Designing nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA): a review

Abstract

Despite the efforts to end malnutrition through intensive agriculture of caloric crops, micronutrient deficiencies and other forms of malnutrition persist in vulnerable communities worldwide. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions are recognized as chances to address the causes of malnutrition. In this work, the different types of NSA interventions were explored, as well as the pathways through which they can improve nutrition (e.g., increasing biofortified crops and income generation via agricultural sales for a positive impact on access to nutritious foods, and simultaneously involving nutrition education to improve care practices and eventually nutritional status). Some NSA interventions focus on one pathway. Well-designed interventions, however, should follow multi-pathway approaches targeting the underlying causes of undernutrition within the selected population. The circumstances in which certain indicators should be used to measure the impact of an NSA intervention in each stage of the full pathway were also explained, as well as the need of enhancing the design of such interventions. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been employed to solve agriculture-related issues, but it has not been used to identify the optimal types of NSA interventions, metrics, and indicators based on the context of the community, priorities and objectives of the project managers and designers, etc.

Keywords:

• Double burden of malnutrition (DBM)
• nutrition indicators
• food system

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) for providing financial assistance.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author contributions

Arturo Mayorga-Martínez: Conceptualization; Investigation; Writing – original draft. Christopher Kucha: Conceptualization; Writing: review and editing. Ebenezer Kwofie: Conceptualization, Writing – review and editing. Michael Ngadi: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Project Administration; Supervision; Writing: review and editing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the IFAD under Grant 2000002023.