World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 93

World Food Policy

promoters should assess the nutritional
situation of the population they might
have a direct impact on: the farmers/cattle
or raisers themselves and the members of
their families. In addition, and depending
on the scope of the policy, promoters
should assess the nutritional situation
of other populations, nonfarmers’
families from the intervention area, and
populations who might be affected by
the outputs but who are living in other
places: urban dwellers for instance who
might be impacted by changes in relative
prices. Diagnoses which must be carried
out prior to designing the project must
endeavor to identify the different impact
pathways, including potential risks in
order to avoid or alleviate them upstream.
As already said, many times NSAP
must be gender sensitive. Agricultural
policies and programs geared toward the
development of cash crops must be offset
by measures to ensure the preservation
of sufficient subsistence farming for
farmers to be able to feed themselves
and supply local markets. They must
promote environmental and healthfriendly practices. To achieve NSAP,
health officials and agricultural extension
practitioners should be involved, with
clearly attributed roles in the definition
of preventive measures (e.g. good
agricultural practices, information, home
visits during pregnancy, anti-mosquito
measures, etc.) and measures to tackle
these risks (human and animal healthcare
services). Tools and methodologies must
be put in place to allow project managers
to monitor the potential negative impacts
of their projects and to target them with
adequate corrective measures. Many
development actors already have similar
tools at their disposal. In this case, they

might, for example, include tools to
track the price of essential foodstuffs
(detecting the negative impacts of
agricultural programs on the availability
of food resources and access thereto) or
to monitor the schedule and workload
of women. Existing project matrices
must take into account positive and
negative impacts on nutrition. Most
donors require the use of tools to
monitor the environmental impact of
agricultural projects. The integration
of both positive and negative impacts
on food and nutrition security could,
for instance, allow for a link between
agriculture, environment, and nutrition
to be established. Nutritional education
should be included in interventions,
particularly with the objective of allowing
the resulting new agricultural resources
(products, income, reduction in certain
prices, new time if diffusion of timesaving technologies, etc.) to contribute to
better nutrition.

IX - Conclusion

W

hile highlighting the potential
negative impacts on nutrition
of agricultural interventions
through various pathways and suggesting
operational recommendations to address
these risks, the literature review has
helped to identify several research gaps.

It is necessary to give further
thought to defining how agricultural
public policies could be nutrition
sensitive. At this level of intervention, it is
not easy to design agricultural and agrifood policies supporting the diversity
of foodstuffs, since those policies have
usually targeted priority products or
supply chains.

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