report on nutrition-sensitive agriculture inception workshop of … · 2016. 3. 29. ·...
TRANSCRIPT
INNOVATION
COMMUNITY ON
NUTRITION SENSITIVE
AGRICULTURE AgriProFocus/EU Workshop
Report
Report of the workshop that introduced the innovation community on nutrition sensitive agriculture Meskerem Niesette Ritmeester Jelleke de Nooy van Tol Ursula Truebswasser 16 MARCH 2016
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Workshop Agenda
AgriProFocus/EU workshop
Innovation community on nutrition sensitive agriculture
8 March 2016
9-9.30 – Introduction
• Introduction of participants • Presentation on AgriProFocus and the concept of Innovation
Communities • Presentation on of EU+ Joint Programming process
9.30-11.00 - Nutrition sensitive agriculture
• The basics of nutrition sensitive agriculture • Presentation from a nutrition sensitive agricultural project • Present the proposed topics from participants
11.00-11.15 Coffee break
11.15-12.00 - Modalities of the NSA Innovation community
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List of attendants # Name Organization E-mail address 1. Adane Bulo Ethiopian Development
Research Institue (EDRI) [email protected]
2. Alem Agazi CARE [email protected] 3. Alem Greiling Nutri-dense PLC [email protected] 4 Alemayehu
Semunigus EU Delegation [email protected]
5. Amleset Haile CASCAPE [email protected] 6. Berissa Abdella Mercy Corps/PRIME [email protected] 7. Christele Humblot IRD [email protected] 8. Frehiwot Bitew Senselet Food Processing [email protected] 9. Genene Gezu Italian Development
Cooperation [email protected]
10. Jelleke de Nooy AgriProFocus [email protected] 11. Kebede Tafesse Save the Children/
ENGINE [email protected]
12. Medhanit Wube FHI 360 [email protected] 13. Melese Temesgen Addis Ababa University
(AAU) [email protected]
14. Meseret Demissie CARE [email protected] 15. Meskerem Niesette
Ritmeester AgriProFocus [email protected]
16. Mestawet Gebru AKLDP [email protected] 17. Muluberhan
Biedemariam Aksum University (Shire Campus)
18 Pierre-Luc Vanhaeverbeke
EU Delegation Pierre-‐[email protected]
19. Rodrigo Saez Caritas Spain [email protected] 20. Sarah Assefa Hope College of Business,
Science and Technology [email protected]
21. Seblewongel Deneke
Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA)
22. Senait Zewdie FAO [email protected] 23. Takele Teshome Sustainable Development
Alternatives [email protected]
24. Timoteos Hayesso SNV Ethiopia / ASPIRE project
25 Ursula Truebswasser
EU Delegation [email protected]
26. Yewelsew Abebe Alive and Thrive [email protected]
Presentations
The following PowerPoint presentations of the day and other interesting documents on nutrition sensitive agriculture can be found on the AgriProFocus Ethiopia website: http://agriprofocus.com/innovation-‐community-‐nutrition
• Presentation by Yelleka de Nooy (AgriProfocus): Questionnaire results and workshop topics • Presentation by Ursula Truebswasser: The basics of nutrition sensitive agriculture • Presentation by Kebede Tafesse: Engine Project on nutrition sensitive agriculture
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Contents
Workshop Agenda ........................................................................................................................................ 1
List of attendants ......................................................................................................................................... 2
Presentations ............................................................................................................................................... 2
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5
1.1. Introduction of participants and their expectations ................................................................... 5
1.2. Introduction of AgriProFocus and the concept of innovation communities .............................. 6
1.3. Introduction of EU and Joint programming process .................................................................... 6
2. Nutrition sensitive agriculture .............................................................................................................. 7
2.1. Presentation by Ursula Truebswasser (EU) about the basics of NSA .......................................... 7
2.2. Presentation by Kebede Tafesse about the ENGINE project ....................................................... 8
Challenges of the project .................................................................................................................... 9
Questions from participants ............................................................................................................... 9
3. Workshop topics presented and discussed ............................................................................................ 11
4. Next steps ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Figure 1. Presentation by Kebede Tafesse about the ENGINE project
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1. Introduction The aim of this workshop was to create an innovation community on nutrition sensitive agriculture (NSA), because there is a demand from professionals, donors (e.g. EU) and the government to not only focus on the increase in agricultural production but also on the nutritional value of what is being produced. The goal of this innovation community is to bring all stakeholders together to exchange knowledge and experience in order to create synergy on NSA among the different stakeholder groups (government/donors, NGOs, private sector and knowledge institutions). This workshop has been launched by AgriProFocus in cooperation with the EU to introduce NSA and the concept of innovation communities. In addition, this workshop served as a tool to find out what the participants expect from the innovation community on NSA and on which specific topics they want to exchange knowledge and learn more about. 1.1. Introduction of participants and their expectations Before the workshop started, the workshop participants (and potential members of this NSA community) introduced themselves and shared their expectations. Below are some of these expectations summed up:
-‐ To develop a platform for NSA together -‐ Exchange knowledge and share information among a variety of actors working on
NSA -‐ To understand how to mainstream nutrition in food security -‐ To gain more understanding on the meaning of NSA -‐ To promote nutrition through health centers/health extension workers and
development agents (DAs) but also with farmers and cooperatives and to link those two
-‐ How nutrition affects dietary diversity in children -‐ Want to link agriculture with nutrition and gain different experiences -‐ Learn what other partners are doing in nutrition and ways forward -‐ We want to create a group to work on nutrition and agriculture, conserving nutrients
of horticulture crops -‐ How to make pastoralists areas more nutrition sensitive -‐ Nutrition is a new area for us, but we are exploring what is going on in this field -‐ How NSA contributes to reducing malnutrition -‐ What approach could we follow to mainstream nutrition in agriculture and other
sectors -‐ How to close the gap between our nutrition programme and what is available on the
market since many agricultural products are not used in the Ethiopian diet -‐ How to effectively use Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) to increase
dietary diversity -‐ How to harmonize the tools and approaches to make the community to involve
themselves in NSA and diversify their dietary intake
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1.2. Introduction of AgriProFocus and the concept of innovation communities The AgriProFocus Ethiopia country network is part of the global AgriProFocus network. As a network, we believe that farmers are key to local economic growth, sustainable agri-‐food systems, and food security for all. AgriProFocus assembles all actors that are actively involved in promoting and supporting farmer entrepreneurship. One way of assembling all the different actors is through innovation communities. An innovation community is a working group of professionals working for the government, development agencies, knowledge institutions and major donors. Within an innovation community, knowledge, information and practical experiences are shared. In this way, one can learn from each other. The role of AgriProFocus is to start and facilitate the innovation communities based on the demand of different organizations. AgriProFocus currently facilitates four innovation communities:
-‐ Gender in Value chains (funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands – EKN) -‐ Soil Health Management, including Fertile Grounds Initiative (FGI) -‐ Nutrition sensitive agriculture (started with this workshop) -‐ Agro-‐ecology (which will start soon, in collaboration with Tufts University)
Why would we want to start an innovation community on NSA? As has been written in the introduction, there was a demand from professionals to start an innovation community on NSA, since nutrition becomes more and more an essential component of food security and the overall health and well-‐being of households. There is a need to exchange knowledge and information on NSA and to harmonize already existing tools and approaches with regard to the implementation of NSA. Also, this innovation community can serve as a platform to co-‐create new ideas/plans and share already existing materials (e.g. manuals) on NSA. 1.3. Introduction of EU and Joint programming process The EU is a huge donor for many projects in Ethiopia. Inspired by the global focus on reducing malnutrition as one of the global development goals, the EU recently started to prioritize nutrition and to support development agencies to include nutrition in their agricultural development programs/activities and to develop nutrition indicators. There is an agreement between 14 member states for joint-‐programming on nutrition in development programs. As an example of joint initiatives of EU Member States, the EU jointly with GIZ, initiated the work on harmonizing training materials on nutrition-‐sensitive agriculture. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture took this initiative immediately up and created a Task Force on this issue. Important to state is that this innovation community, and the EU for that matter, does not aim to duplicate or replicate any existing platforms and activities (e.g. home gardening network). The EU wants to act as service provider and make use of the facilitation expertise of AgriProFocus.
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2. Nutrition sensitive agriculture 2.1. Presentation by Ursula Truebswasser (EU) about the basics of NSA Ursula explained the concept of nutrition sensitive agriculture. She gave the example of poultry farming for household consumption. If the eggs and the chicken meat is used for household consumption, it contributes to the dietary intake of the household. However, if the chickens and eggs are only used as extra income generation, it does not necessarily improve the diet of children in a household. Another point made is that you need to assess the nutrition situation within your project area. For instance if you plan on introducing corn because you think that is good but the people in that area already eat a lot of corn, you should introduce another food group that is lacking in the diet of the population. Moreover, it is highly important to focus on improving the diets of the most nutritionally vulnerable people which are usually children under 2 and pregnant and lactating women. Furthermore, negative impacts should be avoided as much as possible, because they can negatively impact the nutritional status of the target population. For example, there are health risks involved for children exposed to chicken faeces from free roaming chicken, contributing to chronic gut damage, which is widely believed to be a leading cause of child stunting in developing countries. An answer to the question “how to include NSA in an already ongoing project” is that it is never too late to change the path of your project. It is essential to refocus your project or add some components of nutrition in it. To underscore this, Ursula provided a one-‐page overview of 10 key recommendations created by the FAO to be included in agricultural programs to strengthen their impact on nutrition:
1. Incorporate explicit nutrition objectives and indicators into their design, and track and mitigate potential harms, while seeking synergies with economic, social and environmental objectives.
2. Assess the context at the local level, to design appropriate activities to address the types and causes of malnutrition, including chronic or acute under-‐nutrition, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and obesity and chronic disease. Context assessment can include potential food resources, agro-‐ecology, seasonality of production and income, access to productive resources such as land, market opportunities and infrastructure, gender dynamics and roles, opportunities for collaboration with other sectors or programs, and local priorities.
3. Target the vulnerable and improve equity through participation, access to resources, and decent employment. Vulnerable groups include smallholders, women, youth, the landless, urban dwellers, the unemployed.
4. Collaborate and coordinate with other sectors (health, environment, social protection, labor, water and sanitation, education, energy) and programmes, through joint strategies with common goals, to address concurrently the multiple underlying causes of malnutrition.
5. Maintain or improve the natural resource base (water, soil, air, climate, biodiversity), critical to the livelihoods and resilience of vulnerable farmers and to sustainable food and nutrition security for all. Manage water resources in particular to reduce vector-‐borne illness and to ensure sustainable, safe household water sources.
6. Empower women by ensuring access to productive resources, income opportunities, extension services and information, credit, labor and time-‐saving technologies (including energy and water services), and supporting their voice in household and farming decisions.
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Equitable opportunities to earn and learn should be compatible with safe pregnancy and young child feeding.
7. Facilitate production diversification, and increase production of nutrient-‐dense crops and small-‐scale livestock (for example, horticultural products, legumes, livestock and fish at a small scale, underutilized crops, and bio-‐fortified crops). Diversified production systems are important to vulnerable producers to enable resilience to climate and price shocks, more diverse food consumption, reduction of seasonal food and income fluctuations, and greater and more gender-‐equitable income generation.
8. Improve processing, storage and preservation to retain nutritional value, shelf-‐life, and food safety, to reduce seasonality of food insecurity and post-‐harvest losses, and to make healthy foods convenient to prepare.
9. Expand markets and market access for vulnerable groups, particularly for marketing nutritious foods or products vulnerable groups have a comparative advantage in producing. This can include innovative promotion (such as marketing based on nutrient content), value addition, access to price information, and farmer associations.
10. Incorporate nutrition promotion and education around food and sustainable food systems that builds on existing local knowledge, attitudes and practices. Nutrition knowledge can enhance the impact of production and income in rural households, especially important for women and young children, and can increase demand for nutritious foods in the general population.
2.2. Presentation by Kebede Tafesse about the ENGINE project
Engine experience in NSA/Livelihood The name ENGINE stands for Empower New Generations to Improve Nutrition and Economic opportunity (ENGINE). It is a multi-‐sectoral 5 year (2011-‐2016) Nutrition Project (USAID as part of USG Global Health and FTF initiative). This project is managed by Save the Children with a technical lead by 5 sub primes. This project is implemented through the government structures (Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture). The aim is to improve the nutritional status of women and young children. ENGINE is being implemented in 116 Woredas out of which 16 are in pastoralist areas in Somali. The project objective is to improve dietary diversity through the consumption and income pathways, women empowerment, NSA interventions and promotion of homestead vegetables, fruits and small animals rearing and training of DAs on NSA. Also, through practical training on vegetable production and nutrition for model farmers at selected Farmer Training Centers, so that they could serve as a diffuser of NSA production since they have the financial? and innovation attitude. ENGINE provides vegetable seeds, fruit seedlings and farm hand tools to FTCs and schools. ENGINE selected the following crops: Cabbage, carrot, Irish potato/sweet potato, beans, pumpkins, habesha gomen. Also fruits such as papaya and mango. In addition, chicken, goats and sheep are promoted for its meat and dairy. Chickens are provided to targeted households in addition to feed for three months and vaccinations. ENGINE provides small grants and sets up women saving groups that are linked to microfinance institutions. Furthermore, the project promotes vegetables and fruits through school gardens and farmers training centers and homestead production and introduces nutrition curricula in all schools.
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ENGINE measured the impact of its activities, although not extensively. It was found that consumption of nutritional foods such as vegetables has increased significantly since 2014, but the maternal dietary diversity not as much (probably due to seasonal differences). Challenges of the project
• Weak vegetable seed supply chain • Weak livestock extension service • Lack of appropriate vegetable processing and preservation technology • Need for strong SBCC to ensure behavior change in dietary intake
Questions from participants
Statement from one of the participants: “There are nutrition challenges in this country. We must realise that food security is not only about food availability. A comprehensive approach of food availability and food utilization is needed. Malnourished children even exist in areas where there is food available. The cooperation on this issue among the different actors is very important. Integration with health sector and education sectors is also important. We should integrate as many sectors as possible”. 1. What is the outcome of trainings given to DAs?
ENGINE trained a number of DAs/Farmer Training Centers (FTCs) to build capacity to spread nutrition messages to the farmers. ENGINE have also tried to include nutrition in the school curriculum; all (university) students of ETIVET and government universities with agricultural studies have now a nutrition course in their curriculum.
2. What was the cause of insignificant increase in dietary diversity? It could be due to seasonal differences and a lot of households were included in the baseline but not in targeted in the project.
3. How were you trying to empower women through the ENGINE project? SBCC was provided to men and women so that the needs and benefits of both men and women are addressed. Also, the project focuses on empowering women in household decision making.
4. How did you manage to do an NSA intervention in these pastoralists’ communities of the 16 targeted Woredas in Somali region? What about small grants for the targeted households? With the Somali community, we used a different approach than in highlands. We supplied feeding for their livestock so that they do not have to travel far to get feed for their livestock. We are promoting agro-‐pastoralists to store certain crops for when there are crisis. Also, based on the experience of the Milk Matters project, we promote milk intake and provide cooking demonstrations and we are planning to provide preservation activities. In addition, we provide small grants whereby repayment is not needed (it is not a loan), because we wanted to take them out of the poverty trap.
5. How much does it cost to change to NSA? Can the government provide any financial support here? The ENGINE project is planning to conduct a cost–benefit analysis which may tell us how much it would cost. The purpose of this analysis is to make a calculation of the cost-‐benefits of all our interventions.
6. Is there a WASH component?
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Yes, ENGINE provided input latrines, hand washing promotion activities, spring water systems and works with the WASH task force at national level.
7. In our new program on nutrition we focus on training for DAs. What advice can you give us? ENGINE has trained DAs and Health Extension Workers (HEW) on nutrition sensitive agriculture. The latter are already trained on nutrition through the regular trainings of the MoH. Furthermore, a new programme (SURE1) of MoA and MoH aims to build capacity of HEWs, DAs and HDAs in NSA.
8. Why do you target households with children under 2? The project targets the most vulnerable households and most in need, usually this includes households with children under 2 among others.
9. How did you do your evaluation? You compare households in the same area? We did not work with a control group. We only control against the baseline study.
10. ENGINE promotes selected fruits and vegetables etc. in the communities. Have cultural food preferences and food taboos been taken into account?, Also, how are the government structures used? No taboos were found related to the selected fruits and vegetables but in some areas there is a taboo on egg consumption. So this has been taken into account and there have not been any challenges in this regard. The Woreda is convinced that nutrition is part of their duty and they are implementing the project. ENGINE only provides technical advice.
Figure 2. stakeholders from different organisations (private sector, knowledge institutions , NGOs and development agencies) attended this workshop
1 Sustainable Undernutrition Reduction in Ethiopia
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3. Workshop topics presented and discussed After the presentations, the participants voiced their preference with regard to topics for the next 4 workshops on NSA that will be facilitated by the EU and AgriProFocus. Below a list of those topics:
1. Marketing of nutritious food + input + seed supply + Processing and Preservation 2. Nutrition in Pastoralist areas 3. Dealing with increasing demand for nutritious food – SBCC/DAs-‐raise awareness: 4. Bigger impact -‐ when it comes to sustainability of NSA, the environment, health status,
income increase 5. M&E: Mainstreaming NSA in conventional agricultural systems: how to develop
indicators to measure NSA and its impact 6. Roles of DAs – how can we support the DAs and the MoA to effectively spread
nutrition messages to the communities: 7. Deficiencies: Lysine, iron 8. Indigenous vegetables: e.g. Amaranth 9. Biofortification -‐ before harvest
Who else should be involved?
-‐ Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) should be involved in this platform -‐ The EU will contact the MoA through the task force and inform them
-‐ Ministry of Health (MoH) should also be involved due to their provision of trainings for HEW -‐ Ministry of Education is also involved in training DAs so they should be contacted as well -‐ Home garden projects -‐ CANGO
Modalities of the nutrition sensitive innovation community
• People can also join for a particular topic • If possible and relevant, we could do field excursions as complementary to the workshop
subject. This should however be co-‐funded by the organization of the participant(s) wishing to organize or join (APF only covers 50%)
• Participants were asked to form a steering committee out of their midst. The following people expressed interest in taking the lead in this year’s agenda: Alem Greiling (Nutri-‐dense PLC), Senait (FAO), Amleset Haile (CASCAPE) and Melesse Temesgen (AAU). Facilitators/ secretariat will be done by Ursula Truebswasser (EU) and Jelleke de Nooy and Meskerem Ritmeester from AgriProFocus. This committee will discuss a ToR, the 4 events, which topics to select, and how to make the required inventory.
• The next workshop will probably be in May and will be announced on the AgriProFocus website (http://agriprofocus.com/innovation-‐community-‐nutrition)
• .EU and AgriProFocus are the secretariat • The majority of participants preferred to meet 4 times in 2016. • The secretariat will be able to provide participants with a letter, if needed, to show to
employers to be able to participate in the platform (4 days per year)
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4. Next steps • Participants to express their interest in joining the Steering Committee by email • Steering Committee to meet and plan agenda for 2016 • EU to brief MoA on the discussions and their role in the Innovation Community