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HIDDEN HUNGER EXPOSED
Roger Thurow – Outrage and Inspire – “Hidden Hunger Exposed”
Hidden hunger was brought out into the open in a big way this week – and so was a promising solution.
As we have often noted, nearly one billion people suffer from a chronic lack of food – this is a visible hunger all too familiar to us from scenes of famine and food shortages. But more than two billion people suffer from what is called hidden hunger – a chronic lack of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc. This under-nutrition isn’t as visible because the sufferers may be consuming enough calories; they may appear to be reasonably well fed. But a lack of access to more nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables and animal products leaves them deprived of vital nutrients that makes them vulnerable to blindness, increased risk of disease and premature death, and leaves countless children stunted mentally and physically.
But critical help appears to be right around the corner. At a conference hosted by HarvestPlus this week in Washington DC, crop breeders, nutritionists and economists gathered to examine the potential benefits of biofortification, or boosting the nutritional aspects of staple crops.
At the vanguard of these efforts is the orange-fleshed sweet potato, high in provitamin A, which is already being planted by farmers and available in rural markets in Mozambique and Uganda. In the next couple of years, crop breeders say, a multitude of other fortified crops will be ready to be deployed: beans with iron in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); pearl millet with iron in India; cassava with vitamin A in Nigeria and the DRC; maize with vitamin A in Zambia; rice with zinc in Bangladesh and India; wheat with zinc in India and Pakistan.
With the introduction of these crops in these locations, the scientists are hoping to show a positive impact on the nutrition of local residents, evidence that they hope will break down any remaining resistance of agriculture decision makers to encourage crop breeding for nutrition.
It was confounding to hear that this link between agriculture and nutrition has so long been missing – confounding because food production and nutrition seem to be a natural combination, essential allies in the war on hunger. But the two have often been treated as separate academic and practical disciplines. Nutrition has been seen as a health problem and food production as a matter for agriculture. In governments around the world, nutrition has largely been a province of health ministries and crops have been the realm of the agriculture ministries. To fight hunger, the goal of crop breeders has been to boost yields, not increase nutrition. In farming terms, nutrition and agriculture have resided in separate silos. When the two were brought together, those in agriculture voiced the worry that improving nutritional values of crops would lower the yields.
Now, after years of research, Howarth (Howdy) Bouis, director of HarvestPlus and a pioneer of biofortification, declared at the conference: “Evidence shows that there is no trade-off between high nutrient content and high crop yield.”
Howdy led a chorus of pleas at the conference that these be joined together. His list of key challenges included: “Getting the agricultural sector to prioritize improving nutrition. Getting the nutrition community to prioritize agriculture in order to improve nutrition.”
As the world faces the overarching challenge of doubling food production by 2050, it seems a matter of common sense to also make sure that that food is as nutritious as possible. To attack both overt hunger and hidden hunger.
The importance of this dual front was clinically and emotionally emphasized by scientists from India and Bangladesh who pointed out that their countries were still heavily burdened with malnutrition even through their quantity of food production soared during the Green Revolution in the 1960s. It was clear to them that growing more food alone isn’t enough to end hunger and malnutrition.
“Lack of food is a visible travesty. Lack of nutrition is invisible,” said Meera Shekar, lead health and nutrition specialist at the World Bank. “The big challenge is to make nutrition more visible.”
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