Knowledge for Development

April 2013 K4D Newsletter

Date: 24/05/2013

Introduction:

In this issue, we place the spotlight on food and nutrition security, which can be considered as one of the “hot topics” on the national and global agendas of policy and decision makers. We need to broaden and deepen our analysis and reflections on food and nutrition security issues to be better able to provide policy options and take actions that can demonstrate measurable impact. 


 

Please read the review of nine major global future scenario reports published between 2000 and 2012, which uses a food security lens. The author, M. Van Dijk of LEI – Wageningen University and Research centre, concludes that “all of the scenarios only deal with two of the four dimensions of food security: food availability and food accessibility, while food utilization and stability are hardly covered.” He further notes, that the models used for projections have “only very limited capacity for analysis of food demand and food security at the household and individual level”

Achieving food and nutrition security goals has to do with choices and investments made at the individual, household, national, and global levels; whether they are science and technology based or market and trade related. The two CTA commissioned reports on Caribbean marketing boards and the cassava value chain in Jamaica, featured in this newsletter support the need for improving our understanding and knowledge of consumer habits and dietary preferences. Government policies and science and technology solutions are only part of the process. The role of state owned and private marketing agencies and private entrepreneurs, investors and consumers are just as important as scientific pursuits.

As you read all the other interesting items, that we have selected, for example: ”Are we losing sight of the true value of research impact”; “Growing more food with a changing resource base”; “Wild Foods could improve nutrition and food security” “Edible insects in a food safety and nutritional perspective”; we encourage you to try and connect the dots for influencing policy and practice so that real progress can be made on the food and nutrition security front. How do we measure progress suggests that we need to look more closely at what indicators to use? How do we involve multiple stakeholders in tackling this multi-faceted challenge and determining what criteria to be used to evaluate success? 

For more in-depth reading, please click on the links in the K4D newsletter to access the full texts of all the articles. Please also share the newsletter with your colleagues and invite them to send a blank email to join-knowledge-en@lists.cta.int. You can also connect with us via Twitter or Facebook!

We invite you to visit http://knowledge.cta.int/en, click on the dropdown menus and explore all the resources available on the K4D website. 

Please continue to send us your feedback, policy recommendations, research outputs and your success stories of how your research and teaching are contributing to changes in policy and practice. We will feature them on K4D. 

As usual, we welcome and value your feedback.


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