Agriculture and nutrition in India: mapping evidence to pathways

Abstract

In India, progress against undernutrition has been slow. Given its importance for income generation, improving diets, care practices, and maternal health, the agriculture sector is widely regarded as playing an important role in accelerating the reduction in undernutrition. This paper comprehensively maps existing evidence along agriculturenutrition pathways in India and assesses both the quality and coverage of the existing literature. We present a conceptual framework delineating six key pathways between agriculture and nutrition. Three pathways pertain to the nutritional impacts of farm production, farm incomes, and food prices. The other three pertain to agriculture-gender linkages. After an extensive search, we found 78 research papers that provided evidence to populate these pathways. The literature suggests that Indian agriculture has a range of important influences on nutrition. Agriculture seems to influence diets even when controlling for income, and relative food prices could partly explain observed dietary changes in recent decades. The evidence on agriculture-gender linkages to nutrition is relatively weak. Sizeable knowledge gaps remain. The root causes of these gaps include an interdisciplinary disconnect between nutrition and economics/agriculture, a related problem of inadequate survey data, and limited policy-driven experimentation. Closing these gaps is essential to strengthening the agriculture sector's contribution to reducing undernutrition.

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“…Agriculture has close links to both the direct causes of undernutrition (diets, feeding practices, and health) and the underlying factors (such as income; food security; education; access to water, sanitation, and hygiene; access to health services; and gender equity). The sector has huge potential to drive down rates of malnutrition (Kadiyala et al 2014;Pinstrup-Andersen 2012). Yet, as in many low-and middle-income countries with a high dependence on agriculture-based livelihoods and a high burden of undernutrition, this potential for agriculture is currently not being realized Balagamwala and Gazdar 2013;Kadiyala et al 2014).…”

“…The sector has huge potential to drive down rates of malnutrition (Kadiyala et al 2014;Pinstrup-Andersen 2012). Yet, as in many low-and middle-income countries with a high dependence on agriculture-based livelihoods and a high burden of undernutrition, this potential for agriculture is currently not being realized Balagamwala and Gazdar 2013;Kadiyala et al 2014). Agricultural growth may generate more gains for nutrition than gross domestic product (GDP) growth per se (Webb and Block 2012), but nutrition has historically not been a primary concern for agricultural policy makers-for whom aggregate staple crop production is the primary target (Ecker, Breisinger, and Pauw 2011;Headey, Chiu, and Kadiyala 2012).…”

“…Since nonfarm activities do not possess an intrinsic linkage to nutrition, Pathway 1 potentially makes agriculture a special sector, but it also opens up complex dynamic policy tradeoffs (Kadiyala et al 2014). Pathway 3 also makes agriculture a special sector due to its influence on the composition of diets through macroeconomic linkages.…”

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“…There are a number of interacting social, economic and agricultural drivers of India's micronutrient deficiencies, including relative food pricing of energy-dense vs. micronutrient-rich produce; farmer income effects; and inequitable gender access (Headey et al, 2012;Kadiyala et al, 2014). Ultimately these drivers result in two fundamental inadequacies; an overall lack of food intake (exemplified by latest NFHS-4 results of 1-in-5 adults being classified as underweight, and around one-third of children defined as wasted; International Institute for Population Sciences, 2016a); and poor dietary diversity resulting from an agricultural emphasis on cereal production (Kadiyala et al, 2014).…”

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“…While agriculture has the potential to be a strong driver of reductions in undernutrition, the sector is currently not realizing this potential (Ruel and Alderman 2013;Gillespie et al 2013;Balagamwala and Gazdar 2013;Kadiyala et al 2014). Agriculture can deliver relatively high economic returns to investment which benefit nutrition (Hoddinott et al 2012;Ruel and Alderman 2013), but an increase in food production or consumption does not automatically lead to improvements in final nutrition outcomes.…”