What drives diversification of national food supplies? A cross-country analysis

Little previous research has explored what drives the diversification of national food supplies (DFS) across countries and regions. We construct and analyse a cross-country dataset linking a simple DFS indicator - the share of calories supplied by nonstaple foods - with structural transformation and agroecological indicators. Panel econometric models show that several indicators of structural transformation (economic growth, urbanization and demographic change) are strong predictors of diversification within countries, yet time-invariant agroecological factors are also significantly associated with diversification, which appears to explain why some countries have exceptionally low or high DFS relative to their level of economic development. We discuss the implications of these findings for food and nutrition strategies

First foods: Diet quality among infants aged 6–23 months in 42 countries

Diet quality is closely linked to child growth and development, especially among infants aged 6–23 months who need to complement breastmilk with the gradual introduction of nutrient-rich solid foods. This paper links Demographic and Health Survey data on infant feeding to household and environmental factors for 76,641 children in 42 low- and middle-income countries surveyed in 2006–2013, providing novel stylized facts about diets in early childhood. Multivariate regressions examine the associations of household socioeconomic characteristics and community level indicators of climate and infrastructure with dietary diversity scores (DDS). Results show strong support for an infant-feeding version of Bennett's Law, as wealthier households introduce more diverse foods at earlier ages, with additional positive effects of parental education, local infrastructure and more temperate agro-climatic conditions. Associations with consumption of specific nutrient-dense foods are less consistent. Our findings imply that while income growth is indeed an important driver of diversification, there are strong grounds to also invest heavily in women’s education and food environments to improve diet quality, while addressing the impacts of climate change on livelihoods and food systems. These results reveal systematic patterns in how first foods vary across developing countries, pointing to new opportunities for research towards nutrition-smart policies to improve children’s diets

Characterizing rural food environments in South Asia

AFSSA (Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia), a CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative, addresses food system challenges by delivering actionable evidence and scalable innovations in South Asia. This brief provides an overview of TAFSSA’s study on "Characterizing the rural food environments in South Asia”. The evidence generated from this study would promote reshaping of rural food environments to improve access to affordable nutritious foods in rural South Asia

What underlies inadequate and unequal fruit and vegetable consumption in India? An exploratory analysis

Adequate consumption of fruit and vegetables is key to improved diet-related health in India. We analyse fruit and vegetable consumption in the Indian population using National Sample Survey data. A series of regressions is estimated to characterise the distribution of household fruit and vegetable consumption and explore key socio-economic and food system drivers of consumption. Household income and price are important correlates, but consumption is also higher where households are headed by females, are rural, or involve agricultural livelihoods. Caste is an important source of inequality, particularly amongst those with low consumption, with Scheduled Tribes consuming less F&V than others. We also find preliminary evidence that formal agricultural market infrastructure is positively associated with fruit and vegetable consumption in India

Future diets in India: A systematic review of food consumption projection studies

Against a backdrop of a rapidly changing food system and a growing population, characterisation of likely future diets in India can help to inform agriculture and health policies. We systematically searched six published literature databases and grey literature repositories up to January 2018 for studies projecting the consumption of foods in India to time points beyond 2018. The 11 identified studies reported on nine foods up to 2050: the available evidence suggests projected increases in per capita consumption of vegetables, fruit and dairy products, and little projected change in cereal (rice and wheat) and pulse consumption. Meat consumption is projected to remain low. Understanding and mitigating the impacts of projected dietary changes in India is important to protect public health and the environment

Mutual exclusivity of hyaluronan and hyaluronidase in invasive group A Streptococcus

A recent analysis of group A Streptococcus (GAS) invasive infections in Australia has shown a predominance of M4 GAS, a serotype recently reported to lack the antiphagocytic hyaluronic acid (HA) capsule. Here, we use molecular genetics and bioinformatics techniques to characterize 17 clinical M4 isolates associated with invasive disease in children during this recent epidemiology. All M4 isolates lacked HA capsule, and whole genome sequence analysis of two isolates revealed the complete absence of the hasABC capsule biosynthesis operon. Conversely, M4 isolates possess a functional HA-degrading hyaluronate lyase (HylA) enzyme that is rendered nonfunctional in other GAS through a point mutation. Transformation with a plasmid expressing hasABC restored partial encapsulation in wild-type (WT) M4 GAS, and full encapsulation in an isogenic M4 mutant lacking HylA. However, partial encapsulation reduced binding to human complement regulatory protein C4BP, did not enhance survival in whole human blood, and did not increase virulence of WT M4 GAS in a mouse model of systemic infection. Bioinformatics analysis found no hasABC homologs in closely related species, suggesting that this operon was a recent acquisition. These data showcase a mutually exclusive interaction of HA capsule and active HylA among strains of this leading human pathogen

Understanding local food systems in South Asia: An assessment approach and design

Home to one-quarter of humanity—one-fifth of whom are youth—South Asia has the world’s largest concentration of poverty and malnutrition (1–3). Despite producing one-quarter of the world’s consumed food, the region’s agrifood systems face formidable challenges in producing an adequate and affordable supply of the diverse foods needed for sustainable healthy diets (4,5). Unhealthy food consumption is rising, and farming systems are threatened by unsustainable groundwater withdrawal due to poorly developed food and energy policies. In addition, South Asia’s farmers are both contributors and victims of climate change and extreme weather, which contributes to rural out-migration—particularly of youth—resulting in rising labor scarcity and increased production costs. TAFSSA (Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia), a CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative, aims to address these challenges by delivering actionable evidence and scalable innovations across these regions through a coordinated program of research and engagement from farmer to consumer. One of the roadblocks to addressing these challenges is the lack of credible and high-resolution data on food systems in the region. The TAFSSA food systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. It is intended to be a multi-year assessment

An economic analysis of dietary diversification in the developing world

Child undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiency, is widespread in many parts of the developing world. Low dietary diversity is a major source of this problem. This occurs where diets are predominantly based on starchy staples with few fruits, vegetables and animal-sourced foods. Improving children’s diets is therefore an important step towards solving the nutrition problem in low-income settings and reducing its debilitating symptoms such as stunting. Despite the importance that nutritionists attach to early childhood dietary diversification, very little research has focused on the key question of how dietary diversification can be accelerated. Chapter 1 reviews an extensive multi-disciplinary literature on dietary diversification that nevertheless fails to systematically address the multidimensional drivers of diversification, particularly in low-income settings. This thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by investigating factors that drive dietary diversification at a national level (Chapter 2) and at an individual child level (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 sheds light on the nutritional impacts of dietary diversification specifically in the context of dairy, a food group widely perceived to be especially critical for child growth (Chapter 4). Chapter 2 of the thesis investigates the economic, social and agro-ecological indicators that drive dietary diversification of national food supplies (DFS) over time across countries and regions. The traditional economic view, stemming from Bennett (1944), is that economic growth is the major driver of the diversification of food supplies, but meso- and micro-level work point to many other drivers, and to potential agro-ecological constraints to diversification. This chapter addresses those questions through a cross-country analysis linking a simple measure of diversity of food supply (the share of calories supplied by non-staple foods) with various economic, social and agro-ecological indicators. Using panel regression models, the analysis shows that while economic growth and other indicators of structural transformation (urbanisation and demographic change) explain changes in DFS within countries, time-invariant agro-ecological indicators also are significantly associated with DFS. In short, broader structural transformation processes do appear to drive diversification, but some countries face retarded diversification because of specific agro-ecological constraints as well. In contrast to the global view on diversification in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 investigates the determinants of child dietary diversity specifically among pre-school children. Pre-schoolers are a crucial demographic, because most growth faltering occurs between 6 and 23 months of age. This chapter tests the various hypotheses emerging from the economics and nutrition literature by linking Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data on child dietary diversity to household socioeconomic characteristics with community level indicators of climate and infrastructure. Using non-parametric and parametric regression models, the findings uncover strong support for linear effects of household wealth (again, in keeping with Bennett’s Law) but also large and nonlinear associations with parental education, access to health services, infrastructure and climate, and modest associations with an indicator of women’s empowerment. Chapter 4 tests the importance of cow ownership for child growth in rural Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a country with unusually low levels of milk consumption by international standards and very high rates of undernutrition. Unlike previous papers in the literature, this chapter introduces a novel placebo test by distinguishing between lactating dairy cows that have produced milk over the past 12 months and those that have not. Using a rich nationally representative rural household survey, the results show a robust positive association between ownership of lactating cows and child growth among young children (6-23 months). The empirical analysis also reveals an unusual positive association between ownership of lactating cows and wasting, and some evidence that household dairy production is associated with reduced rates of breastfeeding in the first 12 months of life. In short, the apparent linear growth benefits of increased household milk availability are qualified by adverse breastfeeding outcomes and a disconcerting association with child wasting. Efforts to promote increased dairy consumption arguably should be accompanied by interventions to improve nutritional knowledge and emphasize exclusive breastfeeding in early life. The findings of this thesis have important implications for food and nutrition strategies that aspire to accelerate dietary diversification. Chapter 5 points to the results providing evidence that the impact of economic growth on dietary diversification is moderately strong; growth alone would yield only modest diversification without accompanying improvements in parental education, health infrastructure, physical infrastructure and broader demographic transformations. Reassuringly for the nutritionists, the results often suggest that nutritional knowledge may indeed be a critical determinant of dietary diversity, and one partly shaped by exposure to formal education and basic health services. However, more research is needed to determine how best to improve nutritional knowledge cost-effectively, and at scale. The demonstrated importance of agro-climatic and infrastructural constraints also provides support for the separability hypothesis. Resolving the problem of poor diets, especially in rural areas, will likely require significant investments in making markets more effective in delivering a diverse and affordable array of foods. More research is needed to determine how much more of such specific investments are needed to improve rural diets in particular settings.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 2018

Household dairy production and child growth: Evidence from Bangladesh

Research from richer countries finds that dairy consumption has strong positive associations with linear growth in children, but surprisingly little evidence exists for developing countries where diets are far less diversified. One exception is a recent economics literature using the notion of incomplete markets to estimate the impacts of cattle ownership on children’s milk consumption and growth outcomes in Eastern Africa. In addition to external validity concerns, an obvious internal validity concern is that dairy producers may systematically differ from non-dairy households, particularly in terms of latent wealth or nutritional knowledge. We re-examine these concerns by applying a novel double difference model to data from rural Bangladesh, a country with relatively low levels of milk consumption and high rates of stunting. We exploit the fact that a cow’s lactation cycles provide an exogenous source of variation in household milk supply, which allows us to distinguish between a control group of households that do not own cows, a treatment group that own cows that have produced milk, and a placebo group of cow-owning households that have not produced milk in the past 12 months. We find that household dairy production increases height-for-age Z scores by 0.52 standard deviations in the critical 6–23 month growth window, though in the first year of life we find that household dairy supply is associated with a 21.7 point decline in the rate of breastfeeding. The results therefore suggest that increasing access to dairy products can be extremely beneficial to children’s nutrition, but may need to be accompanied by efforts to improve nutritional knowledge and appropriate breastfeeding practices.PRIFPRI3; ISI; Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture (ARENA); CRP4; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for allPHND; A4NH11 pagesCGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH

What drives diversification of national food supplies? A cross-country analysis

Although the diversification of national food supplies (DFS) is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the diversification of diets and for reductions in undernutrition in poor countries, little previous research has analyzed how DFS varies across countries and regions, how rapidly it has changed over time, and what economic, social, and agroecological factors may be driving these observed patterns and trends in DFS. The study addresses those questions through a cross-country analysis. We first review economic theory and evidence on the diversification of production and diets in developing countries, particularly the importance of economic growth and other structural transformation processes, as well as the scope for agroecological factors to shape consumption outcomes in the presence of market imperfections, such as high transport costs. We then construct and analyze a rich cross-country dataset linking a simple DFS indicator—the share of calories supplied by nonstaple foods—with a wide range of economic, social, infrastructural, and agroecological indicators. Descriptive evidence and regression analyses show that several indicators of structural transformation (economic growth, urbanization, and demographic change) are strong predictors of DFS within countries. However, the results also suggest that time-invariant agroecological factors are significantly associated with DFS, such that some countries have exceptionally low or high DFS relative to their level of economic development. We discuss the implications of these findings for food and nutrition strategies, particularly the challenge of accelerating dietary diversification in the absence of sustained and very rapid economic growth and structural transformation, especially in countries where agroecological conditions additionally hinder access to a more diverse food basket.Non-PRIFPRI1; CRP4; B Promoting healthy food systems; Capacity Strengthening; Advancing Research on Nutrition and Agriculture (ARENA)PHND; A4NHCGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH