Agriculture plays a central role in rural households, where 75% of the world's poor reside and where there is substantial undernutrition consisting of both macro- and micronutrient deficiencies. Of the 2.5 billion people in poor countries whose livelihoods depend directly on the agriculture sector, 1.5 billion people live in subsistence, smallholder households (working on ≤10 hectares of land). In sub-Saharan Africa, 80% of the food supply for the continent is provided by smallholder farmers, many of whom are women.
It is clear that agriculture is the sector best placed to improve food production and access to and consumption of more nutritious foods, and agriculture-led growth has, in some cases, led to observed declines in undernutrition. However, most agriculture policies have focused on improving the yield of key staple cereal crops, mainly rice, wheat, and maize, which at the same time has made global food supplies more homogenous. This lack of diversity poses public health challenges. Dietary diversity is a vital element of diet quality—the consumption of a variety of foods across and within food groups, and across different varieties of specific foods—and has shown demonstrable gains toward Adequate Intake of essential nutrients and important nonnutrient factors. Although agriculture can make contributions to healthy diets by increasing and improving diversity of landscapes and the availability of foods produced from those lands, more empirical evidence is needed to better understand the links between agriculture and dietary outcomes
