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Kigali to host meet on Getting Nutritious Food to People from March 31
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Monday, 31 March, 2014, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Kigali
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fiogf49gjkf0d Over 275 high-level stakeholders representing the government, the business community and civil society will meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, for a three-day consultation titled ‘Getting Nutritious Foods to People’, which is hosted by the government of the African nation and commences on March 31, 2014.
Nearly one in three people globally suffers from a lack of essential vitamins and minerals (such as vitamin A, zinc and iron) in the diet. This condition (known as hidden hunger) increases the risk of stunting, anaemia, blindness, infectious diseases and even death. Women and children are especially vulnerable.
HarvestPlus, a global programme aimed at improving nutrition and public health, has worked with partners to develop new varieties of nutritious food crops that provide more vitamin A, zinc or iron.
These crops – already being grown by over a million farmers – have been conventionally-bred. They include cassava, maize and orange sweet potato for vitamin A; beans and pearl millet for iron, and rice and wheat for zinc.
Studies have shown that these new varieties do provide nutritional benefits to consumers. “We are just beginning to scratch the surface. We want to increase access to these nutritious crops as quickly as possible. Now is the time to bring partners together to figure out how we do this together,” said Howarth Bouis, director, HarvestPlus.
Over 5,00,000 Rwandan farmers have already planted new varieties of beans that are rich in iron. These new beans also yield many more tonne per hectare than the local varieties, so the surplus could be shared or sold.
Keynote speakers include M S Swaminathan (father of India’s Green Revolution); Chris Elias, president, Global Development Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development and Forbes Africa Person of the Year 2013.
Adesina serves on the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, a new expert group that advises on nutrition-enhancing agricultural and food policies and investments.
The panel would convene a special session to explore how bio-fortification could help decision-makers in developing nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food policies.
“The evidence is promising, and we now need to explore the potential for bio-fortification to enhance agriculture and food policies for nutrition,” says Jeff Waage, technical advisor to the Global Panel and director, London International Development Centre.
The invitation-only consultation, which would be live-streamed, would be moderated by Jeff Koinange, award-winning Kenyan journalist, former chief anchor for Africa, Arise Television and CNN’s senior Africa correspondent.
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