consumers are undeterred by the orange color of vitamin A maize once the nutritional benefit linked to the color has been explained. Biofortified crops with “invisible” nutrients that do not change
color or taste, such as iron or zinc, will require a different marketing strategy. Combining high mineral and vitamin content with yield, other desired agronomic traits, and profitability will be crucial. Agronomic superiority can drive adoption of a nutrient-rich crop that is otherwise indistinguishable from the varieties that farmers already grow and consume. This strategy requires less investment in behavior change communication than do crops with visible traits, particularly if a high percentage of the total market can be captured by newly introduced higher-yield and higher-profit biofortified varieties. If this is not successful, the more costly alternative is to (i) insert high iron and zinc staple food varieties into public food distribution and income generation programs (for example, the World Food Program’s Purchase for Progress) and/or (ii) brand and target these varieties to malnourished communities as a means for them to improve their nutrition.
Conclusion: Truly getting to scale
Efforts are under way to scale up OSP to reach a million more households in sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years. Lessons from OSP may be most applicable to other crops with visible traits, such as “yellow” cassava and “orange” maize, both with enhanced vitamin A. But they should also be relevant to invisible-trait crops being developed. At this point one can only posit what some of the elements of such a delivery and scaling-up pathway might be. The first level of scaling up requires that a critical mass
of poor farmers adopt the biofortified crop and feed it to their families. Evidence generated at this level will help convince stakeholders that biofortification does have a public health impact. At this level informal diffusion is a pathway by which the food is introduced to others in the community. At the second level, markets for the biofortified crop need be developed to provide farmers with an outlet for marketable surplus, thus reaching nonfarming or rural households that are net buyers of food. This second level is driven by further expansion through diffusion and complementary activities, reaching out to medium-scale producers,
and developing local markets and demand for products made from biofortified foods, still largely in rural areas. At the third level, the private sector becomes the main driver of the diffusion process. As sufficient surplus is generated to reach urban consumers, including the urban poor, value chains for biofortified crops can be developed to produce value-added tradable products in order to mainstream biofortification. However, the nutritional benefits of these foods must be assessed, as nutrients are lost during storage and processing. Actors at many levels are needed to lead the scaling up of
biofortification, once they are convinced by evidence from initial target countries that biofortification is a cost-effective, sustainable, and complementary strategy to improve nutrition for the poor. Investments must also be made in other arenas, such as better sanitation and education, to maximize the benefits of consuming biofortified foods. Improving nutrition—and health—must remain high on the agenda of the donor and policymaking communities, and the agriculture sector must assume more responsibility for improving nutrition. The global research communities should also make “better nutrition through food” a core component of their research and product development portfolios. Frameworks seeking to improve nutrition (for example, the UN’s Scaling up Nutrition) or to improve regional planning (for example, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program) can also do much to mainstream biofortification.
For further reading: H. E. Bouis and Y. Islam, “Biofortification: Leveraging Agriculture to Reduce Hidden Hunger,” in Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, ed. S. Fan and R. Pandya-Lorch (Washington, DC: IFPRI, 2012); H. E. Bouis, C. Hotz, B. McClafferty, J. V. Meenakshi, and W. H. Pfeiffer, “Biofortification: A New Tool to Reduce Micronutrient Malnutrition,” Food & Nutrition Bulletin 32 (supplement 1): 31S–40S; HarvestPlus, Disseminating Orange- Fleshed Sweet Potato: Findings from a HarvestPlus Project in Mozambique and Uganda (Washington, DC: 2010).
Howdy Bouis (
h.bouis@
cgiar.org) is program director at HarvestPlus, Washington, DC. Yassir Islam (
y.islam@
cgiar.org) is head of communications at HarvestPlus.
www.ifpri.org
Copyright © 2012 International Food Policy Research Institute. All rights reserved. Contact
ifpri-copyright@cgiar.org for permission to republish.
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