Mending the broken link: Agriculture and Health Nexus

For the Chicago Council Global Food Security Symposium 2013

One of the panelist: Dr. Howard-Yana Shapiro,

“Finally! Finally! Finally! ” Cries a woman. “Nutrition is now part of Food security discussions “ She continues. 

Later on we come to discover she is no other than Prof Ruth Oniang one of the panelist at the Agriculture and health nexus discussion panel at the Chicago Council Global Food security symposium 2013 and a founding CEO of Rural outreach Africa and African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development; . Other panelists included:

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the co-director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology and associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School; and associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also doubled as the moderator.

Dr. Subbanna Ayyappan, secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Government of India; director general, The Indian Council of Agricultural Research

Dr. Howard-Yana Shapiro, chief agricultural officer, Mars, Inc.; senior fellow, plant sciences, University of California, Davis; distinguished fellow, World Agroforestry Centre

How many times has the thought of nutrition crossed your mind while enjoying that sumptuous meal over dinner, lunch or breakfast? Have you ever thought of where you would get those vitamins you badly need if the smallholders farmers in the world went on a strike say for a day, or for a week? 

These are just some of the many questions that arose in the on the Agriculture and the Health nexus discussion whose aim was to provide new thinking on how current agricultural activities could interplay with health and nutrition objectives.

Earlier on, Rajiv shah, the USAID administrator in his address noted that to end hunger effectively, people need to work from farm to market to table. High nutrient levels are needed at all these stages the produce passes be it in production, processing and finally consumption. This brings to fore the interrelatedness of food security and nutrition security. There cannot exist one without the other.

Sharing her experiences working amongst rural women in Kenya, Prof Ruth noted that if we have to build a solid foundation on nutrition security, then we need to empower women as they are the majority of smallholder farmers and hence determine what is consumed. Being decision makers ,its becomes important for them to know that having or growing  food is not enough rather focus should be on growing and consumption of  nutrient rich food. She pointed out critical issues ailing nutrition security the likes of gender mainstreaming, lack of funding, food insecurity at the household level and a case of aging agricultural scientists with no young people to replaced. She feared for Africa’s case being like Guatemala‘s where for every one hundred agricultural scientists they had, only eight are left. Tackling these setbacks could possibly set Africa as the global food basket in the near future.

“Africa might be looking like this abandoned child but she might feed the whole world in the near future” she optimistically stated

Dr. Mozaffarian emphasized that as we align ourselves in the nutritional security thinking, we need to keep in mind the core goals of nutrition, which are reducing malnutrition and under nutrition. Across the globe, approximately 2 billion people lack access to nutrients needed for their bodies to healthy. Every five minutes a child dies from hunger related diseases.

“We need to have a global view of health from utero to the elderly” emphasized Dr. Mozaffarian

On the other hand, Dr Shapiro stressed on the importance of knowledge sharing. He called out to private organizations to make nutrition segments of plant genes public so crops can be improved through research leading to better and nutrient full varieties.

“It was right to go after agricultural productivity early on, but now have to shift from calories to nutrient-dense foods” he insisted.

Dr Ayyappan shared his insights on dietary changes and the resultant ailments in India. He shared his views of encouraging gardening in both schools and at homes as a way of promoting food security and hence subsequently improving nutrition. 

Summing up the discussion, Dr Shapiro acknowledged his shock at the optimism expressed at the symposium and stated that feeding the world is indeed a huge challenge.

Do you think so?

  PS: Short summary of tweets for The Agriculture and the Health Nexus Discussion

Sack Gardening

The cost of vegetables at the Kenyan Coast is sky rocketting and going by the looming economic crisis, many families are forced to make do without vegetables in their main meals. This drove me to searching for a better option for growing vegetables and going by the fact that land is a limitation in urban centers,an idea i saw during last year Agricultural Society of Kenya Show-Sack gardens resurfaced.

From World Concern Blog

The sack gardening/bag gardening. Maybe you have heard of it. Maybe not. It involves planting vegetables like Kales,Spinach,Brocolli,Tomatoes and Onions in a sack filled with the growing matter.Being an organic farmer i prefer the use of compost manure to fertilizers and the use of homemade pesticides as compared to the conventional pesticides. Its a simple way of gardening and can utilise waste water from the kitchen as part of irrigation,hence comes with a recycling component on it.


Materials you will need:
1.A woven sisal sack. Note:1m3 sack provides about 5m2 accesible farm area.
2.A 2 litre plastic CocaCola bottle with both ends cut off to make a tube.In case of a smaller bag,you can use a smaller bottle.
3.Stones or gravel
4.A mixture of animal manure with some well draining top soil.
5.A knife to cut the bag.

Step by step illustration:

1. Create a base on the sack bottom by filling it with soil.Place the cut bottle on the centre of the sack and fill it with gravel and stones. Fill the sides with soil. Continue doing so until you almost reach the top of the bottle.

2. Continue with the gravel and soil process until you reach the brim of the sack.The stones and gravels are used as a watering system whereby  water is poured on the bag and seeps through the soil helping to water the whole bag.

3.Make/cut holes on the  sides of the sack where you desire to plant the seedlings.Let them have some even distances apart.

4. Transplant your seedlings on the selected sites. Plant some on the top of the sack too.

5. Continously care for the seedlings by watering them through the rock channel created. Harvest the produce on a continuos basis till the growing season is over.At that point you can empty the old used soil and replace it with new growing matter.


 Note: Sack gardens require not only water but also enough sunlight to flourish well.


Embedded below is a video on the same by Solidarites and the sack project they had on Kibera slums ,Kenya

For more resources on the same, see the A Garden in a Sack: Experiences in Kibera,Nairobi


Enjoy and share! :)