Exploring solution spaces for nutrition-sensitive agriculture in Kenya and Vietnam

Carl Timler, Stéphanie Alvarez, Fabrice DeClerck, Roseline Remans, Jessica Raneri, Natalia Estrada Carmona, Nester Mashingaidze, Shantonu Abe Chatterjee, Tsai Wei Chiang, Celine Termote, Ray-Yu Yang, Katrien Descheemaeker, Inge D. Brouwer, Gina Kennedy, Pablo A. Tittonell and Jeroen C.J. Groot

Agricultural Systems, 2020, vol. 180, issue C

Abstract: Smallholder agriculture is an important source of livelihoods in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these regions the highest concentrations of nutritionally vulnerable populations are found. Agricultural development needs to be nutrition-sensitive, and contribute simultaneously to improving household nutrition, farm productivity and environmental performance. We explored the windows of opportunities for farm development and the potential of crop diversification options for meeting household dietary requirements, whilst concurrently improving household economic performance in contrasting smallholder farm systems in Kenya and Vietnam. Farm and household features and farmer perspectives and priorities were integrated into a farm-household model that allowed quantification of a diverse set of nutritional, labour and productive indicators. Using a multi-objective optimization algorithm, we generated ‘solution spaces’ comprising crop compositions and management configurations that would satisfy household dietary needs and allowed income gains. Results indicated site-specific synergies between income and nutritional system yield for vitamin A. Diversification with novel vegetables could cover vitamin A requirements of 10 to 31 extra people per hectare and lead to greater income (25 to 185% increase) for some households, but reduced leisure time. Although the Vietnamese sites exhibited greater nutrient system yields than those in Kenya, the household diets in Kenya had greater nutrient adequacy due to the fact that the Vietnamese farmers sold greater proportions of their on-farm produced foods. We conclude that nutrition-sensitive, multi-method approaches have potential to identify solutions to simultaneously improve household income, nutrition and resource management in vulnerable smallholder farming systems.

Keywords: Nutrition; Agrobiodiversity; Dietary diversity; Trade-offs; Synergies; FarmDESIGN (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X19306687
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agisys:v:180:y:2020:i:c:s0308521x19306687

DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2019.102774

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Systems is currently edited by J.W. Hansen, P.K. Thornton and P.B.M. Berentsen

More articles in Agricultural Systems from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().