Impact of Ethiopia's productive safety net program on household food security and child nutrition: A marginal structural modeling approach.

Safety nets are expanding in African countries as a policy instrument to alleviate poverty and food insecurity. Whether safety nets have improved household food security and child diet and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa has not been well documented. This paper takes the case of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and provides evidence of the impact of safety nets on household food security and child nutritional outcomes. Prior studies provide inconclusive evidence as to whether PSNP has improved household food security and child nutrition. These studies used analytical approaches that correct for selection bias but have overlooked the effect of time-varying confounders that might have resulted in biased estimation. Given that household food security status is both the criteria for participation and one of the desirable outcomes of the program, estimating the causal impact of PSNP on household food security and child nutrition is prone to endogeneity due to selection bias and time-varying confounders. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are (1) to examine the impacts of PSNP on household food security, child meal frequency, child diet diversity, and child anthropometry using marginal structural modeling approach that takes into account both selection bias and time-varying confounders and (2) to shed some light on policy and programmatic implications. Results show that PSNP has not improved household food insecurity, child dietary diversity, and child anthropometry despite its positive impact on child meal frequency. Household participation in PSNP brought a 0.308 unit gain on child meal frequency. Given the consequence of food insecurity and child undernutrition on physical and mental development, intergenerational cycle of poverty, and human capital formation, the program would benefit if it is tailored to nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions.

Correction: Drought and child undernutrition in Ethiopia: A longitudinal path analysis.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217821.].

Drought and child undernutrition in Ethiopia: A longitudinal path analysis.

BACKGROUND: The increase in the frequency of extreme events due to climate change poses a serious challenge to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of ending hunger by 2030. While evidence exists on the impact of drought on under-five children, its effect during late childhood and early adolescence remains less investigated. OBJECTIVE: This study estimates the impact of concurrent and long-term exposure to drought on linear growth during late childhood and early adolescence. METHODS: Four rounds (2002-2013) of data from the young lives Cohort Study dataset (n = 2000) was used. The associations of concurrent and long-term exposure to drought and Height-for-age z-score was analysed using structural equation modelling techniques. The study also explored the mediating role of interim period growth in the association of early exposure to drought and undernutrition at later age and the role of the Productive Safety Net Program in buffering the impact of drought on child nutrition. RESULTS: Results show that both concurrent and long-term exposure to drought was negatively associated with Height-for-age z-score (p < 0.001). Exposure to drought at age 5, 8, and 12 years is associated with lower Height-for-age z- score at age 5, 8, and 12 years respectively. Exposure to drought at age 5 years was also negatively associated with Height-for-age z-score at age 12 years (p < 0.001). This association was mainly indirect (89%) and mediated through reduced child growth in subsequent years. Participation in productive safety net program by drought-affected children reduces but does not completely offset the negative effects of drought on Height-for-age z-score (p < 0.1). Moreover, girls were more likely to suffer poor growth than boys. CONCLUSION: Drought exposure after the 1,000 days window could have a lasting impact on child growth. Given the importance of this period for child physical and mental development, children beyond the 1,000 days window should also be a focus of disaster relief programs.

Availability, production, and consumption of crops biofortified by plant breeding: current evidence and future potential.

Biofortification is the process of increasing the density of vitamins and minerals in a crop through plant breeding-using either conventional methods or genetic engineering-or through agronomic practices. Over the past 15 years, conventional breeding efforts have resulted in the development of varieties of several staple food crops with significant levels of the three micronutrients most limiting in diets: zinc, iron, and vitamin A. More than 15 million people in developing countries now grow and consume biofortified crops. Evidence from nutrition research shows that biofortified varieties provide considerable amounts of bioavailable micronutrients, and consumption of these varieties can improve micronutrient deficiency status among target populations. Farmer adoption and consumer acceptance research shows that farmers and consumers like the various production and consumption characteristics of biofortified varieties, as much as (if not more than) popular conventional varieties, even in the absence of nutritional information. Further development and delivery of these micronutrient-rich varieties can potentially reduce hidden hunger, especially in rural populations whose diets rely on staple food crops. Future work includes strengthening the supply of and the demand for biofortified staple food crops and facilitating targeted investment to those crop-country combinations that have the highest potential nutritional impact.

Validity of food consumption indicators in the Lao context: moving toward cross-cultural standardization.

BACKGROUND: Cross-cultural validity of food security indicators is commonly presumed without questioning the suitability of generic indicators in different geographic settings. However, ethnic differences in the perception of and reporting on, food insecurity, as well as variations in consumption patterns, may limit the comparability of results. Although research on correction factors for standardization of food security indicators is in process, so far no universal indicator has been identified. OBJECTIVE: The current paper considers the ability of the Food Consumption Score (FCS) developed by the World Food Programme in southern Africa in 1996 to meet the requirement of local cultural validity in a Laotian context. The analysis is based on research that seeks to identify options for correcting possible biases linked to cultural disparities. METHODS: Based on the results of a household survey conducted in different agroecological zones of Laos in 2009, the FCS was validated against a benchmark of calorie consumption. Changing the thresholds and excluding small amounts of food items consumed were tested as options to correct for biases caused by cultural disparities. RESULTS: The FCS in its original form underestimates the food insecurity level in the surveyed villages. However, the closeness of fit of the FCS to the benchmark classification improves when small amounts of food items are excluded from the assessment. CONCLUSIONS: Further research in different cultural settings is required to generate more insight into the extent to which universal thresholds can be applied to dietary diversity indicators with or without locally determined correction factors such as the exclusion of small amounts of food items.

Tradeoffs between income, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning during tropical rainforest conversion and agroforestry intensification.

Losses of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning due to rainforest destruction and agricultural intensification are prime concerns for science and society alike. Potentially, ecosystems show nonlinear responses to land-use intensification that would open management options with limited ecological losses but satisfying economic gains. However, multidisciplinary studies to quantify ecological losses and socioeconomic tradeoffs under different management options are rare. Here, we evaluate opposing land use strategies in cacao agroforestry in Sulawesi, Indonesia, by using data on species richness of nine plant and animal taxa, six related ecosystem functions, and on socioeconomic drivers of agroforestry expansion. Expansion of cacao cultivation by 230% in the last two decades was triggered not only by economic market mechanisms, but also by rarely considered cultural factors. Transformation from near-primary forest to agroforestry had little effect on overall species richness, but reduced plant biomass and carbon storage by approximately 75% and species richness of forest-using species by approximately 60%. In contrast, increased land use intensity in cacao agroforestry, coupled with a reduction in shade tree cover from 80% to 40%, caused only minor quantitative changes in biodiversity and maintained high levels of ecosystem functioning while doubling farmers' net income. However, unshaded systems further increased income by approximately 40%, implying that current economic incentives and cultural preferences for new intensification practices put shaded systems at risk. We conclude that low-shade agroforestry provides the best available compromise between economic forces and ecological needs. Certification schemes for shade-grown crops may provide a market-based mechanism to slow down current intensification trends.