SSA boasts of vast, fertile and uncultivated arable lands, its capacity to contribute to feeding its current and future population is seriously being undermined by factors such as low or poor adoption and utilization of innovations and digital tools, impact of climate change, environmental degradation, weak political will, limited interest in farming, lack of government support, etc. However, and in spite of these constraints, sustainable agriculture, food and nutrition security in SSA can be achieved by adopting a multipronged approach, which includes improved agricultural mechanization, adoption of high yielding crop varieties, market access, use of ICT, digital tools, GIS, public investments to facilitate access to improved technologies, provision of rural infrastructure, etc. The purpose of this book is to provide innovative policy tools for enhancing SSAâs capacity to achieve sustainable agriculture, food and nutrition security in this digital age and in the face of climate variability. In addition, this book will present some smart strategies for increased production, reduced food wastes as well as enhanced nutritional outcomes through transformative discoveries in agricultural research, education and advisory or extension services.
Despite its wealth of natural resources, youthful population and emerging technological base, it is seemingly unthinkable that Africa currently holds over 60% of the remaining arable land on earth, while it spends billions of its scarce foreign exchange earnings. In other words, and with limited strategic food reserves in the face of natural calamities such as flooding, epidemics and droughts, many African countries rely heavily on food imports to feed its citizens (World Bank 2020). According to Abrams and Smedley (2020), for every US$1 billion that Africa spends on food imports is equivalent to its annual income of 334,000 farming households, which invariably represents 670,000 on-farm jobs and 200,000 off-farm jobs. This Africaâs food import situation shows the unsustainability characteristics of its agri-food systems. One lesson to be learnt as Africa strives to manage its post-COVID-19 economies is the need for a more pro-poor, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems, which include its supply chains, markets, infrastructure and capacities to respond proactively to future exogenous shocks in the post-COVID-19 world.
Every year, millions of children and mothers die and suffer from both physical and mental impairment due to poor nutrition during a critical 1000-day period (Child Health 2020). Based on the global food and nutrition security (FNS) metrics, one out of every three persons are undernourished, overweight or obese; one in five children under five (or approximately 161 million) are stunted; and many countries lose some of their GDP due to undernutritionâup to 11% in the hardest-hit African and Asian countries (Brookings 2017). Relating this to undernutrition at the global level, in 2016, 155 million children under five were estimated to be stunted (too short for age), 52 million were estimated to be wasted (too thin for height), 41 million were overweight or obese and 45% of child deaths are associated with undernutrition (UNICEF 2017). This ongoing global dynamic has resulted in increasingly renewed focus on the need to make agricultural policies more ânutrition-sensitiveâ (FAO/IFAD/UNICEF/WFP/WHO 2017; BMGF 2012; FAO 2012). However, civilization, changing culture, technology and global land investment dynamics are creating markets for land, thereby influencing the land accessânutrition outcomes relations at communal, national, continental and international levels.
In April 2016, the UN General Assembly endorsed the outcome documents of the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), aimed at achieving the global nutrition targets set by the World Health Assembly, and declared the period 2016â2025 as the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition. The primary objective of the Decade of Action on Nutrition is to increase nutrition investment and implement policies and programmes to improve food security and nutrition within the ICN2 framework1 (FAO/IFAD/UNICEF/WFP/WHO 20172; FAO/WHO 2013; Herforth et al. 2012). For Africa, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) shows that the prevalence of undernourishment, underweight, stunting and wasting in children under five years of age have all decreased since the launch of CAADP in 2003, although rather slowly (Jones et al. 2010; Covic and Hendricks 2016; Sahn and Younger 2017).
African poor small farm holders are dependent on land in order to access credit and related input resources. However, securing access to arable productive land has been on a declining trend as a result of the pressure of teeming population, worsening land degradation due to changing climate and more importantly land grabbing (FAO 2010). From a gender perspective, when women are self-employed as farmers, they generate limited incomes because they do not have rights to own or inherit land and to access input or credit markets. Further, land grabbing influence nutrition outcomes, vis-a-vis the different roles and responsibilities of men and women in securing adequate food and nutrition at the household level (Dumas et al. 2018; Owusu et al. 2016; Menon et al. 2014; Vogl 2007). This shifting gender roles due to land ownership dynamics can affect household welfare where women access to productive resources, especially land, may influence childrenâs nutrition (Allendorf 2007; Galiani and Schargrodsky 2004). In view of this, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)âs actionable impact objective on nutrition âensures that all women and children have the nutrition they need to live healthy and productive lives.â
Rationale, Expected Contribution to Knowledge and the Value Add
Over time, nutrition has been a neglected area of global public health, accounting for less than one per cent of the global development aid largely due to its over-hidden contribution to child illness and deaths (Child Health 2020). At the SSA level, this is also evident in the fact that its food and nutrition landscape is characterized by hunger (undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, stunting and child mortality), inadequate food consumption, food insecurity and volatile food prices, thereby posing as a huge impediment to socioeconomic and sustainable development. This is evident in a vicious cycle of underdevelopment in which poor communities consist of unhealthy inhabitants with high rates of illness and disability, and whose health systems are inefficient, thereby lacking the adequate capacity to deal with complicated nutrition challenges or preventing them from happening in the first place.
In recent years, access to resources, mainly land, markets and institutions have been, and will continue to be subject to tremendous pressure with both positive and negative implications for agricultural development and food security and nutrition (FSN) in Africa. Consequently, much debate has been raised on whether foreign direct investment in land property and institutions is inimical or beneficial for agricultural development in Africa. However, there ongoing discussion on philosophical paradigms policies and management techniques to amelior...