This webinar explores the intersection of women's empowerment and food security, highlighting CASCADE's approaches to improving nutrition and building resilience for women of reproductive age and children.
Malnutrition and climate change are two of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today – and they are intrinsically connected. While food systems contribute to land degradation and roughly one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, climate change in turn jeopardizes the nutrient quality of staple crops.
KEY MESSAGES Micronutrient deficiencies are widespread globally; recent studies revealed that 1 in 2 children and 2 in 3 women are deficient in at least one micronutrient
Fortifying staple foods with micronutrients is a costeffective and safe intervention that is proven to prevent micronutrient deficiencies and related outcomes
While food fortification programmes are widely implemented around the world, gaps remain. The availability and coverage of high-quality fortified foods are often low, even in countries with fortification mandates, and many countries that could benefit from fortification programmes do not have them.
Countries need support to implement best practices around appropriate programme design, effective monitoring of quality and compliance, and regular review of programme assumptions to ensure they remain safe and impactful over time.
National governments, industry, technical partners, and donors all have diverse roles to play in strengthening food fortification programmes and enhancing impact.
Malnutrition and food insecurity remain a pressing issue in Bangladesh, with significant implications for public health. Despite improvements in agricultural productivity and food security, the country continues to grapple with micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs), particularly zinc deficiency, which affects vulnerable populations, especially women and children.
To scale up the production and consumption of biofortified foods through commercialisation, GAIN and
HarvestPlus partnered in 2019 to implement the Commercialisation of Biofortified Crops (CBC)
Programme
The Global Summit for Strengthening Food Systems for Nutrient-Rich Crops is being organised in New Delhi on the 19th of July 2023. The summit will focus on the need for a food systems approach to mitigate rising malnutrition and nutrition insecurity and approaches towards improving our nutrition indicators by using nutrient-rich crops, with perspectives from government and industry.
The Commercialisation for Biofortified Crops (CBC) project was launched by GAIN and HarvestPlus in 2020 with an overall goal to reach at least 167 million consumers with nutrient-dense biofortified foods (previously piloted by HarvestPlus) by 2022 in six countries in Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania) and Asia (India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan), through commercial pathways.
50 organisations representing the global nutrition and child health communities are calling on the executive board of the WHO to support the resolution "Accelerating efforts for preventing micronutrient deficiencies, spina bifida and other neural tube defects through safe and effective food fortification."
Food fortification is a safe and cost-effective strategy for improving diets and preventing or correcting micronutrient deficiencies. But industries delivering fortified foods are subjected to very high (around 60%) rates of import duties and taxes in Pakistan.