Why link agriculture and nutrition? Because more agricultural production doesn’t always mean better nutrition. Consider: When harvests are sold for cash and agricultural income is diverted to non-hunger-related expenditures, the malnourished continue to suffer. Even when extra food does reach the needy, eating more doesn’t necessarily mean eating better.

National governments and international institutions have been forced by famine, drought, or failed food-related policies to pay attention to poverty and hunger issues in Africa. But what about malnutrition, the hidden menace that robs millions of health and energy? Is it understood that hunger and malnutrition are related but not identical? Do governments assume that when they reduce hunger, they are also necessarily reducing malnutrition? Do institutions insist that the critical problem of malnutrition be an integral part of development efforts? Are policies, social norms, and values structured so that they do so?

Too often, the answer is no. A study of institutions in Uganda, Mozambique, and Nigeria found nutrition concerns largely missing from policy dialogue about reducing hunger and poverty, and a need for stronger nutrition advocacy in all three countries. The study, by IFPRI, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), also revealed a lack of collaboration between the agriculture and nutrition communities—collaboration that, if cultivated, could powerfully leverage national strategies to combat malnutrition as well as poverty and hunger.

IFPRI and ICRW are focusing on these problems with a multi-year project called The Agriculture-Nutrition Advantage. With partners in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Uganda, the project will promote links between agriculture and nutrition that take findings from gender analysis into account, with the ultimate goal of improving the nutrition of people in a sustainable and timely manner.

Project teams will demonstrate to decisionmakers how findings from use of this methodology can clarify where resources and interventions are most needed and how they can be most effectively applied. Learn more at www.agnutritionadvantage.org.