Compact2025 News in Brief: November 14, 2019

To accelerate progress to end hunger and undernutrition around the world, the News in Brief informs partners on emerging research and innovation, developments in global, regional, and national policies and programs, and timely news and events. Please feel free to share any feedback at IFPRI-Compact2025@cgiar.org. Find the latest developments in Compact2025 here.

Toward a secure and sustainable agriculture in India

The Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India has released a committee report reviewing the country’s agricultural policies and suggesting an action plan for secure and sustainable agriculture and to improve farmer livelihoods.

UAE launches National Nutrition Guidelines

The United Arab Emirates—in collaboration with the World Health Organization—have launched a set of National Nutrition Guidelines with the aim to check chronic diseases, improve health indicators, and reduce obesity.

Assessing the affordability of the EAT–Lancet reference diet

A study in The Lancet Global Health uses food price and household income data of 159 countries to estimate affordability of the benchmark diets recommended in the EAT-Lancet Commission report. The conclusion is that the reference diet costs a small fraction of average incomes in high-income countries but is not affordable for the world's poor: to improve diets for them, some combination of higher income, nutritional assistance, and lower prices would be needed.

Improving nutrition with fruits and vegetables in Tanzania

The CSIS Global Food Security Project launched Seeds of Change: The Power of Fruits and Vegetables to Improve Nutrition in Tanzania and an interactive story on fieldwork that assessed barriers to consumption, current strategies to increase consumption by U.S. and Dutch foreign aid projects, and opportunities for multisectoral and public-private engagement approaches. Recommendations include creating demand, broadening implementation, scaling up an integrated multisectoral approach, and accelerating public–private engagement.

The double-edged sword of economic improvement for nutrition in India

A study in The Journal of Nutrition examines the determinants of underweight and overweight/obesity among adolescent girls and women. Improved socioeconomic status was found to be a key driver of the reduction in undernutrition as well as the increase in overweight/obesity: simply improving economic status will therefore not ensure healthy weight status for women and girls.

Transforming food systems—a policy seminar

National actions for food system transformation are the focus of a policy seminar on November 14, in Washington, DC, hosted by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and IFPRI. Representatives from Nigeria and Viet Nam will present the challenges, opportunities, and trade-offs they encounter in enabling food system actors in their countries, and a panel will share insights into how food systems can develop in a healthy, sustainable, and equitable way.

Food systems and nutrition e-consultation

Join the USAID Bureau for Food Security, USAID Advancing Nutrition, Agrilinks, and the Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab for an e-consultation on food systems and nutrition November 12–18. A webinar on November 12 will share findings from the Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab’s latest evidence review, and a 5-day online discussion will then provide opportunities for participants to identify and prioritize future research opportunities that fill critical knowledge gaps.

Compact2025 Botswana Roundtable Discussion

On December 5, the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food Security and Compact2025 will host the Botswana Roundtable Discussion in Gaborone. Botswana is a new Compact2025 focal country and the event will gather key stakeholders to discuss food security and nutrition challenges and opportunities; key strategies, policies, and programs in place; and knowledge, policy, and implementation gaps that hold back progress.

Apply for the Food System Vision Prize

The Rockefeller Foundation, SecondMuse, and OpenIDEO invite organizations to submit their vision of the regenerative and nourishing food system that they aspire to create by the year 2050. Food System Vision Prize participants may submit at any point during the Open Submission Phase—the early submission deadline is December 5, 2019, and the last day to apply is January 31, 2019. Top Visionaries will be eligible to receive a prize of $200,000 each.

USAID Advancing Nutrition offers Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review updates

USAID Advancing Nutrition now offers the Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Resource Review, a curated collection of recent research, tools, news, and events related to developments and evidence in global nutrition programming. Subscribe to receive updates by email every other month.

Highlights from this and past Compact2025 News in Briefs, along with other key resources, can be found at the Compact2025 Knowledge & Innovation Hub resources page.

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