Assessing the Impacts of International Agricultural Research on Nutrition and Health in Africa and Asia

Bulte, E. (2018). Assessing the Impacts of International Agricultural Research on Nutrition and Health in Africa and Asia

The multifaceted agriculture-health-nutrition nexus contains many linkages, suggesting wide scope for leveraging agriculture to improve nutrition and health outcomes. Levers may range from changing crops to reforming national policies. Impacts may be direct, such as through dietary changes or changes in the nutritional value of food consumed. They can also be indirect, such as through changes in income or food prices. In the past, for example, much of CGIAR research targeted interventions aimed at raising farm-level productivity, which, when adopted at a sufficient scale, helped increase the overall supply of food and thereby lowered food prices. It is understood that the nature of the agriculture, nutrition, and health nexus varies from one region to the next, and that cross-sectoral links are mediated by conditional factors such as local infrastructure, market structures, women’s empowerment, and the distribution of assets (including land).

This note summarizes a recent effort by the ISPC’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia) to build evidence examining how CGIAR research impacts health and nutrition outcomes.

This research was supported by ISPC-SPIA under the grant “Strengthening Impact Assessment in the CGIAR (SIAC) (https://cas.cgiar.org/spia/news/strengthening-impact-assessment-cgiar-siac-2013-2016).”