Nutrition

October 21, 2010October 21, 2010

Evaluating the Millennium Villages

We’ve shown our skepticism about the Millennium Villages here before, in particular their apparent disregard for the importance of agrobiodiversity. If I am honest, I would say that that on balance they are probably a good thing. They are certainly well-intentioned. And little else seems to have worked. But no matter how many evaluation reports I read, I suspect it is this snippet that will stay with me, quoted in a New Republic review of Peter Gill’s recent book Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid. Gill visits a…

…village called Koraro, chosen to be one of Sachs’s so-called Millennium Villages, which were meant as demonstration projects to prove that foreign aid can really work. He asks a local man whether he has ever met Sachs, to which the man replies, “I have met the owner twice”…

October 21, 2010October 21, 2010

Nibbles: Bean gap analysis, Protected areas 2.0, NZ livestock, French boar, Taro in Hawaii, UNEP, Moringa, False flax, Hordeum

Let “The Bean Counters” show you where to collect wild Phaseolus.
Protected areas get wikified.
Expensive book published on the heritage breeds of New Zealand.
Wild boar going crazy in France.
Another Hawaiian taro festival. And why not.
Ecosystems for climate change adaptation. No agroecosystems though.
Moringa! Not just for people.
Camelina! Not just for Europeans.
What is it about barley wild relatives lately?

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010

Nibbles: Amazon agriculture, Livestock conservation, Chestnut redux, COP 10, Stone Age flour

More on that thing about how the Amazon was once pullulating with people. And why.
Why conserve livestock genetic resources. And one possible way to do it.
The American people are bringing back the American chestnut.
COP-watchers, something to amuse yourselves with if things get dull.
Even Neanderthals understood the benefits of a diverse diet. Though not, perhaps, of jewellery.

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010

Orange sweet potato not a “magic bullet”

They are no magic bullet, but next to a more diverse diet, they may prove to be the most cost-effective approach to reducing hidden hunger.

This statement may well be something of a breakthrough, which is why I think it deserves some prominence here. In the battle against malnutrition there has long been a general needless opposition among supplements, biofortification (by genetic engineering and conventional breeding) and dietary diversity. Each has its place, and if we are highly biased towards dietary diversity, it is because we think it is the most sustainable option, with plenty of spin-off benefits. To hear IFPRI and HarvestPlus suggest that orange-fleshed sweet potatoes may actually be less cost effective than dietary diversity in fighting malnutrition is music indeed.

October 18, 2010October 18, 2010

A tale of two countries

Exhibit A:

Among 1.5 million children aged 0 to 2 years in communities where the program is implemented, the proportion of those who are underweight has fallen from 30 percent in January 2009 to 20 percent in March 2010. The average decline in the four participating regions … is a strong eight percentage points a year.

Exhibit B:

The ICDS and MDMS are the world’s largest nutrition supplement programs. These apart, 160 million families are given food grains at highly subsidized rates. With about half-a million fair price shops, India’s public distribution system (PDS) is rated as the world’s largest food subsidy program. But, the evidence shows that all these welfare measures have not made a difference.

There’s more to be had from these two reports, on Ethiopia and India respectively but the bottom-line observation, as the Times of India points out, is clear.

India is the world’s 10th largest economy with a GDP of $3.57 trillion and $3,100 as per capita income. Sub-Saharan Ethiopia has the 79th largest economy, with $900 as per capita income. It’s far behind India. Yet, Ethiopia and a handful of other sub-Saharan nations beat India in one of the most critical social indices.