Dr. Howarth Bouis: 2016 World Food Prize Laureate

By Howarth Bouis
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 21 2016 (IPS)

This year’s World Food Prize pays tribute to biofortification, an intervention that strengthens efforts to address one of the world’s most insidious and pervasive public health challenges—hidden hunger. That is good news for the majority of the two billion people globally who suffer from hidden hunger, and likewise for those fighting to end the epidemic.

Hidden hunger is the lack of essential vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) necessary for a healthy and productive life. According to the World Health Organization, zinc, iron and vitamin A are among the micronutrients most lacking in diets globally. The deficiency in these particular micronutrients can lead to blindness, stunting, mental retardation, learning disabilities, low work capacity, and even premature death.

Women and young children are hardest hit. More than half of women and three-quarters of children aged under five in India, for example, are estimated to be iron deficient. The burden of hidden hunger extends to economies. India alone loses over $12 billion in GDP annually to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.[1]

The majority of populations most affected by hidden hunger reside in the developing world where regular access to important and effective interventions such as supplementation and fortification is constrained by cost and infrastructure challenges.

More than half of women and three-quarters of children aged under five in India, for example, are estimated to be iron deficient. The burden of hidden hunger extends to economies. India alone loses over $12 billion in GDP annually to vitamin and mineral deficiencies
Those populations are also, unfortunately, unable to diversify their daily diet and, therefore, their micronutrient intake since they rely largely on macronutrient- and/or energy-rich but micronutrient-poor staple food crops—rice, maize, cassava, beans, etc.—for sustenance. In India, for instance, only about one in 10 children regularly consume iron-rich food, while the proportion of children under two years of age who regularly consume vitamin A-rich foods is less than half.[2]

It is difficult to imagine a reversal in the global incidence and impact of hidden hunger without innovative new approaches to complement conventional nutrition interventions. Biofortification is not the silver bullet, but it can significantly expand the reach of nutrition to populations in need. Its underlying premise is that since millions of people eat staple food crops daily, improving the nutritional quality of these crops will lead to better nutritional and health outcomes.

By breeding and disseminating staple food crops rich in vitamins and minerals, biofortification can substantially increase the intake of micronutrients among households growing and consuming these improved crops.

Biofortification has distinct advantages.  It is sustainable; farmers and consumers who adopt biofortified crops can grow and eat these crops over and over, benefitting from the extra vitamins and minerals for free. It is a food based approach that lets the plants do some of the work. Biofortification is also cost effective. After the initial outlay of funds, the recurrent costs are minimal, and each dollar invested reaps $17 dollars’ worth of benefits.[3]

More importantly, biofortification is effective. Recently published studies show that crops biofortified with iron, such as pearl millet in India[4] and beans in Rwanda, [5] can reverse iron deficiency. Sweet potato biofortified with vitamin A reduced the incidence and duration of diarrhea among children in Mozambique.[6] The evidence on the nutritional and health impact of biofortified crops continues to grow as the crops gain momentum around the world.

To date, biofortified crops have been released in 30 countries, including India, and are under testing in an additional 25. HarvestPlus and its partners are developing and delivering these crops as public goods. At least four million households in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have already been reached with these nutritious crops. Scaling up delivery to reach a billion people with biofortified foods by 2030 is a key objective of HarvestPlus.

By shining the spotlight on biofortification, the World Food Prize has brought greater visibility and momentum to the strategy, and it can be the springboard for its scale up and impact globally. India, a country that is no stranger to agricultural innovations, will also play a major role in scaling up biofortification.

The country has already adopted several biofortified crops such as iron pearl millet, zinc rice, and zinc wheat, with more on the way. In 2018 New Delhi will host the Third Global Conference on Biofortification, which will explore strategies and partnerships to broaden delivery and adoption of the nutritious foods. This is a pivotal moment for biofortification and the millions of households around the world who stand to benefit from its success.

[1] World Bank

[2] UNICEF

[3] The Copenhagen Consensus

[4] The Journal of Nutrition

[5] The Journal of Nutrition

[6] World Development

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Courtesy of Howarth Bouis

By Howarth Bouis
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

“We are especially distressed by the high prevalence and increasing numbers of malnourished children under five years of age in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. Moreover, more than 2000 million people, mostly women and children, are deficient in one or more micronutrients…”

These words are from the Final Report of the International Conference on Nutrition that took place in December 1992 in Rome.The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples.

Twenty-two years later, government representatives from around the world will again gather in Rome for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) and will have to contend with the reality that despite reducing the percentage of people suffering from micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiencies, about the same absolute number of people – two billion – are still not getting the micronutrients that are essential for good health.

This is still too high a number; being deprived of essential micronutrients in the first thousand days from conception to a child’s second birthday can result in stunting, lowered IQ, and repeated bouts of illness that reduce lifelong productivity and keep generations in poverty and poor health.

So, today, we still face many of the same challenges as we did more than two decades ago. These have been further exacerbated by population growth, food price volatility and climate change, among other issues. Here are a few trends or factors that stand out today, and must be accounted for as we look to end hunger and malnutrition.

While population has grown, per capita incomes have increased in many countries. Staple food prices have fallen over the long run due to increased productivity from the Green Revolution, but non-staple food prices have risen. Thus, calories have become cheaper, but minerals and vitamins have become more expensive.

The distress is felt most by the poor, whose response is to cut down on the more expensive micronutrient-rich foods while making sure the household gets by on stomach-filling staples. To make matters worse, in recent years we’ve seen a disturbing trend where even the prices of key staple foods such as rice, wheat and maize that provide most of the global calories, have shot up.

Climate-induced changes and natural disasters will lead to more volatility in food production and, thus, price variability. The poorest households are least able to absorb shocks. As such, building resilience has emerged as a critical priority that requires greater alignment and collaboration with diverse partners to protect those who are most vulnerable from shocks.

One way to increase nutritional resilience is to make our food systems more nutrition-smart. Our food systems have to be calibrated to provide the greatest amount of nutrients per square foot of scarce land that can be produced sustainably, especially in the face of climate change.

This means growing more nutritious foods that include staple foods with enhanced micronutrient content that are proving efficacious in reducing micronutrient deficiencies. We have to build agricultural, and therefore dietary, diversity back into the system so that there is a ‘rebalancing’ of calories with micronutrients.

Being nutrition-smart means we also pay attention to growth in obesity, which today exists side by side with undernutrition.

The lessons learned in the past two decades show that there is no silver bullet. Integrated nutrition and public health interventions, and poverty alleviation social reforms are necessary to achieve good nutrition for all.

We have to more efficiently break down the silos between agriculture, nutrition and health food and health systems in order to improve people’s lives. The good news is that we have made significant strides. Twenty-two years ago, agricultural and nutrition scientists did not talk to each other very much. Now they do, and even more of that collaborative conversation and action are needed.

It pleases me greatly that global awareness has been building up over the past five years about how crucial nutrition is. The Copenhagen Consensus, a gathering every four years of top economists in the world, has twice put the reduction of micronutrient deficiencies at the top of their lists as the best use of public money, and have conservatively estimated a 59:1 dollar benefit-cost ratio.

I am heartened by global movements like Scaling Up Nutrition that are galvanising communities around the world to expand nutrition interventions that work, and by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Zero Hunger Challenge to eliminate hunger in our lifetime. As a global society, we cannot afford to let this momentum wane as other crises or trends command attention.

Achieving better nutrition is a multi-faceted endeavour. I have emphasised here the importance of making our food systems more nutrition-smart. And as the tagline for ICN2 states: better nutrition means better lives. There are of course complementary themes deserving of similar attention.

But this is what the delegates in Rome will have to tackle next week when, as the materials for the upcoming ICN2 suggest, coherence and collaboration must be built into any new frameworks and plans to improve nutrition. I look forward to being there, and to learning from the experience, the expertise and the insights of delegates from around the world.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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