Integrating Nutrition Education in Agriculture Extension Services in Kenya

By Dr. Teresa Tumwet, Head/Home EconomicsMinistry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries

Presentation outline

• Introduction• Importance of Integrating Nutrition Education• Nutrition Education Initiatives• Opportunities for integrating Nutrition Education• Gaps/Challenges

Introduction

• Agricultural extension agents organize farmers for crop, livestock and fish production

• Address marketing issues, environmental deterioration, non farm rural employment, HIV/AIDS , malnutrition, processing and partner with other service providers.

• Create an enabling environment for sustainable development and management of resources to ensure the country is food and nutrition secure.

Cont’d

• Nutrition Education will therefore ensure proper utilization of the foods for nutrient retention and bioavailabilty

• This leads to improved nutritional status at household level, translates to community and National levels

• Integrating nutrition education to extension services leads to improved productivity and contributes to poverty reduction strategies and economic development.

Cont’d

• About 2 billion people Worldwide have multiple deficiencies of vitamin A, Iron, Iodine or Zinc which are mainly available in fruits and vegetables easily grown in home gardens

• Micronutrient intake is a factor of availability, accessibility and sustainability

• Also proper processing, preparation, utilization, preservation and storage

Importance of Integrating Nutrition Education• The importance of consuming high micronutrient

rich foods cannot be over-emphasized• It is clear that inadequate nutritional knowledge will

make people consume less diverse foods (<5 food groups), and,

• Use of improper preparation methods that will compromise on nutritional value of the food leading to malnutrition

Cont’d

• Studies have shown that a stunted child will not reach their potential in life and will most likely give birth to another stunted child!

• This becomes a vicious cycle of low intellectual ability, low productivity, reduced economic growth and poverty

• This can only be broken through consumption of micronutrient rich foods; fruits and vegetables

Nutrition Education Initiatives

• Development and implementation of the National Food & Nutrition Security Policy and Implementation framework

• Integrating Nutrition Education in all Food Security Projects and Programmes

• Adopting various approaches; e-extension; Farmers Field Schools; Group; Individual farmer; use of ICT; Public/Private Partnership

• Development of comprehensive TOT manual

Cont’d Initiatives

• Integrating Nutrition Education in Formal school curricula

• Implementing Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) AND Comprehensive Accelerated Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) initiatives

• Reviewing the Kenya Food Composition Tables• Strengthening collaboration with relevant

stakeholders

Opportunities for integrating Nutrition Education• Use of ICT, Media• Formal education curricula• Including Nutrition indicators in routine data

collection activities• Creating awareness at every available forum

Gaps/Challenges• Capacity building of Counties to upscale and harmonize

the nutrition programmes• Implementation of a National food and Nutrition

security programme to scale up lessons learnt• Upscaling the food processing and preservation

initiatives to commercialization level• Low funding levels

Improve nutrition status: Invest in Nutrition education