Operationalizing the Concept of Farming System for Nutrition through the Promotion of Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture

Despite impressive gain in agricultural production and greater availability of food, a large population in India is suffering from nutritional imbalance. Improvements in total agricultural production leading to nutritive food would help combat under nutrition. To demonstrate the feasibility of agriculture- based remedy to malnutrition, five villages in Wardha district of Maharashtra were selected for validating the farming system for nutrition (FSN) approach.

On-farm demonstrations of arable crops and women-managed community nutrition gardens (CNGs) of vegetables and fruits were initiated. A wide choice of nutritive vegetables to be grown was promoted to reduce the off-farm transport cost and ensure higher availability of nutritive vegetables to the households. The additional nutritional gain through FSN can be quantified in terms of equivalence and can be calibrated to ensure that the households get the recommended daily intake of nutrition. Accordingly, a FSN approach is evolved to provide nutritional security to every house-hold.