How is nutrition smart agriculture different from ‘nutrition sensitive agriculture’?
Nutrition sensitive agriculture is a holistic, multi-sectoral effort to ensure the production of a variety of affordable, nutritious, culturally appropriate and safe foods in adequate quantity and quality to meet the dietary requirements of populations in a sustainable manner.
Nutrition smart agriculture is a subset of nutrition-sensitive agriculture. It is focused on the production side of the food value chain, which is where farmers and agribusinesses decide ‘what’ and ‘how’ to produce and where the agriculture sector designs and implements actions and policies to improve nutrition. NSmartAg is an approach that identifies practices and technologies and channels public investments in agriculture towards a double objective: improving the bottom line for farmers and agribusiness while also contributing to improve nutrition of the local population. This approach is a building block of food systems that promote healthy people, a healthy planet and healthy economies.
Although there are existing agriculture technologies and practices, such as biofortification, that can be considered “nutrition smart” (meeting the double objective), this concept is new and thus not always explicitly supported by existing agriculture public policies and programs.
The Country Profiles developed for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Haiti, and Mozambique provide a snapshot of nutrition smart agriculture technologies and practices across the country and identify entry points for their adoption for improved outcomes for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs.
