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Bangladesh

Guideline on Implementing Nutrition-sensitive Actions in the Agri-food Systems

Attachments

Key Messages

1. Broader Focus on Nutrition:

- Integrate nutritional goals into all stages of intervention design and implementation.

- Conduct thorough contextual and process evaluations to address specific nutritional needs and local contexts.

2. Effective Reporting:

- Implement robust monitoring and documentation to assess the true impact on nutritional outcomes.

- Plan timely economic evaluations and maintain detailed records to guide decision-making and scalability.

3. Stakeholder Engagement:

- Involve key nutrition stakeholders early to align with broader nutritional goals and leverage diverse expertise.

- Actively engage nutritionally vulnerable populations to tailor interventions to their needs and empower communities.

4. Sustainability through Empowerment:

- Focus on capacity building and empowering communities, particularly women, for sustainable nutrition and production.

- Provide training, resources, and foster community ownership to ensure long-term success.

5. Integrated Approaches:

- Combine agricultural initiatives with livelihood support and market linkages for sustainable impacts.

- Collaborate with local and national governments, NGOs, and the private sector to enhance intervention effectiveness and sustainability.

By implementing these strategies, agri-food systems interventions can achieve longterm success, reduce malnutrition, and improve the livelihoods of vulnerable populations.

What is Nutrition-sensitive Action?

Nutrition-sensitive actions are strategies designed to address malnutrition by incorporating nutritional goals into various sectors, particularly agriculture. These actions go beyond the production of staple crops to emphasize micronutrient-rich foods, such as fruits and vegetables, essential for a balanced diet (Pingali & Sunder, 2017). They involve multiple pathways, including food production, nutrition education, income generation, women's empowerment, and strengthening local institutions (Sharma et al., 2020).

While these interventions aim to improve dietary practices and reduce disease occurrence, their direct impact on nutritional status can be less pronounced (Sharma et al., 2020). Effective nutritionsensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions should consider the specific needs and contexts of different populations, using a multi-pathway approach to tackle the underlying causes of undernutrition (Mayorga-Martínez et al., 2023). This requires designing tailored strategies that address local dietary habits, agricultural practices, and social factors to ensure sustainability beyond the project cycle.

Understanding of the Problem

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture aims to maximize the impact of agricultural interventions on nutrition outcomes. This involves strategies like promoting diverse food production, improving post-harvest handling to retain nutrients, and empowering women in agriculture. However, successfully implementing such approaches requires overcoming several obstacles related to program design, coordination, capacity, and evidence generation. Our framework serves as a comprehensive tool for determining nutrition sensitive actions in agri-food systems interventions (Figure 1).