Tata-Cornell Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative (TCi)

VISION AND STRATEGY

Prabhu Pingali Professor & Director

Tata-Cornell Agriculture & Nutrition Initiative (TCi) Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Emerging India

High economic growth &

rising urban middle class

A Green revolution pioneer

Strong & growing private

R&D capacity

Diet diversification & rapid

growth in supermarkets

Rising literacy, especially

for girls

Lagging India

Stubbornly high poverty & hunger and under-nutrition

Large areas with low productive agriculture

Little investment in crops & traits important to the poor

Traditional markets & poor rural infrastructure

Women’s empowerment lagging

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The Indian Context: Enormous

Diversity & Complexity

Renewed political recognition of agriculture as “engine of

growth” & nutrition improvement

Significant national/state investments in rural infrastructure and

agricultural modernization

Provisioning the urban middle class is a new growth opportunity

for small holders

Innovations in genomics, crop improvement, & bio-fortification

provide new solutions

Cell phones and ICTs enable scale-up of knowledge-intensive

technologies and better targeting of nutrition and safety-net

programs

Feminization of smallholder agriculture is an opportunity & a

challenge 3

Great Opportunities for an

Agricultural Renaissance

HH Incomes

HH Food Access

Individual Food

Intake

Individual Nutrition (e.g. stunting,

wasting)

Agricultural Interventions

Other Interventions (e.g. Health, Education)

e.g. relative

prices of foods

and non-foods,

diet diversity

e.g. gender

empowerment,

HH behavior,

demographics

e.g. sanitation

and hygiene,

health

conditions,

nutrition

practices

calorie

requirements

e.g. Ag

productivity growth and

poverty reduction

e.g. food price effects, fortification,

bio-fortification

e.g. ag empowerme

nt, labor

e.g. food safety

Mediating Factors

Agriculture – Nutrition Pathways:

A Conceptual Framework

Source: BMGF Agriculture Division

Agriculture led income growth Small holder productivity

growth

Linking smallholders to markets

Agriculture based rural employment (production and processing)

Food based solutions Bio-fortification

Crop Diversification (legumes, lentils, etc)

Home gardens for vegetables

Back yard dairy

Behavior Change Women’s empowerment and

education

Child feeding practices

Intra-household distribution of food, especially for women of child bearing age

Food handling and safety

Sanitation and Hygiene Clean drinking water

Sanitation facilities

The challenge is to get all these strategies to work together in one place.

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Strategies for Addressing the

Agriculture-Nutrition Nexus

HH Income

HH Food

Access

Indiv

Food Intake

Indiv

Nutrition

Agricultural Interventions

Other Interventions (e.g. Health,

Education)

NREGA, NRLM, RKVY,

NHM

PDS, NFSM PDS, MDM NRHM, NNM, ICDS,

TSM/WATSAN

Indian Government Interventions

along the Pathway

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Complementing other

Agriculture-Nutrition efforts in India IRRI/CIMMYT: Cereal Systems

Intensification in South Asia

(CSISA) IFPRI: Partnerships and

Opportunities to Strengthen &

Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in

India (POSHAN)

MSSRF: Leveraging Agriculture

for Nutrition in South Asia

(LANSA)

ICRISAT/CGIAR:

Bio-fortification; VDSA

IGIDR: Tackling the Agriculture

Nutrition Disconnect in India

(TANDI II)

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Pachora

Akola Amravati

Sevagram

Hyderabad

Koraput

Ranchi

•Commercial agriculture of cotton & Soybean

Pachora

•Commercial agriculture of cotton & Soybean

Akola

• Tribal populations under transformation

Amravati

• ICRISAT Hyderabad

•Small subsistence millet & paddy farmers

Koraput

• Tribal setting with upland rice

Bhubaneswar

& Keonjhar

• Small subsistence paddy farmers

Ranchi

• Rice-Maize systems

Bihar

Sites of Exploratory visit

Keonjhar

Patna

Farmer Group Discussions

We plan to drive across

four states covering a total

of approximately 4000 kms

We will conduct farmer

group interviews in 15

locations

We will corroborate our

findings with other

stakeholders & partners

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Agriculture led growth

Labor market study & opportunities for labor-saving technologies

Commercialization & Nutrition (Soybean and cotton cropping system in Vidarbha)

Food based solutions

Promotion of Bio-fortified food

Animal husbandry and nutrition

PDS & the seasonality of hunger and diet diversification

Behavior Change

Aspirations and Diet change

Digital technologies for behavior change

Women’s literacy & self-help groups – nutrition impact

Sanitation and Hygiene

Clean drinking water supply

Access to toilets & nutrition outcomes

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Potential Research &

InterventionThemes

Agriculture income growth

& Nutrition improvement

Impact of agricultural commercialization on nutritional status of women & children (Chandrapur District, MH)

Agricultural Labor Market Dynamics & opportunities for labor-saving techniques (cotton/soybean – MH; Rice/Maize – BH)

Impact of mechanization/labor-saving techniques on female labor – income & nutrition

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Food Based Interventions

Promotion of biofortified pearl millet – dissemination, adoption & impact (Western MH)

Ex Ante assessment of biofortified rice (Bh, JH, OR)

Goats in small holder systems (RJ)

Impact of PDS on seasonal hunger, labor allocation & diet diversification

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Behavior Change Possibilities

Aspirations, changes in tastes and use of modern media for promoting improved diets (MH, OR)

Use of digital technologies for promoting behavior change (OR)

Self-Help Groups for promoting women’s empowerment & nutrition change (OR)

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Drinking Water & Sanitation

Village level water

purification plants –

pilot & scale up (JH)

Access to toilets &

nutritional outcomes

for women and

children

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The AguaClara story

AguaClara is a Cornell Technology for providing clean drinking water

Tried out in Honduras with reasonable success – provides EPA standard water

Technology applied in India has 2 components –

A filtration unit using the Stacked Rapid Sand Filters (SRSF) technology

A chemical dosing unit for releasing treating water with appropriate chemical dosage

The filtration unit and the chemical doser is placed appropriately within the water supply system promoted by the Government

Work in progress at two villages in Khunti district, Jharkhand – Gufu and Rohnae – tribal, backward setting

UNICEF has shown interest to scale up the chemical doser across the state of Jharkhand in collaboration with the State Government

Data & Metrics

Objective: To understand the pathways & levers for

positive agricultural & nutritional impact, and to assess

the efficacy of proposed interventions.

Minimum set of nutrition data to add to agricultural

household surveys and the opposite (minimum

agricultural data to add to nutrition surveys)

A long-term household panel that captures the

multi-dimensions of the agriculture-nutrition

pathway

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Potential Collaborators

ICRISAT, IFPRI, Harvest Plus, & other CGIAR partners

Delhi University, MSSRF

National and International funded projects like

CAIM etc

State level institutes: MGIMS & PDKV in MH. OR? JH?

Private Sector: Nirmal Seeds, others?

NGOs: PRADAN, Digital Green

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Thank You

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