Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results write by Ahmed, Akhter. This book was released on 2023-01-26. Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The relationships between agricultural diversity, dietary diversity, and gender norms are complex and multi-dimensional. To better understand these links, and how to most effectively promote nutrition- and gender-sensitive agriculture in Bangladesh, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) designed the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. ANGeL aimed to identify actions and investments in agriculture that will help increase farm household income, improve nutrition, and empower women. Using rigorous research, namely, a randomized controlled trial design, IFPRI assessed impacts of the ANGeL project interventions on various outcomes. Over the 17-month implementation period, with no inputs provided to participating farm households besides knowledge from trainings, ANGeL generated useful lessons on strengthening the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in the country. Both men and women benefited from agricultural trainings, yet women learned more from the same trainings. Crop diversity increased substantially in homestead gardens, mainly due to ANGeL’s emphasis on homestead food production from nutritious crops. Farmers also adopted improved production practices. We consistently found that women were more likely to apply knowledge gained from agricultural production trainings to adopt various types of improved agriculture production practices, such as pest disease and control, seed production and care, and use of quality fertilizer. Similarly, improvements in nutrition knowledge were far greater for women and when trainings were combined. These improvements in knowledge had impacts on nutrition outcomes, with increases in household diet quality and child dietary diversity over the project period. The strongest improvements in empowerment came when agriculture, nutrition, and gender sensitization trainings were combined. ANGeL’s household approach empowered women and men in unique ways: while women became more empowered in asset ownership and income decisions, men became more empowered in production and income decisions in select interventions. Attitudes related to gender of both women and men also improved, with more women recognizing that they make important contributions to their communities. ANGeL is the first ministry-led initiative that uses a rigorous impact evaluation to develop an evidence base to design and implement a national program. The ANGeL project is a significant step towards filling critical knowledge and action gaps in the country on promoting nutrition-and gender-sensitive agriculture.
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study write by Tauseef, Salauddin. This book was released on 2017-06-09. Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 1.1 Background Bangladesh has made commendable progress in domestic food production through public investments in agricultural research and extension, public and private investments in irrigation, and liberalization of agricultural input markets. In the early 1970s, Bangladesh was a food-deficit country with a population of about 75 million people. Today, the population has more than doubled, and the country is nearly self-sufficient in rice production, which has tripled over the past three decades. However, Bangladesh’s performance in improving child and maternal nutrition has been less satisfactory. Despite its success in reducing child stunting, the rate of stunting in Bangladesh (36 percent in 2014) remains high (NIPORT 2015). Bangladesh also continues to struggle with deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamin A. Such deficiencies reflect poor diets that are rice-dominated, monotonous, and lacking diversity (Ahmed et al. 2013). Anemia (in part due to iron deficiency) is estimated to affect 26 percent of nonpregnant, non-lactating women, whereas 42 percent suffer from iodine deficiency. About 28 percent women of reproductive age are underweight (NIPORT 2015). In preschool children, the rates of anemia, iodine, and vitamin A deficiencies are 33 percent, 40 percent, and 20 percent, respectively (ICDDR,B 2013). Therefore, government policies and strategies underscore the importance of strengthening the linkage between agriculture and nutrition. Agriculture provides a source of food and nutrients, contributes to income, and affects food prices. Exploring agriculture and nutrition linkages in Bangladesh using data from a multi-round district level panel, a study finds that rice yields are associated with earlier introduction of complementary foods to young children, as well as increases in their weight-for-height (Heady and Hoddinott 2016). Agriculture can also have effects on women’s health, nutrition, empowerment and time allocation, which can have important consequences for their ability to care for family members. Given these links, agriculture has the potential to be a strong driver of nutrition. However, that potential is not being fully realized in Bangladesh because, traditionally, nutrition and agricultural policies have been uncoordinated. Low status of women and gender gaps in health and education contribute to chronic child undernutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even when other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, improve. According to an IFPRI study, women are key actors within the food system, but are historically disempowered in Bangladesh in terms of leadership in the community, control of resources, and control of income (Sraboni, Quisumbing, and Ahmed 2014a). The lack of women’s empowerment weakens the links between agriculture and nutrition. Despite increases in 2 women’s participation in agriculture in Bangladesh in recent years (Asaduzzaman 2010), women face persistent obstacles, particularly due to social and economic constraints, which limit their further inclusion in agriculture. Women have limited control over agricultural assets, as well as limited mobility to go to markets to sell agricultural produce, often relying on husbands and sons to take produce to market. 1.2 Motivation for the Study IFPRI research in Bangladesh, using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted by IFPRI, reveals that women’s empowerment plays a key role in improving household food security and dietary diversity of children, women, and other household members (Sraboni et al. 2014b; Malapit et al. 2015). The study also shows that agricultural production diversity is associated with dietary diversity (Sraboni et al. 2014b). Further, IFPRI research in Bangladesh shows that nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) training imparted to women and men in rural households leads to significant improvements in child nutrition and complementary feeding practices (Ahmed et al. 2016; Menon et al. 2016). Motivated by research-based evidence, IFPRI researchers developed a concept note to strengthen the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in Bangladesh and presented it to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in June 2014. Based on the concept note, an inter-ministerial committee of the Government of Bangladesh approved a pilot research project entitled, “Orienting Agriculture Toward Improved Nutrition and Women’s Empowerment”, also known as “Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages”(ANGeL), for implementation by the MOA, with technical assistance from IFPRI and Helen Keller International (HKI), and an evaluation led by IFPRI. The Minister of Agriculture officially launched the pilot project in October 2015. The project is jointly funded by the Government of Bangladesh and USAID. 1.3 The Baseline Report As part of the evaluation of the ANGeL Project, IFPRI carried out a baseline survey of project participants and a comparison group of households just before the start of project interventions. This report presents the results of the ANGeL baseline survey. It is organized in nine sections. Section 2 describes the salient features of the ANGeL Project. Section 3 presents the progress of the ANGeL Project to date. Section 4 describes the baseline survey. Section 5 gives a profile of the survey households. Section 6 provides the land tenure status of sample households and findings on agricultural production and practices. Section 7 presents patterns of food consumption and nutrition. Section 8 provides findings on women’s empowerment. Section 9 summarizes the main findings and provides conclusions.
Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture, gender, and nutrition linkages: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh
Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture, gender, and nutrition linkages: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture, gender, and nutrition linkages: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh write by Ahmed, Akhter. This book was released on 2022-04-06. Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture, gender, and nutrition linkages: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A growing body of evidence indicates that agricultural development programs can potentially improve production diversity and diet quality of poor rural households; however, less is known about which aspects of program design are effective in diverse contexts and feasible to implement at scale. We address this issue through an evaluation of the Agriculture, Gender, and Nutrition Linkages (ANGeL) project. ANGeL is a randomized controlled trial testing what combination of trainings focused on agricultural production, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization were most effective in improving production diversity and diet quality among rural farm households in Bangladesh. We find that trainings focused on agriculture improved production diversity in terms of greater production of fruits and vegetables grown on the homestead, eggs, dairy, and fish; adding trainings on nutrition and gender did not significantly change these impacts. Trainings focused on both agriculture and nutrition showed the largest impacts on diet quality, with evidence indicating that households in this arm also significantly increased consumption out of homestead production for fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy, and fish. Findings indicate that agricultural training that promotes production of diverse, high-value, nutrient-rich foods can increase production diversity, and this can improve diet quality, but diet quality impacts are larger when agricultural training is combined with nutrition training. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality.
Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades
Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades write by Quisumbing, Agnes R.. This book was released on 2020-08-12. Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The importance of women’s roles for nutrition-sensitive agricultural projects is increasingly recognized, yet little is known about whether such projects improve women’s empowerment and gender equality. We study the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, which was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial by the Government of Bangladesh. The project’s treatment arms included agricultural training, nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), and gender sensitization trainings to husbands and wives together – with these components combined additively, such that the impact of gender sensitization could be distinguished from that of agriculture and nutrition trainings. Empowerment was measured using the internationally-validated project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), and attitudes regarding gender roles were elicited from both men and women, to explore potentially gender-transformative impacts. Our study finds that ANGeL increased both women’s and men’s empowerment, raised the prevalence of households achieving gender parity, and led to small improvements in the gender attitudes of both women and men. We find significant increases in women’s empowerment scores and empowerment status from all treatment arms but with no significant differences across these. We find no evidence of unintended impacts on workloads and we note inconclusive evidence of possible increases in intimate partner violence (IPV). Our results also suggest some potential benefits of bundling nutrition and gender components with an agricultural development intervention; however, many of these benefits seem to be driven by bundling nutrition with agriculture. While we cannot assess the extent to which including men and women within the same treatment arms contributed to our results, it is plausible that the positive impacts of all treatment arms on women’s empowerment outcomes may have arisen from implementation modalities that provided information to both husbands and wives when they were together. The role of engaging men and women jointly in interventions is a promising area for future research.
Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone
Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone write by Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA). This book was released on 2022-04-19. Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Social behavior change communication (SBCC) interventions on gender and nutrition are now commonly implemented, but their impact on diet quality and empowerment is rarely assessed rigorously. We estimate the impact of a nutrition and gender SBCC intervention on women’s dietary diversity and empowerment in Myanmar during an especially challenging period—the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 30 villages in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone. Our analysis employs data from the baseline survey implemented in February 2020 and a phone survey implemented in February–March 2021 and focuses on women’s dietary diversity and sub-indicators of the project-level women’s empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI). Two indicators of women’s empowerment―inputs to productive decisions and access to and decisions over credit―improved, indicating that SBCC interventions can contribute to changing gendered perceptions and behaviors; however, most of the empowerment indicators did not change, indicating that much of gendered norms and beliefs take time to change. Women’s dietary diversity scores were higher by half a food group out of 10 in treatment villages. More women in treatment villages consumed nuts, milk, meat or fish, and Vitamin A–rich foods daily than in control villages. We show that even in the setting of a pandemic, a SBCC intervention can be delivered through a range of tools, including household visits, phone-based coaching, and voice-based training, that are responsive to local and individual resource limitations. Gender messaging can change some gendered perceptions; but it may take more time to change deeply ingrained gender norms. Nutrition messaging can help counter the declines in dietary quality that would be expected from negative shocks to supply chains and incomes.
