SecureNutrition eUpdate
April 2015

The SecureNutrition eUpdate shares information about the latest developments from SecureNutrition, its partners, and beyond. SecureNutrition provides a knowledge platform where the community can share experiences, exchange information, and increase collaboration and coordination to link agriculture, food security, and nutrition.

SecureNutrition Redesign
This week we are conducting Usability Labs to test our new site design. If you'd like to be involved, please email us.
Global Food Policy Report
The 2014-2015 Global Food Policy Report was released on March 18th, and represents the fourth installment of one of IFPRI's flagship publications. In addition to reviewing headway made on food policy the world over, this year's report looks especially at social protection, food safety, aquaculture, middle income countries, and "The Power of WASH." A major update on indicators draws especially from their Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators Initiatives (ASTI), Statistics of Public Expenditure for Economic Development (SPEED), and other resources built to assess hunger, policy capacity, and agricultural productivity. And finally, a chapter devoted entirely to regional developments allows readers to focus on areas of interest. As with many of the more recent IFPRI publications, a range of data visualizations, widgets, and interactive reading formats are available on their site.
Suggested Nutrition Indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) recently released both a policy brief and a full technical report outlining recommended nutrition indicators and mapping them to proposed Sustainable Development Goals goals and targets. The vast majority fall within Goal 2, which is to "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture,' although Goal 3 is also represented. Readers curious about nutrition indicators may find the 2-page policy brief particularly useful, as it provides simple descriptions of why each of those selected is relevant. For example, anemia is important to assess because "It increases the risk of maternal death and compromises healthy birth." See footnote under indicator table for the range of individuals and organizations consulted.
Paths of Convergence for Agriculture, Health, and Wealth 
The Annals of the New York Academy of Science released an issue recently devoted entirely to exploring food systems, agribusiness, agriculture, nutrition, health, innovation, data... it might seem like too broad a scope, but the collection of  research is compelling and weaves the idea of "convergence" around food into practical links from one area to another. 
The issue includes an updated evidence-mapping article from Kadiyala et al.
, looking at agriculture-nutrition pathways in India that several of the authors previously published under IFPRI in 2012 An additional contribution from Cornell University authors proposes a suite of 'multisectoral indicators for nutrition improvement,' including aspects of market food supply
New Resources and Tools
Released by World Food Program USA last month, this policy brief offers an updated look at how the Roadmap Coalition--founded after the 2008 global food price crisis--has been working to achieve some of the 5-year policy recommendations set out in its 2012 document, endorsed by more than 50 NGOs. While functioning as an advocacy piece to maintain the attention of U.S. lawmakers, the this brief has a distinctly multisectoral perspective and organizes its updates among four 'pillars' needed to reduce global hunger: 1) Emergency response; 2) Safety nets; 3) Nutrition; and, 4) Agriculture.

Published as part of the World Bank Discussion Paper series, author Ugo Gentilini offers his research and views on the debate between effectiveness and appropriatness of cash vs. food transfers as a social protection mechanism. Included in the review are figures looking differential effects on calorie intake, food consumption, and dietary diversity; interestingly, the author finds that most differences in these indicators are not statistically significant as a function of the type of transfer itself. Rather, the main lesson may be one of focusing on context in order to achieve desired results, with more important drivers being found among beneficiary behaviors at the outset, market characteristics, and overall program design.  

A new video from Bioversity International highlights the importance of local, traditional vegetables in Benin (both wild and cultivated), and their contributions to a nutritious diet. The video offers a peek into the lives of Benin farmers, market vendors, and others along the value chain going about their day at a bustling market. Each discuss their role in the value chain, including the best way to prepare different vegetables to ensure the nutritional value is preserved. 

News You May Have Missed

The World Food Program collected nine infographics that help explain food security, hunger and malnutrition. Each infographic is accompanied by a short description of situations in which the graphic might be most useful, with the intention that educators use them to help spread awareness about the causes and impacts of these three development concerns.

The FAO's Executive Council meets this week, and Director-General Jos� Graziano da Silva opened the proceedings by noting that the 2016-2017 annual budget will increase funding for nutrition and obesity-related initiatives. The proposed budget still has to be approved by the membership in June. 

A recent article featured in Wired Magazine looks at the case of entomophagy, otherwise known as insect eating, in Mexico--crickets, specifically. While articles around the benefits of insect protein are not difficult to track down, Wired comes at it from the angle of stumbling blocks to industrial food production--price, sourcing, production, pesticides, etc. Read on to find out of a new company, Aspire, can take on these issues and improve access to insects as food.

In 2014, SecureNutrition in collaboration with the World Bank Library and Archives of Development, led a review to present a summary on how agricultural and food-based approaches to nutrition have been addressed by the nutrition and agriculture sectors of the World Bank. This blog post, written by Anna Herforth, PhD, summarizes key learnings from the report, and highlights a new digital timeline that provides interactive access to many of the reports key themes and background documents.  
Upcoming Events
Convened annually by The Chicago Council, the Global Food Security Symposium discusses the US government's and international community's progress on addressing global food and nutrition security. The Global Food Security Symposium 2015 will address food systems for improved health. The symposium will also be the platform for the release of a new Chicago Council study recommending ways the United States can leverage its research institutions, deploy development and trade tools, and engage with business to improve health and nutrition globally

5th Annual LCIRAH Research Conference"Agri-health research: what have we learned and where to next?"

The Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH) will be holding its 5th annual research conference, to be held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, on the 3rd and 4th of June, 2015.
 


Blogs

Using the 2007-2008 food price crisis as a "natural experiment," Per Pinstrup-Andersen and colleagues seek to explain government responses to price fluctuations and to gain an overall better understanding of "the political economy of agricultural policy-making." Lessons for policy assistance and recommendations to governments includeimproving the management of staple cereal crop stocks and better facilitating public-private partnerships to build trust between the sectors.

"it is time for nutritionists to step beyond their comfort zone, engage with other sectors and start to speak their language," says IFPRI after an event on the Dutch release of the Global Nutrition Report. Although the event participants did not agree on the best way to scale up Dutch involvement in promoting nutrition, a robust debate of multisectoral stakeholders ensued. This alone is an important milestone for nutrition.

This is the first in series of monthly columns produced by Agri-Pulse--an agriculture-oriented news and policy firm--and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Project on Global Agriculture. While the column focuses especially on American competitiveness, the interplay of topics like production, research, and trade are relevant to policy audiences worldwide.

The World Bank's Living Standard Measurement (LSMS) Team remind us that good econometrics and data visualizations are only as useful as the data that goes in to them, just like ingredients in a fancy meal. LSMS are conducting randomized, methodological experiments in which different methods for collecting data on a specific topic (in this case, milk production) are tested. Surprisingly, there are only a handful of methodological studies available for important SNKP topics like consumption and agricultural productivity. The team conclude that "It might be time for more research funding, journal space, and researchers' attention to go to the ingredients."



Open Calls

The overall mission of this position is to perform successively short support missions or "gap filling" in different countries.The variety of situations requires a minimum of theoretical and practical experience in WASH with ACF and/or other NGOs.

Fellow to work on two Wellcome Trust funded projects focusing on diets, climate change and health.
SecureNutrition Knowledge Platform 

[email protected] 
www.securenutritionplatform.org 

Copyright �2015. All Rights Reserved.
Header Photo: Andrea Borgarello / World Bank
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