Agriculture and Health

Agriculture and Health

By Dr Arvind Kumar

The deliberations at the recently-concluded three-day International Conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health in New Delhi were focused on nutrition, health and agriculture. Some participants pointed out that “nutrition and agriculture talk to each other, and so do nutrition and health”, but “health has never told agriculture what it needs,” because the links between the three sectors seemed to have broken down. Asserting that these discussions were at least three decades old, some veteran experts opined that the symptoms of the breakdown surfaced in 2007/08, when the world was jolted by the food price crisis. However, the crisis, triggered by various factors that influenced both the supply and demand side of food availability, pushed at least a billion people into hunger.

Broadly speaking, agriculture, health and nutrition are closely intertwined to each other. Agriculture is the primary source of calories and nutrients worldwide, and in developing countries is often the major source of personal income, as most people are either subsistence farmers or farm labourers. The links between nutrition and health are obvious. Health status is affected by the consumption of goods that directly improve or worsen health. While agreeing that nutritional status affects health, most experts said it was time to re-establish the links between agriculture, nutrition and health, and perhaps educate each sector about the objectives of the others. Emphasizing need to build a movement, Jay Naidoo, a former minister in South African president Nelson Mandela’s cabinet, said the initiative should be led by civil society and grassroots organizations, whose voice he found lacking at the conference.