Nutritional status has important implications for labor productivity, lifetime earnings, and country-wide economic development. Dietary diversity is an important contributor to nutrition.
To identify how patterns of food consumption are related to dietary diversity and to measure the potential for policy interventions to influence diet complexity.
Background
The USAID Bureau for Food Security (BFS) has prioritized a need to synthesize research findings in agriculture, food systems, and nutrition, to identify where evidence exists and where there are knowledge gaps. This information will help drive future research on how to reshape food systems to improve health and nutrition, and will enhance programming to meet U.S. Government objectives and the global Sustainable Development Goals.
Background: Agriculture can influence diets through consumption of home-produced foods or increased purchasing power derived from sale of agricultural commodities.
Objective: This article explores cross-sectional relationships between agricultural diversification and dietary diversity (a proxy for micronutrient adequacy) among women of reproductive age in rural Tanzania.
We explored the empirical relationship between bio-fortification and child nutrition in Uganda. The research expanded the traditional approach used to address child nutrition by including in the model a categorical dependent variable for a household growing bio-fortified crop varieties. We used three waves of panel data from the Feed. The Future Innovation Lab for Nutrition, collected from 6 districts in Uganda.
Presented at the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, August 2017. This presentation focuses on agricultural R & D and its return as a public investment.
Presented at Rutgers University in April of 2017, this presentation discusses new data in agricultural research.