A model-based exploration of farm-household livelihood and nutrition indicators to guide nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions

Abstract

Assessing progress towards healthier people, farms and landscapes through nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) requires transdisciplinary methods with robust models and metrics. Farm-household models could facilitate disentangling the complex agriculture-nutrition nexus, by jointly assessing performance indicators on different farm system components such as farm productivity, farm environmental performance, household nutrition, and livelihoods. We, therefore, applied a farm-household model, FarmDESIGN, expanded to more comprehensively capture household nutrition and production diversity, diet diversity, and nutrient adequacy metrics. We estimated the potential contribution of an NSA intervention targeting the diversification of home gardens, aimed at reducing nutritional gaps and improving livelihoods in rural Vietnam. We addressed three central questions: (1) Do 'Selected Crops' (i.e. crops identified in a participatory process) in the intervention contribute to satisfying household dietary requirements?; (2) Does the adoption of Selected Crops contribute to improving household livelihoods (i.e. does it increase leisure time for non-earning activities as well as the dispensable budget)?; and (3) Do the proposed nutritionrelated metrics estimate the contribution of home-garden diversification towards satisfying household dietary requirements? Results indicate trade-offs between nutrition and dispensable budget, with limited farm-household configurations leading to jointly improved nutrition and livelihoods. FarmDESIGN facilitated testing the robustness and limitations of commonly used metrics to monitor progress towards NSA. Results indicate that most of the production diversity metrics performed poorly at predicting desirable nutritional outcomes in this modelling study. This study demonstrates that farm-household models can facilitate anticipating the effect (positive or negative) of agricultural interventions on nutrition and the environment, identifying complementary interventions for significant and positive results and helping to foresee the trade-offs that farm-households could face. Furthermore, FarmDESIGN could contribute to identifying agreed-upon and robust metrics for measuring nutritional outcomes at the farm-household level, to allow comparability between contexts and NSA interventions.

Looking beyond calories—when food quality and sourcing matters

“…There is an increasing interest in going beyond caloric needs for better human nutrition in agriculture-related studies (Estrada-Carmona et al, 2020;Novotny et al, 2021;Remans et al, 2011;Timler et al, 2020). Yet, calorie consumption remains the central pillar when discussing undernourishment in major reports on food security (Baquedano et al, 2021;FAO et al, 2021).…”

Exploring windows of opportunities of smallholder farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India

“…Multiple objectives can be selected from a large array of indicators that are quantified, and the direction of optimization (minimization or maximization) is specified Estrada-Carmona et al, 2020;.…”

Designing Diversified Cropping Systems in China: Theory, Approaches and Implementation

“…With respect to the ecological benefits, the mechanisms for diversified crop farms to achieve efficient resource use and eco-environmental friendliness mainly include: (1) diversified cropping systems that include, for example, crop rotations, intercropping and cover crops can contribute to pathogen, pest and weed control [34][35][36][37][38][39][40] and soil fertility increase, reducing the inputs of pesticides and fertilizers in farm production and mitigating negative environmental impacts [41] ; (2) the optimization and adjustment of the spatial and temporal layout of crops can overcome the resource constraints at a whole farm scale to achieve efficient use of agricultural resources [42] ; and (3) mixed farms can achieve efficient nutrient cycling, increase soil organic matter content and reduce nutrient loss [43] . In terms of social benefits, diversified cropping systems can produce a range of plant-derived foods and provide multiple dietary options on the farm, thereby ensuring the food and nutrition security of farmers [44] . However, current research on the comprehensive benefits of diversified cropping systems at farm scale is relatively limited.…”