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The agriculture sector needs to make effort to increase the production and productivity of the food crops to ensure the sustainable availability and affordability of staple and nutritious crops.
Food crops with high nutritional importance need to be selected and made to give high yields with reasonable resistant to adverse environmental conditions.
The agriculture sector needs to play a role of improving the production and productivity and also work on the awareness of the community on the importance on new crops for nutrition and health.
Besides increasing the production and productivity of crops, increasing the diversity of food crops is crucial to improving nutrition.
High quality nutritious crops like fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts as well as rearing of small ruminant animals and poultries is very important for food and nutrition security of the farming community.
Production of diversity of foods alone does not guarantee improved nutrition of the community.
The agriculture professionals need to also educate the farmers on hygienic preparation of the crops and encourage the home consumption of the nutritious crops, and to take only the surplus to the market.
Teaching the mothers to include these nutritious crops in complementary foods for children under 2 years of age is also very important.
Production of Legumes, Fruits and Vegetables
Legumes (cheap protein sources – poor man’s meat) need to be grown and used for consumption at household level.
The production (back yard gardens, irrigation) and consumption of fruits and vegetables, (rich sources of many micronutrients – vitamins and minerals), are also required to be promoted to the farming communities.
Orienting the farmers to feed adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables to their children and women of reproductive ages is expected from the agriculture sector professionals.
Rearing of Small Ruminant Animals and poultries:
Rearing of small ruminant animals (goats, sheep) and poultries (chicken) are among the low-cost agricultural activities.
The small animals can be consumed at home or can be used as a source of income to buy more nutritious foods for the families.
Eggs for instance can be fed to children and lactating or pregnant women to improve their protein requirements.
Milk and milk products can also be used to improve the nutritional status of the families.
Education and demonstration on better management practices for the small animals and poultries as well as importance of home consumption of animal source foods need to be delivered to the farming communities by the agricultural professionals and development agents.
Promoting High Quality Nutritional Foods:
High quality nutritious crops like the deep colored fruits and leafy vegetables as well as orange fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) can be promoted to new areas to improve the vitamin A deficiency problems in young children.
Depending on the availability and quality of water, small scale fishery farms can also be established at farmers’ training centers (FTC) and demonstrated to the community.
The utilization of fortified foods and their preparations can also be demonstrated to the community on special events or regular basis.
For instance, the importance of iodized salt and its management during storage and cooking can be demonstrated to women groups by the agriculture professionals and extension workers.
Complementary feeding-
The agriculture sector should be the major player in promoting complementary feeding of young children between 6 and 23 months of age for accelerated stunting reduction in Ethiopia.
The agriculture sector needs to promote the production of crops that are important for the formulation of high-quality complementary foods.
The agriculture sector should also take the responsibility of formulating cereal-based local complementary foods with the inclusion of 20-30% legumes and nuts.
The Agricultural extension and development agents need to own the complementary feeding component of the national nutrition program.
The Agricultural extensionists and development agents need to be trained on the consistency (appropriate thickness) and feeding frequency and amount of the complementary food.
They are also required to get training on the enrichment of complementary foods (adding meet powder, using milk instead of water, use of oils and fats, use of sugar and iodized salt).
Food Quality, Food Safety, Hygiene, and sanitation:
The foods that are consumed by humans are also needed by other organisms like bacterial, molds and yeasts.
They are also important for rodents and other pests. The micro and macro-organism that feed on human foods will reduce its nutritional and functional qualities and compromise its safety for humans.
The agriculture sector needs to make sure that the farming families are aware of all the food hazards from production through storage and preparation to consumption.
Postharvest management practices and transforming perishable foods to amore storable ones by using simple and affordable food processing technologies like drying, cooking, packaging, preserving and so on need to be promoted by the agriculture sector.
Hygienic practices in food storage, preparation and consumption is a crucial issue in maintaining human health.
The sources of water and its quality, the cleanliness of the food handlers and the sanitation of utensils used for food handling are all important issued.
Spoilage of foods by microbes and other natural processes will drive the nutrients to be unavailable for our body to readily absorb them.
Therefore, the hygiene and sanitation issues in food preparation and consumption are very important.
The agriculture sectors need to work in collaboration with the health sector to ensure proper management of wastes and safety and hygiene of water for domestic and agricultural consumptions.
BY KHAS.
