‘Agroecology’ raises kids’ food diversity by 10 pct

Bronwen Powell, a research associate at the Indonesia-headquartered Center for International Forestry Research, says the researchers used a rigorous study design to demonstrate the effectiveness of an agroecological intervention to improve diet quality in a remote region of Tanzania that faces a lot of obstacles such limited rainfall that occurs over a short rainy season.

“Poor quality diets are one of the top determinants of mortality (death) globally, and this research has clearly demonstrated a strategy to improve diet quality,” explains Powell, who was not involved in the study.

“For years, we have poured research and development funding into trying to reduce food security by increasing crop yields for staple crops – a strategy that effectively reduced hunger during the green revolution but has done little to improve diet quality.”

According to Powell, part of the problem with just increasing food availability “is that it fails to deal with the fact that it is not availability, but access to high quality nutritious foods that is the main barrier to improving diet quality”.