Food sufficiency and improved nutrition
By Access to food is a fundamental human right. However, in recent times, there has been a surge in the number and proportion of hungry people across the globe.
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According to recent estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, world hunger is on the rise. The number of undernourished people in the world increased in 2017, for the third consecutive year. It was reported that 821 million people (11 per cent of the world’s population) suffered chronic undernourishment.
This translates to one in nine people on the planet. Most of these people are family and subsistence farmers living in poor rural areas of sub-Sahara Africa and Southeast Asia. Concurrently, statistics in the same year show that various forms of malnutrition have also increased, with at least 1.5 billion people suffering from micronutrient deficiencies that undermine their health and lives.
Whereas hunger is highly prevalent in areas ravaged by conflicts, droughts and extreme poverty, overweight and obesity is on the rise all around the world and we are now witnessing the globalization of diet-related non-communicable diseases.
For example, overweight and obesity rates are reported to be climbing faster in Africa than in any other region. Furthermore, childhood overweight affected 38 million children under five years of age in 2017.
All of these have brought about a need to transform agriculture and food systems to deliver improved nutrition and sustainable and resilient rural communities. All stakeholders need to redouble their efforts in order to boost food sufficiency and improve nutrition.
It is not just about feeding people; it is also about providing people with the necessary nutrients for a healthy life. Food systems must be transformed in ways that provide all people with healthy and nutritious food. There must be a collective effort towards providing healthy diets that include diversified nutrient-dense foods, including bio-fortified foods, fruits/vegetables, as well as animal-source foods. It also involves the creation of standards on fortification, proper labeling of foods, as well as the banning of some harmful ingredients.
School-based nutrition education curricula should aim to improve students’ knowledge, skills, self-efficacy, and behaviour aligned with the dietary guidelines. Proper nutrition education can help young people to attain the knowledge and the skills that they need to make proper food choices and develop lifelong healthy eating patterns.
Nutrition education programme should not be limited to health-related aspects of food consumption. There is also a need to educate students, or more broadly consumers, about food systems-related issues covering: production, processing, packaging, distribution, retailing, consumption, and wastage of food.
It is also important that both private and public schools at all levels establish viable school farms. School farms are not just spaces for growing food items. They are complete learning zones, which largely succeed in taking learning to new heights.
The knowledge obtained from practical sessions on the school farm helps not only to re-enforce what is taught in the classrooms. It also teaches pupils, and students alike, about eating healthy, about how food arrive our homes from the farms, etc. It also equips the pupils/students with first-hand knowledge of how to run agribusinesses. This is especially important in cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit in the students.
Daniel Ighakpe
Lagos.
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