The story behind the success: Ten case studies identifying what led to uptake of research for development

With the increasing scrutiny of the effectiveness of development aid, more attention is being paid to ensure investments in ‘research for development’ (R4D) are acted upon and lead to positive impact. The typical ‘outputs’ produced by R4D organizations may be, for example, new technologies, improved practices, software models, data, general information or policy recommendations. Efforts and strategies to achieve the adoption of R4D outputs and ultimately positive impact is an emerging ne

Breaking the food-system divide with Smart Food: good for you, the planet and the farmer

The ‘food-system divide’ – which is rarely talked about, let alone challenged – is one of the biggest hindrances to achieving a healthy population and sustainable and viable agricultural systems in developing countries. For decades, the majority of investments, whether on R&D, or big company investment, or policy support, or product development or even development aid, have been funnelled into just three major crops: rice, wheat and maize. These ‘Big 3’ crops provide 50% of the world’s calories and protein. As a result, their value chains are well developed and supported, making it very difficult to ‘mainstream’ other foods. The need for greater diversity in diets and on-farm is well known. Meeting that need will require mainstreaming and ensuring the viability of more foods. This should not be tackled with just any food but with food that is ‘good for you (nutritious and healthy), good for the planet (environmentally sustainable) and good for the farmer (viable and climate smart)’; that is our definition of Smart Food. The Smart Food initiative aims to learn from the successes of the ‘Big 3’ and create the ‘Big 5’ and eventually the ‘Big 7’, and so on. Smart Food will focus especially on foods that can be eaten as staples. This way, we will have a major impact on some of the leading global issues. As Smart Food is good for you and the planet and the farmer, these three qualities can in unison contribute to healthy people and sustainable and viable agriculture

Pulses are a Smart Food and important for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Pulses are what we call Smart Food – good for you, good for the planet and good for the smallholder farmer. Pulses like chickpea and pigeonpea will contribute towards the new Sustainable Development Goals to reduce poverty and hunger, improve health and gender equity, promote responsible consumption and help adapt to climate change..

The smart food triple bottom line – starting with diversifying staples

The Smart Food initiative engages in finding foodsystem solutions that, in unison, are good for consumers (nutritious and healthy), the planet (environmentally sustainable) and the producers, especially smallholder famers. This is the Smart Food triple bottom line. A key objective of Smart Food is to diversify staples. By focussing on staples across Africa and Asia, which typically comprise 70 percent of the plate and are often eaten three times a day, we can make a big impact

COVID-19 calls for renewed focus on eating right and natural

India has achieved significant poverty reduction in the last couple of years and the middle-class has burgeoned considerably. A World Economic Forum research and consumer survey predicted that by 2030, India will no longer be an economy led by the bottom of the pyramid, but by the middle-class. It stated that 80 per cent of Indian households will be middle-income and will drive 75 per cent of consumer spending. There is need to boost our immune systems, especially in the wake of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Medicines can’t fix our immune systems; our lifestyle and what we eat will only help. Several new initiatives such as Eat Right and Smart Food have enhanced demand for healthier and nutritious foods. India is a nutri-basket of nutri-dense plant-based foods. We need to ensure these are safe, accessible and affordable to all. Even before the present pandemic, demand for natural and organic products in India was on the rise. Availability of organic food stuff and products grown under natural systems (of agriculture) has increased manifold. This is manifested by very steep growth in market share of natural (and ayurvedic) products and a corresponding alignment to the trend by competing with multinational companies. The general observation is that the aspirational consumers are going back to nature and natural products to live healthier and longer

Sustainable agriculture and food systems: Channeling CSR investments to promote science backed development in agriculture sector

The investments to sustainable agriculture and food systems contributes directly to reducing hunger, poverty and malnutrition o f the targeted population and positive contribution towards environmental welfare. The issues affecting Indian agriculture spread across the entire agricultural value chain right from soil and water conservation to market connectivity and social concerns associated. This paper maps three major focus areas under agriculture where in the CSR investments can be channelized. This include addressing the Environmental constraints, Improving Access to Markets and Social engineering and various sub-elements for financing being suggested under these suggested focus areas. The paper seeks to explore opportunities for promoting responsible investments in agriculture and food systems through CSR investments. This paper takes a case study approach and analyses in the context of the various development work done by ICRISAT and using the impacts as a guiding factor for proposed investment suggestions

The social and Environmental Value of CSR Investments in Agriculture Including the Approach and Value of Science Backed Solutions

CSR investments on agriculture are significantly under-represented. Yet these investments are key to ensuring food security, overcoming hunger and protecting the environment. Rural communities also have the highest levels of poverty and malnutrition. Bringing prosperity and sustainability to rural areas hinges on making agriculture profitable. Improved livelihoods in rural areas have shown to lead to increased spending on education and health care, connecting agricultural development with a more holistic solution. The approach to agricultural development needs to be community driven, tackling initially the community's top priorities and identifying the low hanging fruit to achieve early impacts. These efforts will build trust in the community which can then be built on with more interventions across the whole agriculture value chain. Interventions need to be science-backed. In developing these solutions, sustainable models that are market-driven and valued are important. Cross cutting to the whole approach is the inclusiveness, engaging the required partners, communications and the monitoring and evaluation

Changing Perception through a Participatory Approach by Involving Adolescent School Children in Evaluating Smart Food Dishes in School Feeding Programs – Real-Time Experience from Central and Northern Tanzania

The study aimed to test the prospects for, and acceptance of, pigeonpea and finger millet-based dishes in a school feeding program for 2822 adolescents’ in Central Tanzania. The focus was on incorporating nutritious and resilient crops like finger millet and pigeonpea through a participatory approach involving series of theoretical and practical training sessions, for the period of 6 months on the nutritional quality and sensory characteristics of these two unexplored foods in Tanzania. Sharing knowledge on the nutritional value of these crops and involving students in the acceptance study changed their negative perception of finger millet and pigeonpea by 79.5% and 70.3%, respectively. Fifteen months after the study period, schools were still continued feeding the dishes and more than 95% of the students wanted to eat the finger millet and pigeonpea dishes at school. Around 84.2% of the students wanted to include pigeonpea 2–7 times a week and 79.6% of the students wanted to include finger millet on all 7 days in school meal. The study proved that it is possible to change food perceptions and bring about behavior change by sharing knowledge on their benefits and by engaging the consumers through a participatory and culturally appropriate approach

Acceptance and Impact of Millet-Based Mid-Day Meal on the Nutritional Status of Adolescent School Going Children in a Peri Urban Region of Karnataka State in India

The study assessed the potential for use of millets in mid-day school meal programs for better nutritional outcomes of children in a peri-urban region of Karnataka, India, where children conventionally consumed a fortified rice-based mid-day meal. For a three-month period, millet-based mid-day meals were fed to 1500 adolescent children at two schools, of which 136 were studied as the intervention group and were compared with 107 other children in two other schools that did not receive the intervention. The intervention design was equivalent to the parallel group, two-arm, superiority trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio. The end line allocation ratio was 1.27:1 due to attrition. It was found that there was statistically significant improvement in stunting (p = 0.000) and the body mass index (p = 0.003) in the intervention group and not in the control group (p = 0.351 and p = 0.511, respectively). The sensory evaluation revealed that all the millet-based menu items had high acceptability, with the highest scores for the following three items: finger millet idli, a steam cooked fermented savory cake; little and pearl millet bisi belle bath, a millet-lentil hot meal; and upma, a pearl and little millet-vegetable meal. These results suggest significant potential for millets to replace or supplement rice in school feeding programs for improved nutritional outcomes of children

Impact of regular consumption of millets on fasting and post-prandial blood glucose level: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Millets have a low Glycemic Index and are thus expected to help reduce concentration of Fasting and Post-Prandial Blood Sugar (FBS and PPBS) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), which can potentially help the management of type 2 diabetes. This study conducts a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of millets consumption on FBS, PPBS, and HbA1c levels in comparison to major staple diets using the difference-in-differences (DID) method, where the effect size was computed on the Standardized Mean Difference scale. Among twelve eligible articles, ten were used in the meta-analysis to assess the effects on FBS levels, while five were used to assess the effects on PPBS levels. The results show significant effects on FBS (p <  0.01) and PPBS (p <  0.05) levels with the effect size of −0.71 and −0.42, respectively. There were 11.8% (p =  0.001) and 15.1% (p =  0.012) reductions in FBS and PPBS level respectively observed in the millet consuming group whereas the comparator group did not have significant reductions in either indicator. On the other hand, the effects on HbA1c levels were insignificant, presumably due to the small sample size where only two studies were undertaken over 90 days, which warrants further research. The findings corroborate the evidence that millets can contribute to managing FBS and PPBS levels better than major staple diets, implying that millets consumption helps reduce the risk of type 2 diabete