World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 80
The Negative Side of the Agricultural–Nutrition Impact Pathways: A Literature Review
It is interesting to underline
the fact that these studies sought the
positive effects of interventions, while
agricultural interventions may also have
negative effects, as the impact pathways
are complex and interlocking. Taking a
“do no harm” lens, based on the existing
literature and interviews with experts, this
article proposes to shed some light on the
risks that ADIs might entail for nutrition.
The article sets out to inventory potential
risks, without assessing neither the reality
of the threats nor their relative weight,
which greatly depends on the intervention
contexts. It proposes conceptual guidelines
for agricultural policy or project designers
to assess ex ante likely impacts and to
mitigate the possible drawbacks of their
actions.
The followed methodology of
data collection and analysis is detailed
in Section II. Section III illustrates the
different pathways from agriculture to
nutrition. Six different risks are identified
and developed in section IV. Discussion
and conclusion are the last two sections.
interviewed 15 colleagues, from different
backgrounds: history, human nutrition
and epidemiology, agricultural economics
or agronomy from Food and Agriculture
Organization - FAO, Action Against
Hunger (Action Contre la Faim in French
– ACF), Institut de Recherche pour le
Développement - IRD, and Centre de
coopération Internationale en Recherche
Agronomique pour le Développement
- Cirad about their knowledge of
existing literature or empirical evidences
concerning a possible negative effect of
certain types of projects or policies on
nutrition.
Altogether, we gathered 171
different documents, in English and in
French, all written between 1980 and 2013.
We excluded from this stock of documents
all references presenting neutral impacts
of ADIs on nutrition or stating impacts
are not necessarily positive but without
specifying impacts are negative. It
appears that studies documenting
specifically the negative impacts of ADIs
on nutrition were scarce and relatively
old (e.g. those published by Von Braun
and Kennedy 1986; 1994). For example,
despite a number of studies highlighting
the limitations of biofortification and
questioning its relevance as a “silver bullet
solution” compared to dietary diversity
(e.g., Keatinge et al. 2011; Brooks 2010,
Kimura 2013), it has been difficult to
find references clearly showing negative
impacts on nutrition. Consequently,
articles revealing negative links between
agriculture and certain key variables
for nutrition were also taken into
consideration, even though the impact
pathways did not extend all the way to
nutrition. We then included references
presenting negative impacts of ADIs on
II - Methodology
S
tarting from the different recent
reports (Webb 2013; World Bank
2007, 2013; du Vachat and ACF
2013), conference presentations (Headey
2013; Hoddinott 2012), books (Fan and
Pandya-Lorch 2012), and scientific papers
(Masset et al. 2012; Ruel, Alderman, and
Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group
2013; Berti, Krasevec, and FitzGerald
2004) concerning the effect of agriculture
on nutrition, we followed a backward
snowball methodology, identifying each
paper or author, who was quoted about a
possible negative causality. In addition, we
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