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Showing posts with label urban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label urban. Show all posts

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Urban diets and nutrition: Trends, challenges, and opportunities for policy action

NaijaAgroNet:

The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition has launched a new brief: Urban diets and nutrition: trends, challenges, and opportunities for policy action, reports NaijaAgroNet.
Just as the President of the African Development Bank Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has received the World Food Prize 2017.
The brief looks at the challenge of providing healthy diets in urban environments in low and middle-income countries, presenting eight recommendations directed primarily at policymakers especially those working at the sub-national level.
Attended by Global Panel Members Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank and 2017 World Food Prize laureate; Agnes Kalibata, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa; Tom Arnold, Former Director General, Institute of International and European Affairs; and Emmy Simmons, Senior Adviser, Non-resident, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Global Food Security Project; former Assistant Administrator, US Agency for International Development.

66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban by 2050. The additional 2.5 billion urban residents will live primarily in Africa and Asia. This is leading to a growing crisis of urban malnutrition.

“There is an urgent need for better urban governance around food, nutrition and health”, said Adesina. “Urban populations need improved information on how to live well by eating well.”

The brief gives particular focus to the growing threat of diet-related non-communicable disease. The greater wealth in urban centres, relative to rural areas, does not necessarily lead to healthier diets, with excessive consumption of highly-processed foods that are high in calories but low in nutrients. Emmy Simmons argues that “within complex, diverse urban environments, poor dietary choices could create a further financial burden, with rising levels of overweight or obesity generating increases in the health care costs associated with non-communicable diseases”.

The eight recommendations in the brief call for a wider policy approach which integrates actions from food, agriculture and nutrition into urban planning, education, health, sanitation, water and infrastructure development. It will also require a shift in attitudes towards the informal food sector and the collection of better data on urban diets.

The brief shows how policymakers at the local level need to champion better diets and nutrition, but this requires them to be both mandated and empowered to act. Panel Member Tom Arnold argues that these “public policymakers need to recognise that productivity, quality of life and life expectancy in urban areas will revolve around healthy diets and lifestyles.”

Without decisive action, the Global Panel argues that this urban malnutrition crisis will deepen. This is especially important in many low and middle-income countries where urban dwellers do not consume enough basic calories, lack sufficient micronutrients, or suffer from being overweight or obese with associated diet-related non-communicable diseases, leading to a ‘triple burden of urban malnutrition’. As Dr. Kalibata recently stated, “The growing threat of an urban food crisis can no longer be ignored”.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Defective supply chain behind food waste in Africa




NaijaAgroNet

The food security challenges facing Africa has been attributed to defective supply chain as produce raised on some fertile cropland, the shortest route to the richest urban markets runs through another country, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Stephanie Gallatova, who cited the continent’s bad roads, insanitary conditions and poor food stock management as major problems, NaijaAgroNet gathered, said "The food losses occurring in Africa are due to limitations in the various technological and logistical factors in the food chain,"

Gallatova is an agro-industries officer with the FAO Regional Office for Africa, which conducts anti-food loss projects in more than a dozen West African countries. "We are looking at the whole value chain and seeing what investments can be made to reduce losses in a sustainable manner."

This geographic reality, with its multiple logistical hurdles, illustrates the food security challenges facing Senegal, for instance, and the wider West African region. 

The trouble with feeding people here is not so much the availability of food but its accessibility, adding, NaijaAgroNet learnt, that the difficulties arise not just in agricultural production but also in inefficient food delivery systems – in harvesting, storage, processing and transport.

In their 2014 Agricultural outlook report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that food waste and losses represent a major threat to global food security over the next ten years.

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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Saturday, May 2, 2015

AU, Harvest Plus sets to promote farming technologies


African Union commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, Tumuslime Rhoda Peace, has said that the union would partner with lead research-based agriculture institution, Harvest Plus, to promote farming and consumption of boi-fortified crops, through the use of farming technologies, especially among poor farming and urban communities, to boost Agriculture in the African continent. NaijaAgroNet, reports.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that Tumuslime appreciated the role of the institute in lifting the rural poor communities in Africa out of poverty and stressed that in order to improve market access, the use of farming technology needs propagation at higher policy making levels so that farmers can adopt it and sellers can buy the micro nutrient-added to produce in good quantities.

Director Harvest Plus, Dr. Howarth Bouis and Harvest Plus, Head of Africa Strategic Alliances, Dr. Anna-Marie Ball NaijaAgroNet learnt, briefed the commissioner on its accomplishments in breeding and production of bio-fortified food crops and distribution bio-fortified seed varieties as well as improved cultivars, thereby empowering rural communities.

Dr. Bouis said, “The organisation also helps add value to locally produced agricultural crops in countries where the organization is working in Africa.” She added that “we have released a number of bio-fortified crops including: iron beans, iron pearl millet, vitamin A cassava, vitamin A maize, vitamin A sweet potatoes, Zinc rice and Zinc wheat.”

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the Harvard Plus has executed countless programmes in Africa, especially the rapid expansion in production and consumption of yellow cassava in Nigeria.

Harvest Plus as NaijaAgroNet learnt, is a lead research-based, agriculture technology institution that was established to respond to the problem of ‘hidden hunger’ which is caused by the lack of essential vitamins and minerals in the diet, such as vitamin A, zinc, and iron, thus reinforcing agriculture’s pivotal role in improving the quality of diet and increasing micro-nutrient consumption. 

Nsolibe Daniel/Ed, Ops.
 

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