Nutrition and health: farming women in Kenya’s Murang’a speak out

As a rule, women play a major role in determining household dietary practices and nutrition. In agricultural rural areas, they are actively involved in food production as well, and thus also play a crucial role in terms of food availability. But what are the factors determining the dietary practices which women opt for? And is it important whether they engage in organic or conventional farming

1s2: Can dietary recommendations of animal source food align with circular production principles?

A change of human diets has potential for reducing environmental pressures that originate from food production. Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) can support this change by informing consumers about dietary patterns and behaviour. However, FBDGs are generally designed from health principles and do not include environmental aspects like resource suitability and environmental consequences of the associated food production. Recent research shows that applying circularity principles in food production, suchas raising livestock solely on non-edible feedstuffs, leads to resource efficiency and can therefore reduce environmental pressures. Our aim was to assess and integrate nutritional and environmental consequences of limiting animal-source food (ASF) recommendations to livestock raised in a circular food system. We therefore assessed if the recommended ASF in FBDGs from five European countries (Bulgaria, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland) could be met by livestock fed only with nationally available non-edible feedstuffs. A resource optimization model was used to allocate non-edible feedstuffs to either dairy cows, beef cows, pigs or chicken, to include all recommended ASF types in the diet. The resulting quantities of ASF were assessed for global warming potential, land use, and their nutritional contribution. The results showed that the quantities of recommended ASF in FBDGs were substantially high with a contribution between 34 to 56 g/cap/day to total recommended protein. These quantities of recommended ASF were not compatible with the amount and nutritional contribution of ASF in a circular food system. Furthermore there were large differences between individual countries that could be assigned to cultural and geographical circumstances. For example, in Malta only 15.9 g protein per capita per day could be produced with the nationally available non-edible feedstuffs while in Switzerland 38.9 g per capita per day could be produced. Although these protein quantities are almost one third up to half of the daily human protein needs, they did not meet the ASF recommendations in these countries’ FBDGs. We conclude that when livestock is only fed on non-edible feedstuff that is nationally available, the available ASF for human consumption can cover a significant amount of nutrient requirements while the related dietary pattern can contribute to a more climate-friendly food system. Using circularity principles, health and environment can be aligned, which emphasizes the opportunity to create future guidelines with a holistic approach

Integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches to design a new framework to asses crop diversification sustainability

International audienc

When experts disagree: the need to rethink indicator selection for assessing sustainability of agriculture

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Sustainability indicators are well recognized for their potential to assess and monitor sustainable development of agricultural systems. A large number of indicators are proposed in various sustainability assessment frameworks, which raises concerns regarding the validity of approaches, usefulness and trust in such frameworks. Selecting indicators requires transparent and well-defined procedures to ensure the relevance and validity of sustainability assessments. The objective of this study, therefore, was to determine whether experts agree on which criteria are most important in the selection of indicators and indicator sets for robust sustainability assessments. Two groups of experts (Temperate Agriculture Research Network and New Zealand Sustainability Dashboard) were asked to rank the relative importance of eleven criteria for selecting individual indicators and of nine criteria for balancing a collective set of indicators. Both ranking surveys reveal a startling lack of consensus amongst experts about how best to measure agricultural sustainability and call for a radical rethink about how complementary approaches to sustainability assessments are used alongside each other to ensure a plurality of views and maximum collaboration and trust amongst stakeholders. To improve the transparency, relevance and robustness of sustainable assessments, the context of the sustainability assessment, including prioritizations of selection criteria for indicator selection, must be accounted for. A collaborative design process will enhance the acceptance of diverse values and prioritizations embedded in sustainability assessments. The process by which indicators and sustainability frameworks are established may be a much more important determinant of their success than the final shape of the assessment tools. Such an emphasis on process would make assessments more transparent, transformative and enduring