How can agriculture contribute more to
improving nutrition in countries like Pakistan (as well as others in South
Asia) where the sector continues to employ a large proportion of the workforce,
even while its contribution to national income undergoes decline? To find
answers to this question is the main objective of the Research Programme
Consortium Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA).
The latest IDS Bulletin which focuses on nutrition in
Pakistan provided the perfect opportunity of showcasing emerging LANSA work on
the country. The evidence paper on Pakistan which I co-authored
with my colleague Mysbah Balagamwala at the Collective for Social Science
Research reviews existing evidence on the pathways and disconnects between
agriculture and nutrition using a framework developed for India by the research
programme TANDI (Tackling the Agriculture-Nutrition Disconnect in India). A
piece written on the article in the IDS Bulletin can be found here.
We were able to identify four key disconnects
between agriculture and nutrition in Pakistan: first, limited and unequal
access to land, second, unequal gender relations and patriarchy which lead to
anti-nutrition choices in consumption and care, third, similar effects of
prevailing behaviour and preferences, and fourth, low political priority and state
organizational effectiveness leading to weak public action. The last
disconnect – the one pertaining to politics and state effectiveness – has
implications for all others. With weak state institutions, land ownership
is underpinned by privately-wielded power, which forestalls reform and
perpetuates inequality. It is also harder to challenge patriarchal and
other behavioural norms through public action if formal legislative and
programmatic interventions have limited outreach into societ\
State fragility is a widely used term for
referring to situations where political priorities are skewed against welfare
and where the government’s organizational capacity is compromised. There
are two interconnected aspects of fragility which influence nutritional
outcomes. Environmental fragility – or the prevalence of environmental
risks – is associated with food insecurity and the danger of hunger. The
scarcity and volatility of water resources resulting in droughts or floods has
been a frequent source of livelihood failures in Pakistan. Institutional
fragility – or the proneness of institutions to fail – can trigger or
exacerbate the effects of environmental fragility. As Amartya Sen showed
more than three decades ago, if markets and/or public distribution of food fail
due to poor infrastructure or conflict, supply side shocks can escalate into
shortages, hunger and worse. Beyond food scarcity and hunger,
institutional fragility is also inversely correlated with other determinants of
nutrition, such as health provision, care practices, and water and sanitation
infrastructure.
Fragility, therefore, in both its dimensions
as well as in interactions between these dimensions, can be an important
determinant of nutrition. We hope to incorporate this insight into our
research for LANSA by paying attention to inter-regional variations within
Pakistan in environmental and institutional fragility. As it happens,
many of the regions of the country which face environmental fragility also
happen to be sites of conflict and state weakness.
But if fragility is an important concern for
understanding of nutrition, how might it be expected to influence
agriculture-nutrition pathways and disconnects? Here, the story becomes
somewhat complicated. Under conditions of extreme fragility the
population subsists on local food production and remains vulnerable to chronic
hunger as well as adverse shocks. This means that while hunger and
poverty might be widespread, the link between agriculture and nutrition is
straightforward. Improvements in agricultural productivity can have
direct impacts on nutrition through reduced hunger and food insecurity.
As an economy develops, however, and becomes less vulnerable to environmental
shock because its institutions gain resilience, the agriculture-nutrition
linkage is likely to be become more complex. Livelihood and food
acquisition strategies are less reliant on the local agricultural economy and
markets and public action cushion adverse local food supply shocks.
Policies for leveraging agriculture for
nutrition will need to be attentive to prior conditions, particularly those
relating to environmental and institutional fragility, in order to come up with
appropriate interventions. While improvements in productivity through technological
advances and other incentives will be important in fragile regions, hunger and
undernutrition still remain significant concerns in regions which are
environmentally and institutionally less fragile. In these relatively
more developed regions the agriculture-nutrition link will need to be leveraged
through more complex routes such as targeted programmes for particular
population segments such as landless households and women agricultural
labourers. Hunger and food insecurity in these regions is more likely to
be seasonal phenomenon, particularly for the landless, thus requiring
interventions which can help consumption smoothing. In some instances
improving the agriculture-nutrition link may be a matter of counteracting some
of the adverse impacts of agricultural growth and employment on
nutrition. Non-food determinants of undernutrition are also likely to be
more prominent in the more developed areas where chronic hunger is less of a
problem.
This blog originally appeared on SecureNutrition in July 2013.
Haris Gazdar is a Senior Researcher and Director at the Collective for Social Science Research, he is also the Lead Researcher for LANSA in Pakistan.
