Adding nutrition to the food chain in Indonesia
A case study from Indonesia applies a five-step approach to incorporate nutrition considerations into food value chains and so diversify diets, improve diet quality and increase smallholder incomes.
– This article is a research highlight from the Bioversity International Annual Report 2018 –
What are value chains and how can they improve nutrition?
A value chain is the entire network of stakeholders and activities that provide our food, from farm to fork, adding value along the way – for example, through trading or processing. It includes producers, processors, traders and consumers. In recent years governments and development partners have invested in value chain development as part of more comprehensive development strategies. A traditional value chain project for smallholder producers links smallholders to markets to increase production and incomes. Nutrition-sensitive value chains have an extra function – to improve nutrition in a given population by shaping the value chain to address constraints and opportunities around supply, demand and nutrition value.
A new guide and a five-step approach
Drawing on experience from the field, staff from Bioversity International and IFAD worked together to develop a guide on how to design value chains that seek to improve nutrition and increase incomes of producers and other value chain actors, as well as paying attention to environmental sustainability, climate change and women’s empowerment. The results are found in a new two-volume publication – Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chains: A Guide for Project Design which sets out this five-step approach.
Continue reading in the 2018 Annual Report
Partners
This work was carried out as part of the project 'Support of development of nutrition-sensitive value chains in middle-income countries,' undertaken by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). It was conducted as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and is supported by contributors to the CGIAR Trust Fund. Bioversity International is an A4NH Managing Partner.
Principal funding was provided by the Government of Germany, with complementary funding from the Government of Canada.