A


gricultural development has tradition- ally focused on raising productivity and maximizing production of cereals. In this


regard, the world’s farmers and farming sys- tems have made enormous advances, multiply- ing cereal production several times over in the past half century. Yet hunger, malnutrition, and poor health remain widespread and persistent problems. Nearly 1 billion people still go hungry, and billions more are malnourished. The food price crisis of 2007–08— and more recent increases in food prices—shows just how vulnerable the global food system is to disrup- tions related to weather and government policies. At the same time, agriculture faces a number of challenges in the coming decades, including growing population, climate change, water scarcity, land degradation, urbanization and changing diets, rising energy costs, and natu- ral disasters. Looking ahead, agriculture faces the task of contributing to food security, nutrition, and good health for a rising number of people. Can it meet the challenge?


In February 2011, about 1,000 people came


together at a conference in New Delhi to think through the interactions among agriculture, nu- trition, and health and consider ways to exploit them to improve human nutrition and health. Participants helped clarify what is known about the links among the three sectors, what is not known, and where opportunities for leveraging agriculture for nutrition and health may lie.


OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS


Many people are beginning to take a broader view of agriculture’s potential. It is increasingly clear that nutrition and health are linked to agriculture in many ways, yet the three sectors rarely work together to reach their common goal


of improving human well-being. It is time for agriculture, nutrition, and health to join forces.


In many ways, the links among agriculture,


nutrition, and health are already at work. Agriculture is the primary source of food to meet people’s need for energy and essential nutrients. To get access to this food, people can produce it themselves or buy it. The agricultural system may help increase people’s access to food by allowing them to produce more food,


“Leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health . . . is particularly important in developing countries, where agriculture is also the mainstay of a very large number of people.”


—Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India


lowering food prices, raising farmers’ incomes, and raising incomes among other rural people who benefit from a more prosperous agricul- tural sector. By improving their access to food, agriculture thus has the potential to greatly improve people’s nutrition and health. At the same time, some agricultural conditions and practices can lead to disease and poor health for both farmers and consumers.


How the links among the three sectors work


on a local, national, and global scale depends partly on the physical, social, legal, economic, and governance settings in which they take place. They also depend on a household’s re- sources of time, money, land and other assets, education, health, and nutrition. Anything that affects agriculture has the potential to affect health and nutrition, and anything that affects health and nutrition has the potential to affect agriculture—for good or ill.


THE ROLE OF GROWTH It is widely assumed that economic growth will lead to better nutrition by increasing people’s


“I urge you to use your time together to find ways for all of us to do even more: more to improve agricultural productivity, more to connect farmers to markets, more to increase access to nutritious crops and health care, and more to support the women who are growing food and caring for children around the world.”


—Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, United States of America 1


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