PUBLICATIONS

× Little is known about whether reductions in intimate partner violence (IPV) from transfer programs persist. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that women in rural Bangladesh who received cash transfers with complementary nutrition programming (including group-based training, home visits, and community meetings) experienced sustained reductions in IPV four years after the program ended. Neither cash transfers alone, nor food transfers with or without complementary nutrition programming, showed sustained impacts on IPV. Evidence suggests that cash with complementary nutrition programming sustained IPV reductions through persistent increases in women’s bargaining power, costs to men of perpetrating violence, and men’s emotional well-being.

× Could perceived relative economic standing affect citizens’ support for political leaders and institutions? We explore this question by examining Pakistan's national unconditional cash transfer program, the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). Leveraging a regression discontinuity approach using BISP's administrative data and an original survey experiment, we find that perceptions of relative deprivation color citizen reactions to social protection. When citizens do not feel relatively deprived, receiving cash transfers has little sustained effect on individuals’ reported level of support for their political system and its leaders. However, when citizens feel relatively worse off, those receiving cash transfers become more politically satisfied while those denied transfers become more politically disgruntled. Moreover, the magnitude of the reduction in political support among non-beneficiaries is larger than the magnitude of the increase in political support among beneficiaries. This has important implications for our understanding of the political ramifications of rising perceived inequality.

× In the context of rural Bangladesh, we assess whether agriculture training alone, nutrition behavior communication change (BCC) alone, combined agriculture training and nutrition BCC, or agriculture training and nutrition BCC combined with gender sensitization improve: (a) production diversity, either on household fields or through crop, livestock, or aquaculture activities carried out near the family homestead; and (b) diet diversity and the quality of household diets. All treatment arms were implemented by government employees. Implementation quality was high. No treatment increased production diversification of crops grown on fields. Treatment arms with agricultural training did increase the number of different crops grown in homestead gardens and the likelihood of any egg, dairy, or fish production but the magnitudes of these effect sizes were small. All agricultural treatment arms had, in percentage terms, large effects on measures of levels of homestead production. However, because baseline levels of production were low, the magnitude of these changes in absolute terms was modest. Nearly all treatment arms improved measures of food consumption and diet with the largest effects found when nutrition and agriculture training were combined. 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. Interventions that combine agricultural training and nutrition BCC can improve both production diversity and diet quality, but they are not a panacea. They can, however, contribute toward better diets of rural households.

× The Nexus Project is a collaboration between IFPRI and its partners, including national statistical agencies and research institutions. Our aim is to improve the quality of the social accounting matrices (SAMs) used for computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The Nexus Project develops toolkits and establishes common data standards, procedures, and classification systems for constructing and updating national SAMs. This addresses the need for greater transparency and consistency in SAM construction to strengthen model-based research and policy analysis in developing countries. Nexus SAMs allows for more robust cross-country comparisons of national and sub-national economic structure, especially agriculture-food systems. The Nexus Project’s guiding principles are that all data should be traceable to original sources and/or assumptions, and that all SAMs should be freely available online. Greater transparency and accessibility should facilitate more data validation and participation of the modeling community. Statistics are continuously being revised and errors are often only identified when data is used for analysis, and so we welcome your suggestions on how the SAMs can be improved to reflect new and/or better information.

× Agriculture is the mainstay of Sri Lanka’s rural economy and employs about 26.5 percent of the country’s total employed population, rural and urban (Department of Census and Statistics [DCS] 2023a). Paddy occupies the largest portion of cropland; tea, rubber, coconut, spices, fruits, vegetables, pulses, and other cereals occupy the rest (Thibbotuwawa 2021; Senanayake and Premaratne 2016; Adhikari nayake 2005). Nonetheless, food and nutrition security remain a major challenge: nearly 3.9 million people, or 17 percent of Sri Lankans, experience moderately acute food insecurity; nearly 10,000 are severely acute food insecure; and 56 percent of households have adopted food-based coping strategies, including reducing meal portion sizes (36 percent) and skipping meals (19 percent) (FAO 2023a). Moreover, the prevalence of underweight in women and anaemia in adolescent girls and women is high in South Asia (UNICEF 2023), and micronutrient (iron, zinc, and/or folate) deficiencies are also highest there (72 percent).

× Nepal is a mountainous, landlocked, and low-middle-income country in the South Asian region. Agriculture is the principal occupation housing 69% of the labor force, followed by tourism. Nepal witnesses frequent soil erosion, landslides, flash floods, and droughts with lasting impacts on most livelihoods. A recent Asian Development Bank study estimates that before 2050, the country will lose 2.2 percent of its yearly GDP to climate change. Energy, agriculture, water resources, forestry, biodiversity, and the health sector are at high risk due to the negative impact of climate change. The National Adaptation Plan (NAP) 2021 – 2050 is the guiding document along with the Second and the Third National Communication to the UNFCCC. The Second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) (Jan 2021 – Dec 2030) outlines the sectoral activity-based and policy targets and reduction in emissions in select sectors, all conditional on international support.

× Agriculture is multi-functional, producing economic goods including food, feed, fibre, and fuel, as well as providing several intangible or non-tradable services to society free of cost. Non-tradable services, unlike economic goods, remain unpriced; as a result, farmers are not compensated monetarily for the benefits of the several non-tradable services they provide through agriculture. Recognizing the monetary value of non-tradable ecosystem services is crucial to incentivize farmers to adopt eco-friendly technologies and practices for the sustainable development of agriculture. Through a meta-analysis of the existing evidence on ecosystem services, this study attempts to estimate the value of ecosystem services by using direct and indirect valuation methods—for example, carbon sequestration, methane emission, nutrient availability, biological nitrogen fixation, and water saving—generated by several important technological and agronomic interventions, namely the direct seeding of rice (DSR), zero-tillage in wheat, leguminous crops, organic manure, integrated nutrient management, and agroforestry, based on studies conducted in India. It also explores the trade-offs between the non-tradable and tradable ecosystem services attributable to these interventions. The monetary value of the non-tradable services resulting from most of these interventions is quite large, 34–77% of the total value of all the ecosystem services. However, not all interventions result in a win-win situation that yields improvements in both tradable and non-tradable outcomes. While no-till wheat, legumes, and integrated nutrient management result in a win-win outcome, there are trade-offs between the tradable and non tradable ecosystem services in the cases of directed seed rice, organic manure, and agroforestry. This evidence suggests that not all agricultural technologies and practices are beneficial for farmers, despite their higher environmental benefits. Thus, the findings of this study imply that agricultural policy should provide incentives for the adoption of technologies and practices to conserve ecosystems and natural resources.

× Progress to improve nutrition among women, infants and children in South Asia has fallen behind the pace needed to meet established global targets. Renewed political commitment and monitoring of nutrition interventions are required to improve coverage and quality of care. Our study aimed to assess the availability of national nutrition policies, programmes, and coverage data of nutrition interventions for women, children, and adolescents in eight countries in South Asia. We reviewed relevant policy and programme documents, examined questionnaires used in the most recent rounds of 20 nationally representative surveys, and generated an evidence gap map on the availability of policies, programmes, and survey data to track progress on coverage of globally recommended nutrition interventions. Current policies and programmes in South Asian countries addressed almost all the recommended nutrition interventions targeted at women, children, and adolescents. There was a strong policy focus in all countries, except Maldives, on health system platforms such as antenatal and postnatal care and child growth and development. Survey data on nutrition intervention coverage was most available in India and Nepal, while Bangladesh and Bhutan had the least. Though countries in South Asia have committed to national nutrition policies and strategies, national surveys had substantial data gaps, precluding progress tracking of nutrition intervention coverage. Greater attention and effort are needed for multisectoral collaboration to promote and strengthen nutrition data systems.

× Many cash transfer programs include complementary nutrition training, with the aim of encouraging households to use transfer resources toward improving child nutrition. Evidence indicates that these bundled programs, if intensive and well-implemented, can be effective in improving child nutritional status. However, little is known about how adding nutrition training to transfer programs affects their economic impacts. In particular, few studies have assessed whether nutrition programming may induce reallocation of transfer resources from physical capital to human capital. Scarce evidence also exists as to whether these tradeoffs depend on the transfer modality. We study a pilot program called the Transfer Modality Research Initiative in Bangladesh (TMRI), designed as a randomized controlled trial. TMRI provided cash or food transfers, with or without intensive group-based nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), to mothers of young children in poor rural households. We find that adding nutrition BCC to cash or food transfers leads to larger impacts on both consumption and assets – potentially surprising, given that the transfer value is unchanged. Analysis of mechanisms suggests that these effects occur through the BCC inducing increases in income generation, through investments in livelihoods. Suggestive evidence indicates that the effects of TMRI’s BCC are plausibly due to the intensive group-based format, which increased social capital for participant women and their household members, as well as improved participant women’s agency and self-confidence, knowledge, and input into household decisions. Results indicate that adding nutrition BCC to cash or food transfer programs do not necessarily induce a tradeoff between investing in human capital versus physical capital, but can rather strengthen impacts on both if appropriately designed.

× While there is growing global momentum behind food systems strategies to improve planetary and human health—including nutrition—there is limited evidence of what types of food systems interventions work. Evaluating these types of interventions is challenging due to their complex and dynamic nature and lack of fit with standard evaluation methods. In this paper, we draw on a portfolio of six evaluations of food systems interventions in Africa and South Asia that were intended to improve nutrition. We identify key methodological challenges and formulate recommendations to improve the quality of such studies. We highlight five challenges: a lack of evidence base to justify the intervention; the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the interventions; addressing attribution; collecting or accessing accurate and timely data; and defining and measuring appropriate outcomes. In addition to more specific guidance, we identify six cross-cutting recommendations, including a need to use multiple and diverse methods and flexible designs. We also note that these evaluation challenges present opportunities to develop new methods and highlight several specific needs in this space.

× BACKGROUND| Healthy diets are necessary for optimal growth and to carry out daily mental and physical tasks. Unhealthy diets drive all forms of malnutritionand dietary risks are the number one risk factor globally for deaths and disability (Global Burden of Disease collaborators, 2019). Given the importance of diet as a key driver of health and wellbeing, this Data Note examines available data from three rounds of India’s National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) on food consumption patterns of adult men and women.
MEASUREMENT| NFHS asks women (15-49 years) and men (15-54 years) how frequently (daily, weekly, occasionally or never) they consume nine food groups including two unhealthy food groups (Figure 1). The 2020 Nutrient Requirements for Indiansoutlines the quantity per day of vegetarian foods to be consumed as part of a balanced diet (ICMR-NIN, 2020). The guidelines indicate that pulses can be replaced with animal-source foods for non-vegetarians. Thus, for this Data Note we constructed an additional indicator –daily consumption of pulses or egg or fish or chicken or meat –to estimate any protein consumption (Figure 1). Estimates are first presented at the national levelto provide an overall view of how diets have changed from 2005-06 to 2019-21. On subsequent pages, we show trends between 2015-16 and 2019-21 by stateand district.
USE| This data note provides a broad view of diet patterns among adults and should be used for further inquiry by stakeholders including researchers, policymakers, and program staff at multiple levels. We recognize that NFHS is not a detailed dietary survey and does not ask about individual food items or the quantity of food consumed. Thus, this data note should be used as a starting point for discussion and to identify major areas of improvement in consumption and measurement.

× This paper documents the different steps followed to construct Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Balochistan for the year 2019-20. More precisely, it describes the estimation methods and the nature of the data used in developing the SAM at the subnational level. The Balochistan SAM includes 13 production activities, 4 factors of production, 4 household groups and rest of the world account, assessing linkages between production, factor income distribution, and households’ incomes and expenditures, and capturing distributional effects. The Balochistan SAM reveals that the shares of services and manufacturing sector remains lower than national average and there is an overwhelming contribution of the livestock and horticulture sector in the subnational economy which has the potential in boosting national livestock and horticulture exports. Further, the consumption pattern in Balochistan supports Engle’s law of consumption showing that with an increase in households’ income, the share of expenditure on food decreases and consumption of non-food items increases.
This paper is organized as follows. The first section presents an overview of Balochistan province of Pakistan. The second Section highlights the background of Social Accounting Matrix and its key features. The third section review the literature and various efforts made to develop Pakistan SAM with varying features. The fourth section describes the process and the methodology used to develop SAM. The fifth section presents the structure of Balochistan SAM, accounts, and data sources and elaborates the process and techniques used to balance Balochistan SAM. The sixth section highlights the structure of Balochistan’s economy and an evaluation of value addition. The seventh section underscores the key findings of Balochistan SAM. The final section underlines how the SAM Balochistan can contribute to evidence-based policy making that helps in economic growth and reducing poverty in Balochistan.

× Common pool resources provide important socioeconomic and ecological benefits for local communities and beyond, with around 2.5-3 billion people depending on commons for their livelihoods and other needs globally. In India, common lands constitute around a quarter of the country’s landmass, help meet the subsistence and livelihood needs of at least 350 million people and are of social and cultural significance to rural communities, as well as providing ecosystem services that benefit wider society. Despite these vital contributions, India’s commons have been facing widespread degradation, and policymakers tend to perceive some commons as “wastelands” because their true extent and value is not known. This study contributes to improved understanding of the magnitude and vitality of commons for rural communities, focusing on land-based commons in India. We provide a national assessment of the spatial extent and usage of common lands across districts, using publicly available spatial datasets and 2011 Census of India data and Household Census data. We further examine the spatial overlap between common lands and officially recognized protected areas to shine light on the possible locations where sustainable management or restoration of commons can potentially add value to conservation, in addition to benefiting local communities. Our results show that common lands are spread out spatially across the country and are intertwined, with more than one type of commons often present within the same district. Further, communities, especially poor, marginalized and indigenous communities such as Scheduled Tribe rely on forest commons, barren lands, pastures and culturable wastelands for their livelihoods, including for extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for housing and cooking, grazing livestock, among others. Common lands and the communities that depend on them also often live in proximity to or are surrounded by officially recognized protected areas. Our study points to the need to drill down to more disaggregated level for commons mapping, which, in conjunction with information on the values of ecosystem services provide by commons, could inform land use policies and conservation and development planning.

× Agriculture-nutrition linkages in developing countries remain complex and continue evolving as weather and market risks intensify due to climate change and other geopolitical and socioeconomic factors. Knowledge gaps remain regarding the exact interrelationship among these dimensions of agriculture-nutrition linkages. This study aimed to partly fill this knowledge gap by assessing how the associations between home production of various food groups and household/individual level nutritional outcomes are affected by weather anomalies and price risks of these food groups in the market, using panel data from India. Our results indicate that, generally, the associations between home production and nutritional outcomes are greater under more normal weather, with rainfall and temperature during the production season being closer to the historical median, potentially because of greater productivity realized and sufficient harvest that can be consumed throughout the year. The associations are also greater when households face greater market price fluctuations of food commodities conditional on the distance to the market, potentially because such price risks lead to reduced food purchases from the market. These effects generally hold not only during the average month but also during the lean month, indicating robustness against seasonality. These results also hold more consistently in remote areas than in areas closer to the market. Overall, our results suggest that efforts to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture in developing countries should also consider evolving patterns of weather risks and agrifood market price risks to improve their effectiveness.

× This Data Note provides an update on the prevalence of anemia and its determinants in India at state and districts levels, as well as coverage of a nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions. Data were from the National Family Health Surveys in 2005 06, 2015 2016 and 2019 21. We first report national trends for 8 population groups (Figure 1 below). For each population group, we show anemia prevalence by severity category and at state and district levels using the two latest rounds of data. Lastly, we show recent trends in determinants of anemia and, nutrition and health interventions.

× Nutrition-specific interventions are aimed at improving the food, health, and care environment for women and children during the first 1000 days. These interventions span pregnancy, postnatal, and early childhood periods and include food and micronutrient supplementation, nutrition education and/or counselling, growth monitoring and promotion, as well as routine immunization, deworming, and care during illness. At 90% coverage, these interventions can contribute to 20% reduction in stunting and 61% reduction in severe wasting. India’s policy framework for health and nutrition is robust and includes most evidence-based nutrition and health interventions. Two large-scale national program platforms – the Integrated Child Development Services and the National Health Mission – together deliver these interventions across the country. India’s efforts at scaling up nutrition interventions are now also bolstered by the National Nutrition Mission. This Data Note describes the coverage of key nutrition and health interventions for which data are available in the National Family Health Surveys for 2015-2016 and 2019-2021. To examine coverage of interventions, indicators were created based on global definitions and making adaptations to Indian policy context where necessary. Data on women of reproductive age (15-49 years) with a child below five years of age from the most recent birth was used to compute these indicators. Indicator definitions are provided in Annex 1 of this Note.

× A set of global nutrition targets for maternal and child nutrition together with diet related non communicable diseases ( to be achieved by 2025 was endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2013 These targets provide goals against which progress towards ending malnutrition in all its forms can be measured and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals This data note describes trends in multiple forms of malnutrition and NCD outcomes at the national, state, and district levels for India using survey data from NFHS 3 2005 06 NFHS 4 2015 2016 and NFHS 5 2019 2021 Insights on other malnutrition targets such as anemia and breastfeeding will be forthcoming

× The Ukraine War has had major implications for food security and food systems across the world given the important role both Russia and Ukraine play in global food, fertilizer, and energy markets. Russia and Ukraine together supply about 12% of global agricultural exports on a caloric basis and over 30% of global wheat exports.1 Fertilizer and energy markets experienced rising prices and supply disruptions as well. The Russia-Ukraine conflict heavily impacted food security in Sri Lanka which is dependent on imports from the Caspian region. The impact of this shock has been compounded for Sri Lanka which has been suffering from a severe economic crisis due to a lack of foreign reserves, a debt default, high inflation, import restrictions, and shortages of critical goods and services. These compound crises have halted Sri Lanka’s progress on economic development and its achievement of the SDGs. Progress had been significant with the share of undernourished population declining from 16.7% in 2001 to 3.4% in 2020.2 During the same period the prevalence of stunting declined from 20.6% to 16%.3 The prevalence of wasting among children under age five declined from 15.9% in 2000 to 15.1% in 2016. Sri Lanka was ranked 65th out of 116 countries on the Global Hunger Index and 77th out of 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index in 2022 suggesting the need for some improvements in the food system. The latest food security assessment by the World Food Program (WFP) notes that about 30% of the population of 22 million (6.26 Mn people) are food insecure.4 Further, most households are regularly employing food-based coping strategies such as eating less preferred and less nutritious food and reducing the amount of food they eat. Further, an estimated 200,000 households are using emergency livelihood coping strategies that are likely to severely impact their income-generating activities and it is anticipated that more people are turning to these coping strategies as the crisis deepens. Against this backdrop, this policy brief explores the impacts of the evolving crisis in Ukraine on the nexus of poverty, agriculture, and food security in Sri Lanka and the possible avenues for mitigating the negative implica-tions of export restrictions, rising import costs, and inflation.

× The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe income losses, but little is known about its impacts on diets and nutritional adequacy, or the effectiveness of social protection interventions in mitigating dietary and nutritional impacts. We first assess the likely impacts of COVID-19 shocks in Bangladesh and Myanmar on poverty and food and nutrient consumption gaps. We then analyze the estimated mitigating effects of five hypothetical social protection interventions of a typical monetary value: (1) cash transfers; (2) in-kind transfers of common rice; (3) in-kind transfers of fortified rice enriched with multiple essential micronutrients; (4) vouchers for a diversified basket of rice and non-staple foods; and (5) food vouchers with fortified rice instead of common rice. The simulation results suggest modest effectiveness of the cash transfers for mitigating poverty increases and little effectiveness of all five transfers for preventing increasing food and nutrient consumption gaps among the poorest 40%. Rice fortification is, however, effective at closing key micronutrient consumption gaps and could be a suitable policy instrument for averting ‘hidden hunger’ during economic crises.

× This study addresses the policy-relevant question of how, in the face of major economic shocks, social protection interventions can more effectively mitigate undernutrition. In particular, it considers the scope of scaled-up fortification of staples to avert the “hidden hunger” of micronutrient deficiencies. As a re-cent and still relevant example, it focuses on the kinds of economic shocks brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic which, especially during the first lockdowns of April 2020, resulted in severe job and income losses for the poor and thus reduction and changes in spending, with urban and rural non-farm households typically affected more severely than farm households. However, the findings of this study are relevant for other economic shocks that severely reduce household’s disposable income.
In this study, we examine the effects of stylized economic shocks on household incomes in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Indonesia, with a focus on the difference between recommended and actual consumption of particular foods and nutrients. To this end, we use a novel combination of three integrated models to examine impacts and experiment with different types of social protection interventions. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, these are stylized models of the COVID-19 shock and government lock-downs; in Myanmar, however, we model the economic instability that took place after the February 2021 military takeover, which – in conjunction with COVID-19 impacts – resulted in an estimated 18 percent contraction in GDP (World Bank 2022).

× One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is reducing food loss and waste (FLW) across all stages of food value chains, including the on-farm production, the off-farm postharvest, processing, and distribution, and the household consumption stages. We employ general equilibrium models for Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria to assess the economywide implications of reducing FLW at different stages of value chains. Halving FLW results in GDP increases of between 1.1 and 2 percent, with up to 13 million people lifted out of poverty across the three countries. Diets also improve – especially in Kenya and Nigeria – due to greater availability and lower prices of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables. Although most of the gains originate from reducing FLW in the on-farm production stage, strong intersectoral linkages mean around 30 percent of measured GDP gains are realized in non-agricultural sectors. Reducing waste at the final consumption stage has small negative impacts on GDP as households purchase less food without reducing their food intake. We conclude that the significant economywide gains provide a justification for adopting FLW reduction strategies, although costing the policy and investment options needed to reduce FLW is an important area for future research.

× Many development agencies design and implement interventions that aim to reach, benefit, and empower rural women across the value chain in activities ranging from production, to processing, to marketing. Determining whether and how such interventions empower women, as well as the constraints faced by different value chain actors, requires quantitative and qualitative tools. We describe how we adapted the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (pro-WEAI), a mixed-methods tool for studying empowerment in development projects, to include aspects of agency relevant for multiple types of value chain actors. The resulting pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) includes quantitative and qualitative instruments developed over the course of four studies. Studies in the Philippines (2017), Bangladesh (2017), and Malawi (2019) were intended to diagnose areas of disempowerment to inform programming, whereas the Benin (2019) study was an impact assessment of an agricultural training program. The pro-WEAI+MI includes all indicators included in pro-WEAI, plus a dashboard of complementary indicators and recommended qualitative instruments. These tools investigate the empowerment of women in different value chains and nodes and identify barriers to market access and inclusion that may restrict empowerment for different value chain actors. Our findings highlight three lessons. First, the sampling strategy needs to be designed to capture the key actors in a value chain. Second, the market inclusion indicators cannot stand alone; they must be interpreted alongside the core pro-WEAI indicators. Third, not all market inclusion indicators will be relevant for all value chains and contexts. Users should research the experiences of women and men in the target value chains in the context of the programto select priority market inclusion indicators.

× “Transforming Odisha’s Agri-Food Systems”, a policy roundtable meeting and discussion held at Bhuba-neswar, Odisha, was inaugurated on October 20, 2022. It was attended by a number of honoured guests, including: the Hon’ble Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment (A&FE), Fisheries & Animal Re-sources Development Department with august presence of the Agriculture Production Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary of the Department of Water Resources (DoWR), the Principal Secretary of the Department of Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment, the Principal Secretary of the Department of Co-operation, the Director of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) South Asia region, the Directors of the Departments of Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment and Fisheries & Animal Resources Development, senior officials from A&FE, F&ARD, the DoWR, the Odisha State Seeds Corporation, representatives of various NGOs, and progressive farmers.

× International food prices have become increasingly volatile in recent decades, with “global food crises” in 2008, 2011 and most recently in 2022. The 2008 crisis prompted international agencies to ambitiously extend their monitoring of domestic food prices in developing countries to strengthen early warning systems and food and nutrition surveillance. However, food inflation by itself is not sufficient for measuring disposable income or food affordability; for that, one must measure either changes in income or changes in an income proxy. Here we propose the use of a low-cost income proxy that can be monitored at the same high frequency and spatial granularity as food prices: the wages of poor unskilled workers. While not all poor people are unskilled wage earners, changes in the real “reservation wages” of low skilled activities are likely to be highly predictive of changes in disposable income for poorer segments of society (Deaton and Dreze 2002). We demonstrate this by estimating changes in “food wages” – wages deflated food price indices – during well-documented food price crises in Ethiopia (2008, 2011 and 2022), Sri Lanka (2022) and Myanmar (2022). In all these instances, food wages declined by 20-30%, often in the space of a few months. Moreover, in Myanmar we use a household panel survey data to show that the decline in food wages over the course of 2022 closely matches estimate declines in household disposable income and proportional increases in income-based poverty. We argue that the affordability of nutritious food for “all people, at all times” is a critically important dimension of food security, and we advocate for monitoring the wages of the poor as a cheap and accurate means of capturing that dimension.

× The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization that comprises seven nations, five of which are from South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka) and two from Southeast Asia (Myanmar and Thailand). BIMSTEC aims to increase trade including agri-food products to much higher levels than its historical low values lying much below potential. In 2020, intra-BIMSTEC trade accounted for a mere 6.15% of the total trade among its member countries. In contrast, intra-ASEAN trade made up around 23% of the total trade within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). These figures highlight the significant room for growth
in intra-regional trade among BIMSTEC member countries. Importantly the low share of intra BIMSTEC trade is not due to greater integration with supra-BIMSTEC partners. This policy note seeks to spell out some of the key agricultural trade policy-related challenges in the BIMSTEC region and their implications for economic integration in the area.

× Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a flagship program of the Government of India, offers nutrition services to support child development. One major component of ICDS is the Supplementary Nutrition Program (SNP), which provides take-home rations for all children under 6 years of age and pregnant and lactating women to bridge the calorie and protein gaps in their diets. Current SNP guidelines recommend providing the rations in the form of micronutrient-fortified food or energy-dense food to bridge the nutrient gap between the Recommend Dietary Allowance and Average Daily Intake (MoWCD 2014). In Tamil Nadu, the take-home rations are a fortified-blended product called Sathumaavu. Coverage of take-home rations in Tamil Nadu is above the national average for all beneficiary groups, but variability across districts is high (IIPS and ICF 2021). Little is known about household use of Sathumaavu, perceptions of its quality, or its integration into standard diets. This study, a collaboration between LEAD at Krea University and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) with the Government of Tamil Nadu, explored the uptake and use of Sathumaavu among women and children across the state. The study aimed to: • Assess the uptake and use of the ICDS-provided Sathumaavu in Tamil Nadu• Examine demand- and supply-side factors related to the coverage and use of Sathumaavu

× Empowering women is crucial for a country's development because it leads to greater economic growth, increased productivity, and improved social outcomes. When women have access to education, economic opportunities, and decision-making power, they are better able to contribute to their families and communities. This can lead to increased income, improved health and education outcomes, and reduced poverty. In Bangladesh, women and girls still face considerable barriers to accessing education and economic opportunities, and are often subjected to traditional gender roles that may hinder them. Although women play a crucial role in agriculture, they experience many challenges that limit their productivity and economic potential, such as limited access to credit and training. They are also often marginalized and excluded from decision-making processes. As the complexity and importance of gender equity in development work has increased, so too has the need to measure empowerment and progress made toward improving empowerment and achieving gender parity. In Bangladesh, there has been growing momentum by the government and development partners to use evidence to inform gender-sensitive and -responsive policies and programs. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) has emerged as a key tool to achieve this objective. This brief examines how WEAI data have informed and supported the design of policies and programs to promote women's empowerment in Bangladesh.

× The focus of research on international trade has recently shifted from industries and countries to firms. Firm heterogeneity is shown to be a determinant of trade at both the intensive margin (increase exports per firm/product) and extensive margins (the number of firms exporting – new products, new partners, new varieties, and new prices). It is now widely accepted that exporting firms are larger, comparatively productive, more skilled, and capital-intensive, and pay higher wages than non-exporting firms.
The innovations in international trade literature that explains both the emergence as well as levels and the nature of trade flows through value chain integration necessitates examining trade-based exchanges at the highest possible levels of product disaggregation. Developments in trade theory emphasize that it is individual firms not countries that trade and analysis needs to incorporate firm characteristics in decisions and ability for exporting and importing. Firms are the appropriate unit of analysis for trade flows. It helps several paradoxes once the import of firm heterogeneity is understood.
Despite the substantive importance of granular level data and the significant level of disaggregated product-level bilateral trade flow data and enhanced computing power that are becoming available, most studies have tended to rely on analysis with high level of aggregation. Recent research on firm heterogeneity in international trade highlights the importance of extensive margins i.e., new products, new partners, new varieties, and cumulative of these i.e., new prices in trade patterns and firms' responses to trade liberalization and other policy changes. However, the high dimensionality of the data and the large number of responses to changes can easily overwhelm researchers. Additionally, bigger data sets may contain more noise, which can mask important systematic patterns. In analysis of trade flows, notwithstanding the rising incidence of differentiated products (varieties) and value chains that transcend national boundaries, methods in agri-food trade analysis in particular have not kept pace in terms of empirical methods and suitable data.

× The stakeholder identification is initiated under the CGIAR Research Initative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) to identify with whom the project needs to engage with to achieve food system transformations. It brings together all the stakeholders working on food systems issues in a so-called ‘living’ database that can quickly identify potential stakeholders in each of the SHIFT target countries. Understanding, engaging and capacitating the different food system stakeholders will provide diverse perspectives to foster collaborations to leverage transformative actions across the system to improve outcomes. This stakeholder identification is a first step to building an understanding of who (people and institutions) is engaged with food system issues at different governance levels, including public and private actors, and those working in formal and informal sectors at national, regional, and local government levels.
In addition, the SHiFT country engagement approach is looking to connect with and strengthen existing stakeholder (coordination) mechanisms or platforms in food system transformation rather than establish new collaborative structures. Applying a stakeholder platform mapping tool to detect (coordination) structures engaged around food system issues, existing platforms, and networks are identified.

× There is ample data and literature that shows how women’s experiences in low-paid, short-term migration vary from those of men, and that experiences are linked to women’s empowerment – captured by the interrelated dimensions of resources, agency, and achievements. While considerable attention is paid to understanding the generalized notion of women’s empowerment, it is also key to distinguish empowerment in specific realms, including economic empowerment, agriculture, health and nutrition, and migration. To better understand the agency of female migrants, a Women’s Empowerment in Migration Index (WEMI) was developed. This brief discusses work to assess this index with data from women migrants in the Bangladesh to West Asia migration corridor.

× Transformation of the agri-food system (AFS) is a leading pathway to achieve the USG Global Food Security Strategy Objective 1 of “Inclusive agriculture-led growth”. The AFS encompasses the primary agricultural sector, as well as all upstream and downstream agriculture-related activities. An expansion of the AFS’s off-farm components is central to the process of agricultural transformation and is strongly associated with economic development. The Percent change in value-added in the agri-food system (AgGDP+) and Employment in the agri-food system (AgEMP+) indicators are useful to track this process.

× Transformation of the agri-food system (AFS) is a leading pathway to achieve the USG Global Food Security Strategy Objective 1 of “Inclusive agriculture-led growth”. The AFS encompasses the primary agricultural sector, as well as all upstream and downstream agriculture-related activities. An expansion of the AFS’s off-farm components is central to the process of agricultural transformation and is strongly associated with economic development. The Percent change in value-added in the agri-food system (AgGDP+) and Employment in the agri-food system (AgEMP+) indicators are useful to track this process.

× The 48th issue of Abstract Digest features studies on anemia highlighting trends, inequities, and determinants of anemia among various population groups. Another study examined micronutrient deficiencies and their association with cognitive function among children and adolescents. This issue also includes the latest Lancet 2023 Breastfeeding Series editorial and three-papers that outline the multifaceted and highly effective strategies used by commercial formula manufacturers to target parents, health-care professionals, and policy-makers. Other studies included are on patterns in the prevalence of unvaccinated children, variations in measures of poverty, and an assessment of progress on the sustainable development goals. Another study examined the validity of maternal reports of receiving counseling on infant and young child feeding, and yet another one examined utilization of systematic review-based evidence in formulating guidelines for the National Health Programme.

× The spike in global commodity prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine war has had major adverse impacts on many developing countries, including Bangladesh, that still depend heavily on energy and food imports. Although the Bangladesh economy has rebounded after the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest global trade shock has threated to increase food insecurity and poverty. This study utilizes the Bangladesh RIAPA economywide model to assess the impact of increases in global commodity prices and explores potential policy interventions to reduce negative impacts. Simulation results show that increases in international commodity prices create a GDP loss of 0.36 percent and an increase of three million in the number of poor (mainly rural poor). Energy price shocks account for most of this decline in real GDP (0.28 percent). The fertilizer subsidy helps spur agriculture production which leads to an increase in crop GDP by 0.78 percent and total agricultural GDP by 0.43 percent. Changes in policy could help mitigate the effects of these price shocks. In particular, petroleum subsidies would help increase production in both agriculture and services, leading to a 0.3 percent increase in household consumption, considerably more than the gain under a targeted cash transfer policy of equal cost. However, given that the petroleum subsidy does not specifically target the poor, it only reduces poverty by a fraction of what a targeted cash transfer would. Moreover, as illustrated by the experiences of other countries, increases in a fuel subsidy, once introduced, are likely to be very difficult to reverse. This suggests that if the major policy goal is to reduce poverty, a direct cash transfer would be more effective than the other policy options considered here. Combining these policies, however, would be even more effective than any single intervention, reducing poverty incidence by around 2.5 million people, and thereby preventing nearly all of the potential increase in poverty resulting from global price shocks.

× - Bundling agricultural insurance with risk-reducing agricultural technologies can lower the cost of insurance for farmers, but before implementing bundled solutions, it is important to analyze how these bundles would impact men and women differently.
- Using a survey with 900 men and women farmers in Odisha, India, we find that women and men have similar farming practices and input use in general, but women face more difficulties in hiring labor and transplant rice later than men.
- Using biophysical crop models, we show that this delay in transplanting lowers expected yields and increases risk exposure for women farmers.
- Direct-seeded rice (DSR) is a promising alternative method for establishing rice that can help to mitigate the risks posed by climate change. Our findings indicate DSR is especially beneficial for women farmers.
- Gender-responsive policies are needed to ensure that women farmers have equitable access to agricultural insurance and risk-reducing technologies.

× Jordan’s garment sector employs a large number of women migrants from South Asia who face various challenges and vulnerabilities in their work environment. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated some of these vulnerabilities, leading to income losses. However, little information is available about this migration corridor. This study implemented qualitative phone survey interviews with returnee women migrants in Bangladesh to identify interventions that the organizations, such as the International Labor Organization and other actors supporting women’s safe migration could undertake to reduce women’s vulnerabilities in migration. The study identified networks of discipline and power, the perception of appropriate behavior at work and beyond and racialization as key areas that mediate vulnerabilities of women. We recommend increasing awareness of conditions at Jordan’s garment sector as part of pre-departure training, which is supported by the main recruitment practice of garment workers through BOESL in the country. Awareness raising includes information on the role of the Al Hassan Workers’ Center as well as on the role of the embassy of Bangladesh in Jordan. A second recommendation is to translate contractual documents into Bengali so that women migrants can better understand work conditions, including salaries. The final recommendation focuses on the need to continue research on the uneven power dynamics in Jordan’s garment sector to support dismantling networks of discrimination and power and racialization of the work environment.

× As the Russia-Ukraine crisis continues to disrupt the global trade of key foods such as wheat and vegetable oils, along with fertilizers, impacts are falling heavily on countries such as Bangladesh. Dependent on imports of those items to feed its large population, many of whom are poor and vulnerable to shocks, the country faces the prospect of rising food insecurity.
The conflict threatens Bangladesh’s recent progress on this front. With a population of 165 million in 2021 — with 38% employed by the griculture and fisheries sector — and a growing economy, the country’s undernourished population declined from a high of 16% in 2000 to as low as 9.7% in 2019. While the COVID-19 pandemic increased food insecurity, by some measures the country proved relatively resilient: According to an IFPRI study, the proportion of rural households facing moderate or severe food insecurity rose from 15% in early 2020 to 45% in January 2021, then returned to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021.

× Bangladesh experienced strong annual economic growth of 6.6 percent between 2009 and 2019 (BBS 2021). While the global COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant growth slowdown in 2020, growth started to recover in 2021. However, the recovery was hampered by global commodity market disruptions related to the war in Ukraine beginning in 2022 and the global recession in 2023 (Arndt et al. 2023; Diao and Thurlow 2023). The World Bank (2023) projects growth of 5.2 percent for 2023 and 6.2 percent for 2024, which is slower than the country’s pre-pandemic growth rate. Rapid growth in the past has already led to significant structural shifts in Bangladesh’s economy along with a transformation within the agrifood system (AFS). In this brief, we unpack these trends and future projections further to understand how Bangladesh’s AFS is contributing to growth and transformation in the country.

× Nepal experienced annual economic growth of 5.0 percent between 2009 and 2019 (World Bank 2023b). Thanks to a relatively slow population growth rate of 1.4 percent, the living standards of most Nepalis improved during this period; this allowed Nepal to graduate in 2019 from a low-income country to a lower-middle-income country. Nepal’s economy, however, was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with GDP declining by 2.4 percent in 2020 and growing only modestly in 2021. Fortunately, the country was largely spared the adverse effects of global commodity market disruptions arising from the Russia-Ukraine war that started in 2022 and from the 2023 global recession (Arndt et al. 2023; Diao and Thurlow 2023). Nepal’s GDP growth is now projected to reach 5.1 percent in 2023 and 4.9 percent in 2024 (World Bank 2023a); this suggests that the economy is resuming its pre-pandemic growth trajectory. Agriculture remains an important sector, accounting for 25 percent of Nepal’s GDP and 30 percent of its jobs. In this brief, we further unpack Nepal’s historical and projected economic growth trajectory in order to better understand the role of agriculture, and of the broader agrifood system (AFS), in the performance and transformation of its economy.

× The 49th issue of Abstract Digest features a set of studies on child growth, including patterns of child stunting in low- and middle-income countries, various forms of inequities in child growth, and the role of milk in child growth. It also includes studies on obesity in India and the double burden of malnutrition. Anemia is also highlighted in this issue, with one article presenting a framework on integrated action for anemia and the other exploring the timely diagnosis of anemia. This edition also presents various studies examining the factors associated with coverage of antenatal coverage, with maternal behavior change, with kangaroo mother care, and with breastfeeding practices. Two articles focus on frontline workers, and there is a systematic review that examines dietary diversity and undernutrition among school children. Moreover, this issue features authors’ correspondence and responses in The Lancet on gender sensitivity in the National Family Health Surveys.

× South Asia is home to more adolescents than any global region, and one in five adolescents globally live in India. Among the many issues that adolescents face, poor nutrition, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), marriage, and childbearing are of key importance as they have far-ranging and intergenerational consequences. This Data Note examines the national-level trends and spatial variability at state and district levels for a set of key nutrition outcomes, NCDs, marriage, and childbearing status among Indian adolescents (15-19 years; girls and boys). The findings are based on data from the three rounds of India’s National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) – NFHS 2006, 2016, and 2021. The Data Note concludes with key takeaways for adolescents’ wellbeing and identifies areas for improvement. This Data Note can be used for further inquiry by stakeholders including researchers, policymakers, and program staff at multiple levels.

× Early life nutrition sets the stage for the health, nutrition, and development of young children. Optimal infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices begin with timely initiation of breastfeeding, followed by exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding. This Data Note provides an overview of trends and patterns in IYCF practices in India at the national-, state-, and district levels based on the 2015-16 and 2019-21 National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) data. IYCF indicators were created following World Health Organization and UNICEF’s 2021 guidelines.

× The sub-national Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan enacted Farm Services Centers Act, 2014, to establish Model Farm Services Centers (MFSCs) and Farm Services Centers as “one stop-shop” based on public-private partnership principle to strengthen extension system. The aim of these Centers is to empower small farmers at a platform to enhance their knowledge and skills and availability of quality agricultural inputs as stipulated in Section 4(g) of the Act, 2014, that each FSC shall “purchase certified seed, fertilizers, animal husbandry services, quality veterinary heath care services and medicines, farm machinery, expertise and technology for provision to the members who are registered with the Centre on affordable rates in comparison to open market rates”. The objective is to improve rural livelihoods, and development of the rural economy.

× The food systems approach is increasingly being used to understand the dynamics of how food is produced and consumed, with an optimal outcome for human health, social justice, economic endeavors, and the preservation of planetary resources. Since the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) in September 2021, the food systems approach has become central to policy and practice of many international development and research organizations, multilateral organizations, and in (national) programs and policies aiming at improving food and nutrition security.

× Shrimp is Bangladesh’s main agricultural export and makes a substantial contribution to the economy of southern Bangladesh, but the sector has a checkered history. Bangladesh’s shrimp production and exports have been in steady decline, since peaking in the early 2010’s. Most shrimp exports from Bangladesh are used by the food service and niche ethnic markets in Europe.
The complex nature of shrimp supply chains in Bangladesh, comprised of hundreds of thousands of small polyculture farms and tens of thousands of small traders, make it difficult to implement tracea bility and certification initiatives – now a prerequisite for entry into most supermarket supply chains.
This report provides an overview of the sector and the challenges it faces, drawing on secondary and survey data, reviews of government reports and academic literature. We also report the findings of an expert consultation conducted to identify key constraints and potential solutions.
The consensus among industry stakeholders who were part of the expert consultations is that issues related to the supply and quality of shrimp seed and pond management practices represent some of the most pressing, yet relatively simple-to-solve challenges currently faced by the sector. This would serve as the foundation for establishing traceability and certification processes. Previous interventions aimed at upgrading production practices (such as promoting stocking of disease-free shrimp seed) and facilitating disintermediation and transparency in the supply chain (such as by establishing producer groups, shrimp collection centers, and contracts with processors), have met with limited success. We outline potential interventions and partners that might offer scalable solutions enabling small shrimp farmers to access global markets.

× The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) brings together five South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and two Southeast Asian countries (Myanmar and Thailand). Recent events have raised global concerns on food security, including for BIMSTEC countries; these events include Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative with Ukraine, India’s prohibition on the export of non-basmati white rice, and its 20 percent export duty on parboiled rice. This policy note spells out the likely impact of one of these events, that is, India’s restrictions on rice exports to its fellow BIMSTEC nations.
Trade moves food from surplus to deficit regions and hence is crucial for maintaining a stable food supply. Historically, the global supply of cereals has been stable (Bradford et al. 2022); this implies that trade (or the lack of it) can be directly mapped onto area-specific food insecurity. At the same time, shocks leading to trade disruption can pose serious challenges, particularly for countries with high import penetration in food.

× Women farmers in Bangladesh face several challenges when it comes to accessing technology and information, and this limits their ability to improve their agricultural productivity and enhance their livelihoods. The gendered digital divide is a significant contributor to inequities in agriculture and has important implications for women’s empowerment. Lack of access to information affects their ability to make informed decisions, access markets, and secure their rights. This policy note summarizes research designed to identify the barriers female farmers in Bangladesh face in accessing technology and information so that future policies and initiatives can address these challenges and, in so doing, promote gender equality and the empowerment of rural women.

× How were the governments of three middle-income countries with high levels of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)—India, Mexico, and South Africa—able to implement sugar-sweetened beverage taxes (SSBs) despite intense opposition from powerful corporations? Employing a multiple streams analytical framework to explain the agenda-setting process, this chapter highlights several factors that generated supportive coalitions for SSBs, including the importance of transnational advocacy in each country as well as governments’ interest in generating more revenue from the tax. By contrast, regulatory measures to regulate the soda and snack food industries, such as limits on advertising, sales, and food labeling, have been less accepted by the same governments. To explain why, the chapter argues that coalitions around these policies are weaker, regulation generates lower levels of public contestation and visibility, and the prospect for generating government revenue is less pronounced.

× Agri-food systems transformation requires accelerated innovations to address multiple economic, environmental and health objectives. No innovation serves everyone’s interests. Political opposition to innovations is therefore inevitable. Promotion of agrifood systems innovations requires overcoming such opposition. One strategy is to bundle multiple technological, socio-cultural, policy, and/or institutional innovations to build political coalitions sufficient to champion bundled innovation that might not suffice to advance one-off innovations. Bundling can translate the potential Pareto improvements of individual innovations into actual Pareto improvements more likely to enjoy political support and advance multiple societal objectives simultaneously. This chapter lays out conceptually why bundling is therefore important for the political economy of innovation to transform agri-food systems. It then illustrates the logic using three cases from Asian agricultural development: China’s Science and Technology Backyards program, a comparison of genetic advances in Green Revolution and golden rice, and the contrasting cases of Bt brinjal in India and Bangladesh.

× Strict lockdown measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic had extensive impacts on agriculture, and especially on women farmers. These effects were worsened by a lack of reliable and timely access to agricultural extension. This note summarizes findings from panel phone surveys conducted in India and Nepal on the impacts of lockdown measures on women's ability to access agricultural extension services and their perceived impact on agricultural productivity. We find that women's already limited access to formal extension services was further reduced during the pandemic, leading to greater reliance on informal social networks. In both countries, approximately 50 percent of farmers reported negative consequences on productivity due to the unavailability of information during the lockdown. We propose strategies to enhance the inclusivity and resilience of extension systems in India and Nepal in future crises, including through the use of group- and community-based approaches.

× Promoting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices is an important step toward enhancing farmer resilience to climate change. Given the differences in the resilience capacities, operating space, and response options of men and women farmers, it is imperative to understand the gendered preferences for and constraints to their adoption of CSA practices. This policy brief summarizes qualitative research conducted in rural India, Kenya, and Uganda to identify CSA practices preferred by women and men farmers. The findings highlight the need for gender-responsive finance models and information channels to ensure that support to climate change adaptation does not further widen the gender gap in agricultural resources, agency, and achievement.

× Lack of access to information is an important barrier affecting women farmers’ adoption of climate-smart agri culture (CSA) practices and technologies. To overcome this barrier, the use of information and communication technologies is increasingly being promoted. However, digital tools might widen, rather than reduce, gendered information gaps given women’s lower use of mobile phones and mobile Internet as compared to men in sub Saharan African and South Asia. This policy note summarizes data on information channels that women and men farmers use for CSA practices in Gujarat, India, parts of Kenya, and central Uganda. The results can be used by governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other actor groups interested in ensuring equity in access to information on CSA practices in low- and middle-income countries.

× Climate change poses a threat to smallholder farmers worldwide, impacting livelihoods and agricultural pro duction. At the same time, agrifood systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) offers synergistic practices that boost productivity, aid farmers in adapting to cli mate change, and have the potential to mitigate GHG emissions. This note reviews the extent to which a set of practices identified by smallholder farmers in India, Kenya, and Uganda for inclusion in a participatory video-based extension intervention meet the CSA criteria. The findings suggest that the practices hold triple-win potential but often several need to be applied as a package; they also need to be adapted to local conditions.

× This report provides an overview of discussions that transpired during the outreach event titled "Scaling up Experiential Learning Tools for Sustainable Water Governance in India." Held in New Delhi, India, on October 18th, 2023, this event served as a platform for renowned experts, practitioners, and members of the donor community to engage in conversations concerning the complex landscape of water governance in India. The primary focus of this event was to address the challenges and seizing opportunities in this critical domain while emphasizing the need to extend sustainable water management initiatives beyond the current project areas.

× There is a growing focus on gender-sensitive approaches and women’s empowerment in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sectors. At the same time, there is a lack of metrics to measure women’s empowerment in the WASH sector. Such metrics are important for understanding the types of programmatic interventions that are most needed for addressing women’s empowerment, as well as for assessing their impacts on women’s empowerment. In this report, we describe the development of a Women’s Empowerment metrics for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH). We collected data from individual women and men in 812 households in Malawi and 826 households in Nepal. Using the data, we develop 14 indicators and establish cutoff thresholds (i.e., whether the individual is empowered) in the areas of intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency in WASH; instrumental and intrinsic agency in menstrual hygiene management; and the empowerment environment (or resources for empowerment). In each country, we observe differences in empowerment levels between women and men, that favor men on most outcomes. Notably, in both countries, we find that women are much less likely than men to contribute to WASH infrastructure decisions, and most women are spending an undue amount of time contributing to WASH-related labor. In Nepal especially, agency related to menstrual hygiene management is also a substantial area of disempowerment for women.

× The United States Government’s (USG) Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) is an integrated whole-of-government approach that aims to end global hunger, poverty, and malnutrition through the Feed the Future initiative. Launched in 2010 across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, Feed the Future aims to stimulate agriculture-led growth, resilience, and nutrition in countries with significant needs and opportunities for improvement. Through partnerships that invest in agriculture, build resilience, and improve nutrition, the USG has provided the basic dignity of food to millions of families worldwide. This initiative has delivered impressive results, including an estimated 23.4 million people lifted to above the poverty line, 3.4 million children no longer stunted, and an estimated 5.2 million families overcoming hunger. Additionally, Feed the Future has unlocked $3.5 billion in financing for food security (2011–2019), generated $13.7 billion in agricultural sales, and developed and deployed over 1,000 innovations.
However, the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, climate change, and international conflicts have significantly hampered the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a result, the USG has developed the Global Food Security Strategy Refresh (GFSS-R) 2022–2026 that emphasizes the following five new areas of focus:
1. Equity and inclusion
2. An ambitious approach to climate change
3. Countering the long-term impacts of COVID-19
4. Employing systems thinking and working across the food system
5. Integration of conflict management, peacebuilding, and social cohesion
This strategy refresh has significant implications for the Feed the Future initiative; therefore, all Feed the Future countries have now embarked on refreshing the country strategy to incorporate new programs and initiatives aligning with the GFSS-R. The strategy involves implementing a multi-faceted whole-of-government approach, assignment of ownership, and empowerment of country leadership to lead and guide the efforts for progress. The strategy refresh invokes partnership with a wide range of stakeholders, and harnesses the advancement of science, technology, and innovation to achieve these objectives. The Feed the Future interventions in Nepal ensured a very close partnership with the Government of Nepal and emphasized greater involvement of the private sector. Nepal is one of the oldest and most successful Feed the Future countries. Although efforts have been made to ensure food security in Nepal, the country still faces nutritional deficiency. Agricultural productivity in Nepal is comparatively low, and most of the farmers are still engaged in subsistence farming. Further, Nepal is highly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters, pests, and diseases, exacerbating food insecurity leading to the prevalence of nutrition deficiencies, especially among marginalized populations who rely heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods. The USAID mission in Nepal commissioned the IFPRI to support the drafting of the new GFSS Nepal Country Plan. In this regard, provincial consultation workshop has been planned in collaboration with IIDS to generate constructive ideas and feedback on the past and existing interventions implemented in Nepal under Feed the Future and identify a way forward for strengthening and leveraging food and agriculture system transformation in Nepal.

× The National Consultation Workshop on Food and Agriculture System Transformation in Nepal was held in Kathmandu, Nepal on May 18–19, 2023. The consultation was organized by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) with support from the United States Agency for International Development, Nepal (USAID/Nepal). This consultation was a part of generating insights / evidence for the United States Government’s (USG) Global Food Security Strategy-Refresh (GFSS-R) process. The US Government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) is an integrated whole-of-government approach that aims to end global hunger, poverty, and malnutrition through Feed the Future (FtF) initiatives. Several innovations in food and agriculture sectors have been successfully implemented in Nepal, being one of the oldest and most successful Feed the Future countries. However, more remains to be done to ensure food security in the nation. Farmers are still reliant on subsistence farming, leading to low agricultural productivity in the country. Rapid feminization in agriculture, owing to high outmigration and impact of climate change and natural disasters, has further burdened the poor, women, and marginalized groups in achieving food security. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on the country’s economy, thwarting the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This National Consultation Workshop was designed with an objective to inform the GFSS-R 2022– 2026, with emphasis on i) equity and inclusion, ii) an ambitious approach to climate change, iii) countering the long-term impacts of COVID-19, iv) employing system thinking and working across food systems, and v) integration of conflict management, peace-building, and social cohesion. The Whole System in the Room (WSR) approach was applied to facilitate the workshop with 116 participants representing government, non-government organizations (NGOs), private sectors, and farmers from the federal, provincial, and local levels. Discussions during the consultation workshop were mostly centered on the proposed five themes: (i) Risk and Resilience Capacity, (ii) Food Systems Innovations, (iii) Markets and Trade, (iv) Food Systems Outputs and Outcomes, and (v) Food System Governance and Control. Additional sub-themes were identified to capture the status of each of the themes, and to address their gaps and constraints along with recommendations required to transform the food and agriculture system of Nepal. The participants have proposed specific prioritized recommendations from the list that was generated from the consultation. The summary of these prioritized recommendations for all five themes is given below.

× The present study analyzes temporal and spatial trends in public expenditure on agriculture and irrigation in India. It links sub-period growth performance with expenditure based on structural breaks. The analysis pertains to the period between 1992/1993 and 2019/2020. This is a period that has witnessed a stagnation, and even a decrease in public expenditure in the agricultural sector and a resulting deceleration in productivity growth, which was then followed by a revival in both expenditure and output. Significantly expenditure on subsidies of key inputs, viz. fertilizer, irrigation, and power, however, has not incentivized farmers to increase output and productivity to achieve a higher rate of growth. Empirical findings based on the first-difference regression analysis confirm that agricultural growth is determined by public expenditure on agriculture and irrigation; across the states, however, input subsidies alone are shown to be less, or not at all, efficient. Funds to agriculture and irrigation should be increased in proportion to their contribution to the state domestic product, and input subsidies should be rationalized by weighing their positive welfare effects against their cost to the exchequer.

× Do individuals’ perceptions of their relative economic status affect their attitudes regarding gender roles in patriarchal societies? What role does hearing messages designed to increase support for women’s empowerment play in moderating these effects? Leveraging an original survey experiment in Nepal, we find that a prime conferring feelings of relative deprivation causes women to revert to traditional views of gender in economic decision-making; they become less supportive of women having equal control over household income, sharing house hold chores with men, and working outside the home. Women’s empowerment messaging does not attenuate these effects. Priming men to feel relatively deprived causes declines in gender equitable economic and political views, but women’s empowerment messaging nullifies these effects. The results suggest that among populations feeling relatively deprived, regressive gender norms may take hold. However, light-touch efforts to spur support for women’s empowerment may counter some reversion to traditional views of gender.

× Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is critical for reducing smallholder farmers’ vulnerability and enhancing their capacity to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. Constraints to information and extension access — especially among women farmers, who play a vital role in Indian agriculture — are increasingly acknowledged as a barrier for widespread adoption of CSA practices. This note summarizes results from a study implemented among smallholder women farmers in rural Gujarat, India, to assess the effectiveness of a participatory video and poster extension intervention on increasing awareness, knowledge, and adoption of CSA practices. The findings sug gest that videos and posters are a viable information delivery mechanism for promoting awareness around CSA practices but should be supplemented with additional capacity development, access to financial resources, and labor-sharing arrangements.

× This paper analyzed the determinants of India’s virtual water trade in crops and crop products for the period 2001 to 2020. The study used product data at the 6-digit level of commodity classification, covering 206 commodities traded across 218 partner countries. Analysis shows that India has a favorable virtual water trade balance and terms of trade with its partner countries. Among the commodities traded, rice accounted for over one-fourth of the total volume of virtual water exported, and sunflower/safflower oil constitute over one-third of the total volume of virtual water imported. No consistent pattern was observed with regard to the level of endowment of water resources of export destination countries. Gravity model results revealed, as expected, that partner countries’ GDP and population size had a positive effect on virtual water exports, while distance had a negative effect. The coefficient of membership in a free trade agreement (FTA) was negative and statistically significant, implying that FTA member countries are sensitive to the trading of water-intensive agricultural products. The effect of amount of arable land on virtual water exports was negative; this implies that larger virtual water exports correlate with land constraints in a destination country that impede domestic agricultural production. The water endowment variables did not show any significant relationship with virtual water export flows, which confirms the finding in the literature that the water stress of a partner countries does not affect the direction of virtual water flows.

× This factsheet provides a brief description of the economic structure and the size of the agrifood system of Uttar Pradesh (UP), an Indian state. The agrifood system comprises primary agriculture, food processing, agrifood trade, food services, and input supplies. We have constructed a multistate social accounting matrix (SAM) for the year 2017/18 to understand the size of UP’s agrifood system in comparison with the rest of India.

× This factsheet provides a brief description of the economic structure and the size of the agrifood system of Bihar, an Indian state. The agrifood system comprises primary agriculture, food processing, agrifood trade, food services, and input supplies. We have constructed a multistate social accounting matrix (SAM) for the year 2017/18 to understand the size of Bihar’s agrifood system in comparison with the rest of India.

× This factsheet provides a brief description of the economic structure and the size of the agrifood system of Odisha, an Indian state. The agrifood system comprises primary agriculture, food processing, agrifood trade, food services, and input supplies. We have constructed a multistate social accounting matrix (SAM) for the year 2017/18 to understand the size of Odisha’s agrifood system in comparison with the rest of India.

× This study explores the welfare implications of public expenditure at the subnational level. We empirically examine the efficiency of different categories of public expenditure on agriculture and irrigation using the novel cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model and the data from 1981 to 2019 for 17 major agricultural states of India. The findings reveal the strong long-term positive effect in rural India of public sector expenditure on crop husbandry, agricultural research and education, soil and water conservation, irrigation, food storage and warehousing, animal husbandry and dairy development, and fisheries on total factor productivity (TFP), farm income, and poverty alleviation. Irrigation and electricity subsidies do not significantly affect outcome variables, while fertilizer subsidies showed a long-term negative impact on TFP, and credit subsidies had a positive effect on income and on the reduction of rural poverty. Other factors that were shown to have welfare implications included rainfall, literacy rate, and agricultural terms of trade (TOT), that is, the ratio of agriculture GDP to non-agriculture GDP. Policymakers should thus better target and rationalize government expenditure programs by removing unproductive input subsidies and reallocating those funds toward other types of public investment in Indian agriculture.

× Smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries have limited access to finance, due to the pau city of banks and other financial institutions in rural areas. As a result, banks and other formal financial institutions tend not to know much about farming as a business, and therefore they hesitate to extend credit to farmers. Such reluctance is often attributed to the elevated costs and risks linked with small, geographically dispersed farms, as well as the farmers' lack of collateral.
Microfinance has emerged as a crucial intervention in bridging this gap. However, the fixed and rigid repayment structures of microfinance institutions (MFIs) often clash with the seasonal nature of agricul tural production. This mismatch creates financial strain for farmers, who must manage cash flows that are inherently unpredictable due to factors like weather variability and market fluctuations. These challenges underscore the need for more flexible and tailored financial solutions.

× Evidence shows social protection can improve diets, but little is understood about how effects vary within a household or what factors determine how food is allocated across different household members. We use individual food intake data from two randomized control trials to estimate intrahousehold dietary impacts of cash or food transfers, with or without nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), in two regions of Bangladesh. We assess whether intrahousehold impacts 1) are consistent with different allocation "rules" hypothesized in the literature, 2) differ by transfer modality, provision of BCC, or regional context. Results indicate that households distribute food equally among their members (men, women, boys, and girls), both in absolute terms and in proportion to individual-specific requirements and deficits. Patterns are similar across regions and do not depend on transfer modality or whether BCC is provided. Findings have implications for designing nutrition-sensitive social protection with different target groups prioritized.

× Agri-food value chains are a crucial element of food systems and local economies around the world. Existing estimates show that intermediary agri-food value chain actors—the operating enterprises that transport and transform food from the farmgate to retailers—account for 60 to 75 percent of value-added produced by the entire agricultural sector of an economy.

× Agricultural extension services play an important role in agricultural development. Timely and reliable information services are key to improving farmers’ knowledge of strategies to increase agricultural productivity, assisting them in accessing inputs and credit, providing early warning against pests and other shocks, and offering them critical advice on climate action. However, equitable access to knowledge, information, and technology remains challeng ing in most countries. This inequity is even more pronounced among farmers from marginalized groups, including women farmers, resulting in their limited access to climate resilience-enhancing technologies and practices. This note summarizes findings from implementers of participatory video-based extension interventions in India, Kenya, and Uganda. The findings suggest that videos targeting women farmers can reach them effectively. Still, participa tory video-based extension should be accompanied by group discussions, providing complementary inputs, and dismantling other barriers that impede women’s agency and achievements in agriculture.

× Over the past decades, climate change has brought about numerous detrimental consequences for agricultural production in many countries, posing a substantial challenge to the economic well being of farmers while affecting national and international economies. Meteorological data specifically indicates that extreme weather events are occurring with unprecedented frequencies, intensities, and durations. This includes events associated with variations in the El Niño – Southern Oscillation of ocean currents, such as unusually dry weather in June through August in Nepal and other parts of South Asia. For example, during the El Niño year of 1992, a particularly severe drought occurred in Nepal, contributing in part to a 17.7 percent fall in rice production relative to the prior trend. Current indications are that another El Niño – related drought may already be underway in 2023 and into 2024. With the extreme weather events, global economies have experienced a number of recent shocks – for example those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and conflicts in countries such as the Ukraine and Russia that are important exporters of agricultural inputs and goods. As such, this research note explores the implications of a range of agricultural productivity shocks including but not limited to those resulting from a possible El Niño-related drought in 2023 and extending into early 2024 (coinciding with the monsoon and post-monsoon seasons).

× There is little evidence on the association between women’s migration, empowerment, and well-being, driven in part due to difficulty in measuring empowerment in the migration context. To better understand these linkages, we developed a Women’s Empowerment in Migration Index (WEMI) and validated it with survey of 1019 returnee female migrants in Bangladesh, who had returned after working internationally, mostly from countries in West Asia. By incorporating indicators of subjective well-being from migration literature into measures of empowerment, our paper advances research over earlier assessments of women’s experiences in the migration process beyond seemingly objective indicators, such as income, health, and economic welfare. We find that 14% of all migrant women in our sample could be classified as being empowered. Lack of membership in groups, restricted mobility, and lack of asset ownership are the largest contributors to migrant women’s disempowerment in our sample. We find that WEMI is strongly correlated with other measures of well-being, including mental health and livelihood-efficacy. Women with higher empowerment scores are also less likely to experience discriminatory labor practices and unsafe work conditions. With broad applicability to migrants from low and middle-income countries, WEMI can be used as a tool, helping to identify sources of disempowerment, and enabling stakeholders to develop interventions targeting the welfare of women migrant workers.

× Increasing demand for water juxtaposed with shrinking supplies will require a transfer of water resources out of agriculture into the domestic, industrial, and ideally environmental sectors. To examine the potential of policies to facilitate a release of water from agriculture, this paper uses IFPRI’s Computable General Equilibrium Model with a water extension, CGE-W, to assess the impact of commodity taxes on two highly water consumptive crops, rice and sugarcane, on water consumption and the overall economy. We find that land use grows by 1.56 million acres overall when the tax is imposed on both commodities, while 3.2-million-acre feet (MAF) of consumed water, equivalent to 6.35 MAF of water withdrawals, are released from agriculture. These outcomes are due to sugarcane’s reduced use of land over two cropping seasons and significant changes in cropping patterns. The study also examined releases of water from other possible policy measures and found that an even tax rate of 30% on sugarcane, rice and cotton yields 8.73 MAF of water from agriculture. However, with a hotter, drier climate virtually all these releases of water disappear because water must stay in agriculture due to higher evaporation and less precipitation, which raises irrigation demands. The needed policies will go beyond just taxation and might include changing cropping patterns and irrigation practices, as well as development of drought resistant varieties. Other approaches, such as buying tubewells from farmers, and developing markets for nonagricultural purchases of water, may have a role. The role of international trade in sugar and rice is shown to be significant and should be considered further in these analyses.

× This paper explores the relationship between agriculture, dietary diversity, and market access in Nepal, testing the complex causal chains involved, and the nuanced connections between production diversity and dietary diversity among smallholder farmers. While diversifying farm production could enhance dietary diversity, the case of Nepal indicates a varied and context specific relationship. Market access emerges as a crucial factor, often exerting a more significant impact on smallholder farm households than production diversity. Access to markets not only influences economic viability but also contributes directly to food and nutrition security, offering a practical solution to address dietary needs. Focusing on Nepal's diverse terrain, the study analyzes the interplay of remoteness, market access, irrigation availability, and complementary inputs in shaping farmers' decisions, providing valuable insights into sustainable agricultural strategies for improved dietary outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.

× There are few studies that rigorously assess how agricultural and nutrition related interventions enhance resilience and even fewer that incorporate a gendered dimension in their analysis. Mindful of this, we address three knowledge gaps: (1) Whether agricultural interventions aimed at diversifying income sources and improving nutrition have sustainable impacts (on asset bases, consumption, gender-specific outcomes and women’s empowerment, and on diets) that persist after the intervention ends; (2) whether such interventions are protective when shocks occur? and (3) whether these interventions promote gender-sensitive resilience. We answer these questions using unique data, a four-year post-endline follow up survey of households from a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a nutrition-and-gender-sensitive agricultural intervention in Bangladesh. We find that treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training had sustainable effects on real per capita consumption, women’s empowerment (as measured by the pro-WEAI), and asset holdings measured four years after the original intervention ended. Treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training (with or without gender sensitization) reduced the likelihood that households undertook more severe forms of coping strategies and reduced the likelihood that household per capita consumption fell, in real terms, by more than five percent between in the four years following the end of the intervention. The treatment arm that only provided training in agriculture had positive impacts at endline but these had largely faded away four years later. Our results suggest that bundling nutrition and agriculture training may contribute to resilience as well as to sustained impacts on consumption, women’s empowerment, and asset holdings in the medium term. These have implications for the design of future gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs.

× India has committed to reducing the emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35% from the 2005 level by 2030 in alignment with objectives of the Paris Agreement. This will require a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the food and land-use sector. In this paper, we construct three potential pathways for India to achieve its emissions target by 2050 involving moderate ambitions of mitigation action (BAU), moderate ambitions combined with achieving healthy diets (BAU + NIN), and high levels of mitigation action inclusive of healthy diets (SUSTAINABLE). Using an integrated accounting tool, the FABLE Calculator, that harmonizes various socioeconomic and biophysical data, we project these pathways under the conditions of cross-country balanced trade flows. Results from the projections show that the demand for cereals will increase by 2050, leading to increased GHG emissions under BAU. Under the SUSTAINABLE pathways, GHG emissions will decrease over the same period due to reduced demand for cereals, whereas significant crop productivity and harvest intensity gains would lead to increased crop production. The exercise reveals the indispensability of healthy diets, improved crop, and livestock productivity, and net-zero deforestation in achieving India’s mid-century emission targets from the agriculture sector.

× MGNREGA was introduced in India in 2005 with the aim to improve the livelihood of rural Indian households. In 2012-13, around 156 million rural Indian households had an outstanding personal debt; 85% of the amount of credit being disbursed was given to those households in the bottom income decile for ‘non-business’ related purposes. This paper uses nationally representative household data from the NSS EUS collected in 2004-05 and 2009-10 to look at the impact MGNREGA has had on the rural households’ ability to repay outstanding debt. Results suggests that MGNREGA reduced the size of the outstanding debts for vulnerable households.

× Background: Children, especially disadvantaged children in poor countries, were expected to be among the “biggest victims” of the Covid pandemic. Economic burdens, decreased nutritious foods, reduced medical care, school closures, and ill-health or death of family members were predicted to increase child undernutrition and developmental delays, and diminish home child-rearing quality.
Methods: A planned nutrition intervention could not be implemented due to Covid restrictions. However, three surveys (pre-Covid [December 2019], July 2021, and September 2021) in 280 Nepali households (309 parent-dyads, 368 children, 6-66 months old) collected demographics, child anthropometry and development (Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3 [ASQ-3]), and home child-rearing quality (caregiver engagement, learning resources, adult supervision [UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey]). Mixed-effect regression models adjusted for household (wealth, maternal education) and child factors (age, gender) and survey round.
Results: Height, mid-upper-arm and head circumference measurements improved over time. Total ASQ-3 score did not change: communication scores increased while fine motor and personal-social scores declined. Girls’ growth and development worsened more than boys. Caregiver engagement (especially mothers’) generally declined, but learning resource availability increased. More children were left unsupervised at Round 2 than Round 1 or 3.
Conclusions: In this sample, some aspects of child growth, development, and home child-rearing quality improved while others declined. Better understanding of these changes in child well-being and the family environment during the pandemic could provide insight on how to protect children during future crises.

× The COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, associated public health measures, and people’s reactions were projected to have caused job losses among women, a decline in women’s empowerment and reduced women’s diet diversity. Using a November 2020 telephone survey to re-interview adult female respondents of a November 2019 in-person survey, contrary to expectations we find that more women found than lost jobs, and women’s diet diversity increased over the year partly marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not find evidence of a decline in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions, nor women’s autonomy over use of household income. The change in women’s outside employment is neither statistically related to changes in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions, changes women’s autonomy over use of household income, nor changes in women’s diet diversity. Change in women’s involvement in food purchase decisions is positively related with change in women’s diet diversity and change in women’s autonomy over income use is negatively related with change in women’s diet diversity.

× Large-scale male outmigration has placed new pressures on both men and women, especially regarding labour division in farm households and involvement in Water Users Associations (WUAs). This paper illustrates how the interplay between existing gender norms, male migration, remittances, and alternative sources of male labour influence women’s agency and WUA decision-making processes in Nepal. Despite official quotas aimed at promoting women’s participation in WUAs, some women prefer to monetise membership contributions rather than actively engage with the organisation. Others pursue strategic interests through changing WUA rules and, in the process, bringing about an adjustment of cultural norms. Women’s agency is derived not only from their knowledge of irrigation systems features and their ability to manage them; it is also related to their ability to learn new organisational skills and to apply them in the WUA context to negotiate and mobilise rules and resources. Women (re)shape their WUA involvement in conjunction with their farming strategies, their view of the WUA’s functionality, and whether they perceive the involvement as either an opportunity for productive engagement or as merely an increase in their already heavy workload.

× Recent economic relations including foreign assistance scenario in Africa show expansion of China and India as emerging bilateral partners, competing with traditional countries in Europe and North America. The results of this paper found that the relationship of China and India with Zimbabwe has resulted in several challenges including increasing resource-backed debt burden, exploitation of the natural resources, and flouting of constitutional, environmental, and labor provisions. The paper recommends that the Zimbabwean government must demand loans and investments that are contracted under clear terms and conditions, with parliamentary oversight and public scrutiny to avoid abuse by the elites.

× Agricultural development projects increasingly aim to improve health and nutrition outcomes, often by engaging women. Although evidence shows such projects can improve women's and children's health and nutrition and empower women, little is known about their impacts on women's health- and nutrition-related agency and the extent to which impacts emerge through women's empowerment, largely due to a lack of instruments that measure the dimensions of women's agency that are directly relevant to health and nutrition outcomes. We developed an optional, complementary module for the project-level women's empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI) to measure health- and nutrition-related agency (pro-WEAI + HN). Our method for developing related indicators used data collected from six agricultural development programmes implemented across Bangladesh, Burkina Faso and Mali (pooled sample = 12,114) and applied psychometric analysis (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and the Alkire−Foster methodology. Results revealed seven indicators covering women's agency in the areas of her own health and diet; her health and diet during pregnancy; her child's diet; breastfeeding and weaning; purchasing food and health products; and acquiring food and health products. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed measurement invariance across contexts and samples. Tests of association (Cramer's V) and redundancy suggest that the pro-WEAI + HN indicators measured aspects of agency that are distinct from the core pro-WEAI. The uptake of these indicators in studies of nutrition-sensitive agricultural development projects may strengthen the evidence on how such programming can enhance women's empowerment to improve health and nutrition outcomes for themselves and their children.

× Microfinance groups are a prominent source of small-scale rural credit in many developing countries. In India, evidence of the impact of the now ubiquitous women-only savings and credit self-help groups (SHGs) on household consumption and asset accumulation is inconclusive and based on small-scale interventions. Further, little is known about the sustainability of impacts at scale. We use panel data on close to 2500 households from five states in India to estimate the impact of SHG membership on household expenditure and asset ownership. Over four years, we find small but significant impacts of SHG membership on household expenditure and livestock ownership. Membership duration has a modest effect, suggesting that initial impacts may taper off as the program scales up, though small sample sizes limit our ability to draw inferences. Accompanying evidence on pathways is compelling; related work shows that SHG participation improves information, empowerment, and access to entitlements. While the direct impacts of SHG membership may not suffice to fill gaps in access to credit faced by the rural poor, impacts along these additional pathways could intensify the benefits of these groups.

× Commons provide many ecosystem services that support the livelihoods of billions around the world. However, their contribution to people and the economy are rarely estimated in economic terms. Here, we estimate the economic contribution of the land-based commons in India, which cover 66.5 million hectares. We conducted a systematic literature review of publications between 1990 and 2020 and selected 161 peer-reviewed studies to develop an ecosystem services valuation database for India. We identified 34 ecosystem services from this database. We estimate that forest commons provide ecosystem services worth $2108 per ha per year. Culturable wastelands and permanent pastures, and other grazing lands provide $861 per ha per year each, and barren and unculturable lands provide $196 per ha per year. Using the value transfer method, the average value of ecosystem services provided by land commons in India is estimated at $90.5 billion per year (range $24 – 192 billion). This broad range reflects the status and condition of those commons. Based on the trends in the decline of land-based commons, we estimate the value of ecosystem services will decline to $68 billion by 2050: $750 million worth of ecosystem services can be lost each year over the next 30 years. This will have devastating implications for rural populations that depend on the commons for livelihoods and the delivery of critical ecosystem services. We highlight the need to use ecosystem services valuation in decision-making and policy to protect and sustainably manage commons in India.

× A critical global policy question is how the environmental management interventions could be repurposed to meet the sustainable development goals and their target for food security, climate protection, and environmental sustainability. A common challenge facing food systems in developing countries is to improve agricultural productivity to ensure food security for all without increasing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from agriculture. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approaches help to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture and address the challenges of climate change (CC) and food insecurity. Yet, CSA lack understanding of the institutional arrangements and policy processes. This paper examines 38 aspects to assess the institutional and policy status for CC mitigation and adaptation and CSA in Nagaland, India. Furthermore, we use these aspects to develop a scale to measure the policy and institutional environment for mitigation and adaptation of CC and implementation of CSA. Nagaland is relatively in a better position in nine aspects, although it can improve. Methodologically, the scale developed in this paper and the identified factors can help study the institutional and policy status of a country, state, or region. We identify several implications for understanding CC and CSA institutions and policies for informing policy research and practice.

× Zinc deficiency is a severe public health problem in Bangladesh. We examine the effects of nutritional information on rural consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for two ways to increase zinc intake through rice, the main staple crop–low-milling that gives rice grains a distinctive light brown color (a visible trait) and sets it apart from the culturally preferred high-milled white rice grain and biofortification of rice with increased zinc content (an invisible trait), which is also low-milled to retain maximum zinc content. Results of our economic experiments suggest that with nutritional information, consumers are willing to pay a premium of 4.6% for zinc biofortified rice compared to non-biofortified rice, when milled at the same level. However, results confirm the strong preference for high-milled rice by Bangladeshi consumers who discounted low-milled rice by 8%–10% even after receiving information on the nutritional benefits of biofortified or low-milled rice. We find that consumers’ WTP for the two high-zinc-low-milled rice types (biofortified and non-biofortified) is positively correlated with being a female, more educated, belonging to households engaged in non-farm activities and with children under 5 years of age. Results point to the importance of nutritional awareness campaigns for increasing zinc biofortified and low-milled rice consumption and guiding the targeting strategy for such campaigns. Given the consumer preference for high-milled rice, this study also points to the need for exploring the rice fortification strategy to address the challenge of malnutrition.

× Micronutrient deficiencies such as iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), and vitamin A, constitute a severe global public health phenomenon. Over half of preschool children and two-thirds of nonpregnant women of reproductive age worldwide have micronutrient deficiencies. Biofortification is a cost-effective strategy that comprises a meaningful and sustainable means of addressing this issue by delivering micronutrients through staple foods to populations with limited access to diverse diets and other nutritional interventions. Here, we report on the proof-of-concept and early development stage of a collection of biofortified rice events with a high density of Fe and Zn in polished grains that have been pursued further to advance development for product release. In total, eight constructs were developed specifically expressing dicot ferritins and the rice nicotianamine synthase 2 (OsNAS2) gene under different combinations of promoters. A large-scale transformation of these constructs to Bangladesh and Philippines commercial indica cultivars and subsequent molecular screening and confined field evaluations resulted in the identification of a pool of ten events with Fe and Zn concentrations in polished grains of up to 11 μg g−1 and up to 37 μg g−1, respectively. The latter has the potential to reduce the prevalence of inadequate Zn intake for women of childbearing age in Bangladesh and in the Philippines by 30% and 50%, respectively, compared to the current prevalence. To our knowledge, this is the first potential biotechnology public-sector product that adopts the product cycle phase-gated approach, routinely applied in the private sector.

× Addressing public health externalities often requires community-level collective action. Due to social norms, each person’s sanitation investment decisions may depend on the decisions of neighbors. We report on a cluster randomized controlled trial conducted with 19,000 households in rural Bangladesh where we grouped neighboring households and introduced (either financial or social recognition) rewards with a joint liability component for the group, or asked each group member to make a private or public pledge to maintain a hygienic latrine. The group financial reward has the strongest impact in the short term (3 months), inducing a 7.5–12.5 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership, but this effect dissipates in the medium term (15 months). In contrast, the public commitment induced a 4.2–6.3 percentage point increase in hygienic latrine ownership in the short term, but this effect persists in the medium term. Non-financial social recognition or a private pledge has no detectable effect on sanitation investments.

× Anaemia is a global public health problem affecting 800 million women and children globally. Anaemia is associated with perinatal mortality, child morbidity and mortality, mental development, immune competence, susceptibility to lead poisoning and performance at work. The objective of this article is to identify whether antenatal care-seeking was associated with the uptake of iron supplementation among pregnant women, adjusting for a range of covariates. This article used data from the cross-sectional recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 12 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean regions. The individual-level data from 273,144 women of reproductive age (15−49 years) were analysed from multi-country DHS. Multiple Logistic regression analyses were conducted using Predictive Analytics Software for Windows (PASW), Release 18.0. Receiving at least four antenatal care visits was significantly associated with the consumption of 90 or more iron-containing supplements in 12 low and middle income countries across three regions after adjusting for different household and respondent characteristics, while mass media exposure was found to be a significant predictor in India and Indonesia. Antenatal care seems to be the most important predictor of adherence to iron intake in the selected countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean regions.

× Background: Counseling on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) to support optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices is an essential intervention, and accurate coverage data is needed to identify gaps and monitor progress. However, coverage information captured during household surveys have not yet been validated.
Objectives: We examined the validity of maternal report of IYCF counseling received during community-based contacts and factors associated with reporting accuracy.
Methods: Direct observations of home visits conducted by community workers in 40 villages in Bihar, India, served as the “gold standard” to maternal report of IYCF counseling received during 2-week follow-up surveys (n=444 mothers with children less than 1 year of age, interviews matched to direct observations). Individual-level validity was assessed by calculating sensitivity, specificity, and area under ROC curve (AUC). Population-level bias was measured using the inflation factor (IF). Multivariable regression models were used to examine factors associated with response accuracy.
Results: Prevalence of IYCF counseling during home visits was very high (90.1%). Maternal report of any IYCF counseling received in the past 2 weeks was moderate (AUC=0.60, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.67), and population bias was low (IF=0.90). However, recall of specific counseling messages varied. Maternal report of any breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, and dietary diversity messages had moderate validity (AUC>0.60), but other child feeding messages had low individual validity. Child age, maternal age, maternal education, mental stress, and social desirability were associated with reporting accuracy of multiple indicators.
Conclusions: Validity of IYCF counseling coverage was moderate for several key indicators. IYCF counseling is an information-based intervention that may be received from various sources, and it may be challenging to achieve higher reporting accuracy over a longer recall period. We consider the modest validity results as positive and suggest that these coverage indicators may be useful for measuring coverage and tracking progress over time.

× CONTEXT: Millions of people living in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of India engage in agriculture to support their livelihoods yet are income poor, and food and climate insecure. To address these challenges, policymakers and development programs invest in irrigation-led agricultural intensification. However, the evidence for agricultural intensification to lift farmers' incomes above the poverty line remains largely anecdotal. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this study is to use a large household survey (n = 15,572; rice: 8244, wheat: 7328; 2017/18) to assess the link between agricultural intensification and personal daily incomes from farming (FPDI) in the rice-wheat systems of the EGP – the dominant cropping system of the region. METHODS: We use the Intensification Benefit Index (IBI), a measure that relates farm size and household size to FPDI, to assess how daily incomes from rice-wheat production change with irrigation-led intensification across the EGP. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Relative to the international poverty line of 1.90 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)$ day−1 and accounting for variations in HH size in the analysis, we found that small farm sizes limit the potential for agricultural intensification from irrigation to transform the poverty status of households in the bottom three quartiles of the IBI. The estimated median FPDI of households with intensified systems in the bottom three quartiles is only 0.51 PPP$ day−1 (a 0.15 PPP$ gain). The median FPDI increases to 2.10 PPP$ day−1 for households in the upper quartile of the IBI distribution (a 0.30 PPP$ gain). Irrigation-led agricultural intensification of rice-wheat systems in the EGP may provide substantial benefits for resilience to climatic change and food security but achieving meaningful poverty reduction will require complementary investments. SIGNIFICANCE: Transforming the poverty status of most smallholder farmers in the EGP requires diversified portfolios of rural on- and off-farm income-generating opportunities. While bolstering food- and climate security, agronomic intervention programs should consider smallholders' limited monetary incentives to invest in intensification. Irrigation-led agricultural intensification programs and policies should explicitly account for the heterogeneity in household resources, irrigation levels, and degree of dependence on agricultural income.

× This report documents a selected set of case studies of young entrepreneurs in agribusiness in India. Using field visits to their operations and online interviews, we document the issues, challenges, constraints, and opportunities that young agribusiness entrepreneurs face and provide insights for improving the enabling environment, institutional arrangements, and individual capacity for successful entrepreneurship in agribusiness in India.
Indian policies related to youth entrepreneurship have evolved rapidly over the past decade. It is a recognition that the youth force, particularly in agriculture and allied sectors, is key to the effective inclusiveness and engagement of youth and women in improving the livelihood and long-term transformation of the agriculture sector. Further, given the recent policy reforms and the associated challenges, studying opportunities for youth in the agriculture sector becomes paramount to guiding the policy and program implementation process from the youth entrepreneurial perspective.
Indian policymakers operating in the agricultural and rural development sectors recognize youth entrepreneurship as a critical driver for transforming these sectors. Policy and program interventions at the national level reflect this recognition. Recent economic growth in the last two decades in India has also brought the needed preconditions for youth entrepreneurship. Yet the challenges for entering business opportunities for youth in agriculture remain. There are several structural constraints related to access to technology, finance, institutional support, market access, and business mentorship. These challenges are accentuated further by the needed skills and experience relevant for initiating and running businesses, which remain a significant challenge for the youth in rural India.

× As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential learning through games can affect behavioral change, potentially leading to more sustainable commons management. We present a conceptual framework describing the most important processes involved in experiential learning games. The framework highlights the importance of the game context for achieving game outcomes. We list game features that have been argued to influence learning and behavioral determinants, focusing on the game narrative and experience, game rules, and attributes of players. We briefly describe how each game feature influences the processes in the framework. Next, we apply the conceptual framework to examine design features that were particularly important for influencing behavioral drivers in commons management in three intervention cases from India relating to groundwater, surface water, and forests. Our conceptual reflections underpin the need to debate about underlying assumptions in using games as intervention tools. Making assumptions transparent can help to understand why or under what conditions experiential learning works or fails. There is a critical need for more systematic choices of the right tools for the right purpose. This includes participants of the experiential learning who must be able to relate the game to their real life. A social dilemma in the game should at least, in its basic structure, represent a real-life dilemma. We close by highlighting future research needs both from the conceptual behavioral change as well as the game design perspective.

× Soil carbon depletion is a major concern for food security in drylands. The objective of this study is to test tillage with residue management under sequential and intercropping systems for carbon sequestration in semi-arid tropical drylands of India. We report the findings from a long-term field experiment (9 years) used to simulate the effect of residue and tillage management in Maize-chickpea sequential and Maize-Pigeonpea intercropping systems for the four possible future climate projections using APSIM model. These findings demonstrate a sustainable route with inclusive growth, as pledged at the UN climate change summit. A comparison of results under SSP 2.6 and 4.5 Wm−2 with SSP 8.5 shows that demand pressure from competitive marketplaces inhibits the establishment of soil carbon sinks and significantly reduces crop yields, likely due to indiscriminate chemical fertilizer use. We observed that a better decision in selecting cropping system might improve soil organic carbon content (SOC). SOC content ranging from 0.9 to 1.2% in Maize-pigeonpea intercropping and 0.85–1.1% in maize-chickpea sequential cropping systems, demonstrate good potential in the climate change mitigation exertions. Early SOC saturation (20 years) led to a decreased carbon stock in topsoil without residue addition practises. The addition of crop residues significantly increased SOC levels under both conventional and minimum tillage and created additional income for farmers. Simulation analysis showed impact of SOC changes on crop yield which remained nearly stable for 85 years. Therefore, hardy straw biomass of crops covering a large tract in dryland tropics, can be a scalable and sustainable solution to yield losses, while mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration.

× Digital financial services (DFS), particularly mobile banking, have the potential to extend financial services to unbanked populations.[1] Specifically, DFS reduce direct and indirect transaction costs. Mobile banking allows clients to access bank accounts, save money, and send and receive payments directly from their mobile phones, eliminating travel to a physical bank. Additionally, mobile banking reduces social or administrative constraints—such as in-person meetings and paperwork, and safety concerns while travelling with money—which can be especially salient for women.

× Since the COVID-19 pandemic global income inequality has again started to rise—a trend exacerbated by the food and fertiliser crisis caused by Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine (The Economist 2022). Increasingly common disasters (many climate-related) across the globe – such as Pakistan’s devastating 2022 floods (UNICEF 2023), ongoing severe drought in the Horn of Africa (UN News 2022), and the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey (Francis et al. 2023) – also disproportionately affect already vulnerable groups (UNDRR 2023). Such events tend to further exacerbate the gulf between the rich and the poor. This trend toward greater income inequality is notable, given a growing body of research has demonstrated that citizens’ support for and trust in government is heavily influenced by real as well as perceived income inequality (Gimpelson and Treisman 2018, Healy et al. 2017).
Trust in government is essential for a functioning democracy. It is also critical for the economy - for example, Fukuyama (1996) highlights how social trust plays a role equal to that of physical capital in determining economic prosperity. Governments often address poverty and inequality through redistributive social protection programmes, including cash transfer programmes. Can such programmes foster trust in government amid increasing inequality? Evans et al. (2019) show that they can increase trust in leaders and perceptions of leaders’ responsiveness and honesty among recipients. But the empirical evidence is mixed, and other studies show that this does not occur consistently (Freeland 2007, Ellis and Faricy 2011, Zucco 2013).
Understanding of how economic welfare affects political attitudes and behaviour continues to evolve. Classical economic voting theory focuses on absolute welfare, holding that citizens reward the government for good economic outcomes and punish it for bad ones. However, an emerging literature in political science suggests that perceived relative wellbeing – how people see themselves compared with others – is also important in shaping citizens’ assessments of their political leaders and institutions.
In Kosec and Mo (2023), we studied how Pakistan’s national unconditional cash transfer programme, the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), affected political attitudes. Specifically, we considered that cash from the government might have different effects on its recipients according to how economically well off they felt relative to others (and thus presumably how in need and deserving of a cash transfer they felt).

× Introduction: Alive and Thrive (A&T) implemented infant and young child feeding (IYCF) interventions in Bangladesh. We examine the sustained impacts on health workers' IYCF knowledge, service delivery, job satisfaction, and job readiness three years after the program's conclusion.
Methods: We use data from a cluster-randomized controlled trial design, including repeated cross-sectional surveys with health workers in 2010 (baseline, n = 290), 2014 (endline, n = 511) and 2017 (post-endline, n = 600). Health workers in 10 sub-districts were trained and incentivized to deliver intensified IYCF counseling, and participated in social mobilization activities, while health workers in 10 comparison sub-districts delivered standard counseling activities. Accompanying mass media and policy change activities occurred at the national level. The primary outcome is quality of IYCF service delivery (number of IYCF messages reportedly communicated during counseling); intermediate outcomes are IYCF knowledge, job satisfaction, and job readiness. We also assess the role of hypothesized modifiers of program sustainment, i.e. activities of the program: comprehensiveness of refresher trainings and receipt of financial incentives. Multivariable difference-in-difference linear regression models, including worker characteristic covariates and adjusted for clustering at the survey sampling level, are used to compare differences between groups (intervention vs. comparison areas) and over time (baseline, endline, post-endline).
Results: At endline, health workers in intervention areas discussed significantly more IYCF topics than those in comparison areas (4.9 vs. 4.0 topics, p < 0.001), but levels decreased and the post-endline gap was no longer significant (4.0 vs. 3.3 topics, p = 0.067). Comprehensive refresher trainings were protective against deterioration in service delivery. Between baseline and endline, the intervention increased health workers' knowledge (3.5-point increase in knowledge scores in intervention areas, vs. 1.5-point increase in comparison areas, p < 0.0001); and this improvement persisted to post-endline, suggesting a sustained program effect on knowledge. Job satisfaction and readiness both saw improvements among workers in intervention areas during the project period (baseline to endline) but regressed to a similar level as comparison areas by post-endline. Discussion: Our study showed sustained impact of IYCF interventions on health workers' knowledge, but not job satisfaction or job readiness—and, critically, no sustained program effect on service delivery. Programs of limited duration may seek to assess the status of and invest in protective factors identified in this study (e.g., refresher trainings) to encourage sustained impact of improved service delivery. Studies should also prioritize collecting post-endline data to empirically test and refine concepts of sustainment.

× The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in severe income losses, but little is known about its impacts on diets and nutritional adequacy, or the effectiveness of social protection interventions in mitigating dietary and nutritional impacts. We first assess the likely impacts of COVID-19 shocks in Bangladesh and Myanmar on poverty and food and nutrient consumption gaps. We then analyze the estimated mitigating effects of five hypothetical social protection interventions of a typical monetary value: (1) cash transfers; (2) in-kind transfers of common rice; (3) in-kind transfers of fortified rice enriched with multiple essential micronutrients; (4) vouchers for a diversified basket of rice and non-staple foods; and (5) food vouchers with fortified rice instead of common rice. The simulation results suggest modest effectiveness of the cash transfers for mitigating poverty increases and little effectiveness of all five transfers for preventing increasing food and nutrient consumption gaps among the poorest 40%. Rice fortification is, however, effective at closing key micronutrient consumption gaps and could be a suitable policy instrument for averting “hidden hunger” during economic crises.

× We use economywide models to examine the economic recovery from COVID-19 shocks in Bangladesh and Nepal during 2020–2026. Declining labor productivity, capital underutilization, consumption shifts, and international investment shocks had significant and differential sectoral and country-level impacts in these countries. By 2026, GDP will be 6.9% and 13.9% lower in Bangladesh and Nepal, respectively, and the two countries will have an additional 3.3 million people in poverty compared to a no-COVID baseline. Regaining economic and welfare losses will require substantial investments in key industrial, agricultural, and tourism sectors, although tough policy decisions will be required given high levels of public debt.

× The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected vulnerable populations. With its intensity expected to be cyclical over the foreseeable future, and much of the impact estimates still modeled, it is imperative that we accurately assess the impact to date, to help with the process of targeted rebuilding of services. We collected data from administrative health information systems in six South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), to determine essential health services coverage disruptions between January–December 2020, and January–June 2021, compared to the same calendar months in 2019, and estimated the impact of this disruption on maternal and child mortality using the Lives Saved Tool. We also modelled impact of prolonged school closures on continued enrollment, as well as potential sequelae for the cohort of girls who have likely dropped out. Coverage of key maternal and child health interventions, including antenatal care and immunizations, decreased by up to 60%, with the largest disruptions observed between April and June 2020. This was followed by a period of recovery from July 2020 to March 2021, but a reversal of most of these gains in April/May 2021, likely due to the delta variant-fueled surge in South Asia at the same time. We estimated that disruption of essential health services between January 2020 and June 2021 potentially resulted in an additional 19,000 maternal and 317,000 child deaths, an increase of 19% and 13% respectively, compared to 2019. Extended school closures likely resulted in 9 million adolescents dropping out permanently, with 40% likely being from poorest households, resulting in decreased lifetime earnings. A projected increase in early marriages for girls who dropped out could result in an additional 500,000 adolescent pregnancies, 153,000 low birthweight births, and 27,000 additional children becoming stunted by age two years. To date, the increase in maternal and child mortality due to health services disruption has likely exceeded the overall number of COVID-19 deaths in South Asia. The indirect effects of the pandemic were disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable populations, and effects are likely to be long-lasting, permanent and in some cases inter-generational, unless policies aimed at alleviating these impacts are instituted at scale and targeted to reach the poorest of the poor. There are also implications for future pandemic preparedness.

× Background
Counseling on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) to support optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices is an essential intervention, and accurate coverage data is needed to identify gaps and monitor progress. However, coverage information captured during household surveys has not yet been validated.

Objectives
We examined the validity of maternal reports of IYCF counseling received during community-based contacts and factors associated with reporting accuracy.

Methods
Direct observations of home visits conducted by community workers in 40 villages in Bihar, India served as the “gold standard” to maternal reports of IYCF counseling received during 2-wk follow-up surveys (n = 444 mothers with children less than 1 y of age, interviews matched to direct observations). Individual-level validity was assessed by calculating sensitivity, specificity, and AUC. Population-level bias was measured using the inflation factor (IF). Multivariable regression models were used to examine factors associated with response accuracy.

Results
Prevalence of IYCF counseling during home visits was very high (90.1%). Maternal report of any IYCF counseling received in the past 2 wk was moderate (AUC: 0.60; 95% CI: 0.52, 0.67), and population bias was low (IF = 0.90). However, the recall of specific counseling messages varied. Maternal report of any breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding, and dietary diversity messages had moderate validity (AUC > 0.60), but other child feeding messages had low individual validity. Child age, maternal age, maternal education, mental stress, and social desirability were associated with reporting accuracy of multiple indicators.

Conclusions
Validity of IYCF counseling coverage was moderate for several key indicators. IYCF counseling is an information-based intervention that may be received from various sources, and it may be challenging to achieve higher reporting accuracy over a longer recall period. We consider the modest validity results as positive and suggest that these coverage indicators may be useful for measuring coverage and tracking progress over time.

× India accounts for a large proportion of the global prevalence of maternal and child undernutrition, and recent trends have renewed the call for large-scale concerted efforts to improve outcomes. With their reach to millions of rural Indian women, self-help groups (SHGs) offer a possible solution. We provide evidence from a cluster-randomized controlled trial in the state of Bihar of the impact of a health and nutrition intervention that provided behavior change communication to SHG members and worked to strengthen utilization of services. Over the course of 2.5 years, the intervention resulted in a 7% increase in the number of food groups consumed by children and a 30% increase in the proportion of women achieving minimum dietary diversity but had no impact on women’s body mass index or child underweight and wasting. Both knowledge and adoption of key behaviors along the impact pathway improved as a result of the treatment. SHGs certainly have the potential to effect social change and accelerate improvements in maternal and child health and nutrition outcomes, but in resource-constrained settings such as these, information-only interventions delivered through these platforms will likely have limited impact.

× Fragility, Conflict, and Migration addresses challenges to livelihood, food, and climate security faced by some of the most vulnerable populations worldwide. The Initiative focuses on building climate resilience, promoting gender equity, and fostering social inclusion. It forms part of CGIAR’s new Research Portfolio, delivering science and innovation to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.

× In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest has grown in what kinds of assistance protect household food security during shocks. We study rural and urban Bangladesh from 2018 to 2019 to late 2021, assessing how pre-pandemic access to social safety net programs and private remittances relate to household food insecurity during the pandemic. Using longitudinal data and estimating differences-in-differences models with household fixed effects, we find that pre-pandemic access to social protection is associated with significant reductions in food insecurity in all rounds collected during the pandemic, particularly in our urban sample. However, pre-pandemic access to remittances shows no similar protective effect.

× Widespread use of small power pumps in South Asia has revolutionized agricultural production since the 1970s. In the past few years, solar photovoltaic pumps have become affordable alternatives to diesel and grid-powered electric pumps. While their initial investment is higher, the near-zero operating costs make them extremely attractive (Xie et al. 2021; Lefore et al. 2021). They have additional benefits, including reducing the national fuel import bill; and producing no greenhouse gases. Small solar-powered pumps are portable and can be used for many purposes. India, among others, is investing billions of Indian Rupees in subsidies to ramp up their use; and partnerships among private firms, NGOs, governments, researchers, and investors are trying to expand their uptake in sub-Saharan Africa. A major downside is that most irrigation pumps are being acquired by relatively wealthy male farmers, exacerbating already high levels of inequality in rural communities. Poor smallholders, especially women, cannot meet the required credit checks and therefore cannot purchase the pumps. Nor do they have access to finance to purchase complementary inputs such as fertilizer and seeds. In response, various research institutions, pump manufacturers, and NGOs are exploring how to target irrigation pumps to poor smallholders, women, and youth. Many studies and pilot programs have been implemented and shown positive results. The challenge is to scale out the successful pilots based on lessons learned. This brief explores the lessons learned and identifies potential ways forward.

× Background: Despite considerable evidence on a negative association between pregnancy pesticide exposure and child development in high-income countries, evidence from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is limited. Therefore, we assessed associations between pregnancy pesticide exposure and child development in rural Bangladesh and summarised existing literature in a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Methods: We used data from 284 mother-child pairs participating in a birth cohort established in 2008. Eight urinary pesticide biomarkers were quantified in early pregnancy (mean gestational age 11.6±2.9 weeks) as an index of pesticide exposure. The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition were administered at 20–40 months of age. Associations between creatinine-adjusted urinary pesticide biomarker concentrations and child development scores were estimated using multivariable generalised linear models. We searched ten databases up to November 2021 to identify prospective studies on pregnancy pesticide exposure and child development conducted in LMICs. We used a random-effects model to pool similar studies, including our original analysis. The systematic review was pre-registered with PROSPERO: CRD42021292919.
Results: In the Bangladesh cohort, pregnancy 2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-hydroxypyrimidine (IMPY) concentrations were inversely associated with motor development (-0.66 points [95% CI -1.23, -0.09]). Pregnancy 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPY) concentrations were inversely associated with cognitive development, but the association was small: -0.02 points (-0.04, 0.01). We observed no associations between 4-nitrophenol and 3-phenoxybenzoic acid (3-PBA) concentrations and child development. The systematic review included 13 studies from four LMICs. After pooling our results with one other study, we found consistent evidence that pregnancy 3-PBA concentrations were not associated with cognitive, language, or motor development.
Conclusion: Evidence suggests that pregnancy exposure to some organophosphate pesticides is negatively associated with child development. Interventions to reduce in-utero pesticide exposure in LMICs may help protect child development.

× Digitalization is transforming existing agricultural business processes and services and enabling new means to deploy innovative services and products at scale. At the core of these services and innovations is open data. In India, Central and State Governments, academic, research institutions, and the private sector have done critical work in conceptualizing different approaches and aspects of an AgriStack to digitally transform agriculture. Recognizing the need to integrate these efforts and incorporate use cases, CGIAR Research Initiative on Digital Innovation, in partnership with The Agri Collaboratory (TAC), organized a consultation workshop in Delhi in November 2022. Participated by 70 stakeholders representing 54 organizations, the workshop enabled in-depth discussion on the design principles of thematic use cases and facilitated a broader debate on the specific building blocks needed. This document summarizes key principles discussed throughout the workshop.

× Antenatal care (ANC) is an opportunity to receive interventions that can prevent low birth weight (LBW). We sought to 1) estimate LBW prevalence and burden in South Asia, 2) describe the number of ANC visits (quantity) and interventions received (quality), and 3) explore associations between ANC quantity, quality and LBW. We used Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from Afghanistan (2015), Bangladesh (2018), India (2016), Nepal (2016), Pakistan (2018) and Sri Lanka (2016) (n = 146,284 children <5y). Women were categorized as follows: 1) low quantity (<4 ANC visits) and low quality (<5 of 10 interventions received during ANC), 2) low quantity and high quality (≥5 of 10 interventions), 3) high quantity (≥4 visits) and low quality, 4) high quantity and high quality. We used fixed effect logistic regressions to examine associations between ANC quality/quantity and LBW (<2500 grams). LBW prevalence was highest in Pakistan (23%) and India (18%), with India accounting for two-thirds of the regional burden. Only 8% of women in Afghanistan received high quantity and high quality ANC, compared to 42–46% in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, 65% in Nepal and 92% in Sri Lanka. Compared to the low quantity/quality reference group, children of women with high quantity/quality ANC had lower odds of LBW in India (Adjusted Odds Ratio 0.84, 95% CI 0.78–0.89), Nepal (0.57, 0.35–0.94), Pakistan (0.45, 0.23–0.86), and Sri Lanka (0.73, 0.57–0.92). Low quantity but high quality ANC was protective in India (0.90, 0.84–0.96), Afghanistan (0.53, 0.27–1.05) and Pakistan (0.49, 0.23–1.05). High quantity but low quality ANC was protective in Sri Lanka (0.76, 0.61–0.93). Neither frequent ANC without appropriate interventions nor infrequent ANC with appropriate interventions are sufficient to prevent LBW in most South Asian countries, though quality may be more important than quantity. Consistent measurement of interventions during ANC is needed.

× Background
Early detection of diabetes and hypertension is helpful to prevent and/or delay the onset of these diseases through proper interventions. Therefore, it is a prerequisite to know the prevalence of prediabetes and prehypertension and the factors associated with these conditions but people from developing countries including Bangladesh often remain undiagnosed and unaware of these conditions. In this study we investigate the prevalence of prediabetes and prehypertension and their associated factors in Bangladesh using nationally representative data.

Method
We used nationally representative Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2017–18 survey data, which included a total sample of 14,704 adults aged 18 years and more from whom blood pressure and fasting plasma glucose were collected. Chi-square test was used to examine the differences between sociodemographic and outcome variables. The univariate and multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify the factors associated with prediabetes and prehypertension.

Results
Overall, the prevalence of prediabetes and prehypertension was 8.6% with 14% of the sampled population having from prediabetes and prehypertension separately. Among the prediabetic and prehypertensive participants, one-fourth of the participant were from the richest families and around one-third were overweight/obese, while more than fifty percent had normal Body Mass Index (BMI) and completed secondary and higher education. In the univariate analysis, the richest wealth status (UOR 3.3, 95% CI: 2.46 -4.35) and overweight/obesity (UOR 3.2, 95% CI: 2.62–3.85) are the highest predictors for prediabetes and prehypertension. After adjusting the other variables, overweight/obesity remains the largest predictor for prediabetes and prehypertension (AOR:2.5, 95% CI:2.05–3.05). Further, people aged 31 and above and from the richest family had around 2 times and 1.8 times higher risk of being prediabetic and prehypertensive compared to the younger age people (18–30 years) and the poorest family (respectively).

Conclusion
The coexistence of prediabetes and prehypertension is an early sign of a greater burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the near future for Bangladesh. To reduce the higher burden of NCDs, our findings call for a multisectoral approach to identify the precondition of NCDs with particular attention to maintaining body weight.

× Development programs often rely on locally hired agents for service delivery, especially for interventions promoting agricultural practices, health, and nutrition. These agents are key to reaching underserved communities, especially women, with information and services around recommended practices. However, where societies are socially stratified, differences in ethnic identities between agents and beneficiaries may impact the effectiveness of information and service delivery and the uptake of recommended behaviors. We explore the salience of shared ethnic identity between agents and beneficiaries in promoting collective action using a field experiment with women’s self-help groups (SHGs) in India. We cross-randomize an information treatment and a group-agent shared ethnicity treatment at the SHG level. We measure impacts on individual group member information retention and willingness to contribute to a group-owned kitchen garden that could improve access to a diverse and nutritious diet. We find information retention is better when the group is matched with an agent lower in the ethnic hierarchy, but that agents higher in the hierarchy elicit greater individual contributions to the group-owned kitchen garden. We suggest some hypotheses for these seemingly contradictory results. Other characteristics like education, group cohesion and perceived agent ability also matter in changing knowledge and contribution. Our findings have important implications for effective program design and implementation, suggesting that implementers need to consider factors beyond the information content, target group and pedagogical mode of delivery for their strategies to be transformative.

× The COVID-19 pandemic not only imposed severe health risks but also raised major challenges to the economy, due to widespread and severe measures to control the spread of the disease. Food value chains were disrupted by restrictions of the movement of people and commodities, which had significant impacts on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Bangladeshi vegetable farmers. A total of 320 vegetable farmers were selected from the North-West region of Bangladesh. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a digital survey method. Analysis revealed that around 3–5% of the marketed surplus of the farms was reduced during the pandemic due to the disturbances. The majority of the farm households reported that there was a significant reduction in their family income and, as a consequence, around 38% of farm households had cut down on their food consumption during the pandemic. The farmers were found to follow different strategies to cope with the difficulties and respond to government initiatives to mitigate such impacts. Despite all the restrictions and risks, extension services were still available to help the farmers. On the basis of the findings, this study suggests the importance of collaborative participation of the relevant bodies to decrease the effects of COVID-19 on farm households by employing all available mechanisms and focusing more on identifying effective coping strategies that can be supported in the event of future shocks, for more sustainable and resilient food systems.

× Agricultural and food system transformation helps increase farm productivity and encourages farmers to participate in updated value chains, adopt newer technologies, thereby helping farmers transform their livelihoods in a sustainable manner. Relatedly, value chain innovations depend on multiple decisions farmers make at various stages of the value chain, adequate participation being a primary factor. In this paper, we integrate farmers’ adoption decision of a new variety of chilli crop (“Teja”) along with their electronic market participation decision and e-market participation intensity, based on data from the chilli farming sector in India, where agricultural markets have been modernized through digitization (Kalgudi e-Market). Thus, the employed Triple-Hurdle Model (THM) integrates adoption decision of “Teja” variety of chilli, e-Market Participation Decision and e-market participation intensity thereby, allowing us to make inferences relating to chilli farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our results, showed that the drivers of “Teja” variety adoption, e-market participation, and e-participation intensity include education, reliable extension services, access to seeds of high yielding varieties, market information, and membership in farmer-producer organizations. Added to these, personnel training visits, prompt deliveries of inputs, and prompt payment of sales proceeds are also important in influencing participation and intensities. Results show that the three stochastic decisions of THM are strongly correlated implying that the adoption decision of “Teja” variety of chilli by the farmers influences the e-market participation decision and consequently, e-market participation intensity and these three decisions are sequential. On the contrary, the decisions viz., e-market participation decision and e-market participation intensity as input buyers and consequent adoption of “Teja” variety of chilli are simultaneous. So, the policy measures that promote production technology interventions (say, “Teja” variety of chilli) will definitely enhance better e-market access of chilli farmers. Accordingly, the breeding programs of the agricultural research stations should enhance the uptake of improved varieties in tune with modern marketing (e-market) technologies. Future farm policy and agricultural-research and innovations must recognize the potential that the digital marketing systems have to offer. Such considerations coupled with the provision of market infrastructure including assaying, grading, storage, and market information will promote digital transformation in agricultural value chains in developing countries like India.

× What shapes mass attitudes towards constitutional reforms in post-conflict contexts? Constitutional reform has long been a priority for states emerging from conflict, where there is a need to rectify the marginalization of certain groups, define the scopes of authority of different institutions, and delineate power-sharing arrangements. Yet, because constitutional reforms are often led by political elites, we typically lack insights into the views of the broader populace.

× We use a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh to compare two models of delivering nutrition content jointly to husbands and wives: deploying female nutrition workers versus mostly male agriculture extension workers. Both approaches increased nutrition knowledge of men and women, household and individual diet quality, and women’s empowerment. Intervention effects on agriculture and nutrition knowledge, agricultural production diversity, dietary diversity, women’s empowerment, and gender parity do not significantly differ between models where nutrition workers versus agriculture extension workers provide the training. The exception is in an attitudes score, where results indicate same-sex agents may affect scores differently than opposite-sex agents. Our results suggest opposite-sex agents may not necessarily be less effective in providing training. In South Asia, where agricultural extension systems and the pipeline to those systems are male dominated, training men to deliver nutrition messages may offer a temporary solution to the shortage of fe male extension workers and offer opportunities to scale and promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture. However, in both models, we find evidence that the presence of mothers-in-law within households modifies the programs’ effectiveness on some nutrition, empowerment, and attitude measures, suggesting that accounting for other influential household members is a potential area for future programming.

× In early 2023, the United Nations announced that the world is facing the highest number of violent conflicts since World War II, with a majority of these being civil conflicts. Historically, ending civil conflict and fostering democratic transitions has involved constitutional reforms that address the grievances that originally sparked violence. In fact, over 100 peace agreements signed between 1989 and 2020 have included provisions for constitutional reform. However, the period of negotiating constitutional reforms is particularly precarious in such settings and can lead to further destabilization if too many groups’ expectations are not met.

× This paper investigates the associations between agricultural diversification and dietary diversity among men, women and children of farm households in Bangladesh. Using three waves of nationally representative Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS- 2011–12, 2015 and 2018) data and a panel data model, the study found that agricultural production diversification can emphasize the dietary diversification across the life cycle of farm household members. The balanced panel data reveals that agricultural production diversification has a statistically significant and positive impact on dietary diversity of individual members (men, women and children) of farm households. Moreover, other important factors that impact on agricultural diversification and improve dietary diversity like women’s education and employment, commercialization of farm households, access to non-farm income sources, and access to information facilities also have a strong association in improving dietary status, food and nutritional security as well. Although there is currently limited diversity in the diets of adult men, women and children of rural farm households, the situation can be improved over time with proper and consistent support. The findings suggest policy interventions should target not only agricultural diversification but also improve women’s education and on and off farm employment opportunities and facilitate better access to information for rural households. These recommendations can support improved dietary diversity for all household members under different settings.

× Background: Bangladesh is urbanizing rapidly, facing challenges of malnutrition, low coverage and poor quality of urban nutrition services.
Objectives: We assessed the impact of integrating maternal, infant, and young child nutrition interventions, delivered at urban Maternal Neonatal and Child Health facilities, on maternal dietary diversity, iron-folic acid (IFA) and calcium consumption, and child feeding practices.
Methods: We used a quasi-experimental design with a non-random assignment of 20 health facilities in Dhaka to intensive and standard service arms. We conducted facility-based observations and community-based surveys at baseline (2020) and endline (2022) (n=2,455 observations and surveys with 1,678 pregnant [PW] or recently delivered women [RDW] at endline). We derived difference-in-difference (DID) estimates, adjusted for characteristics that differed at baseline or endline, and accounted for clustering.
Results: Exposure to antenatal care (ANC) was similar in both arms: two-thirds of RDW received ANC during the first trimester and three-fourths received ≥4 ANC check-ups.
Compared to the standard arm, a higher proportion of PW in the intensive arm received counselling on dietary diversity (DID: 45 percentage points [pp]), and a higher proportion of RDW received IFA (25pp) and calcium supplementation (19pp), adequate weight gain (44pp), and appropriate child feeding (27pp). Improvements were greater in the intensive than standard arm for number of food groups consumed (DID: 1.1 food groups) and minimum dietary diversity (23pp); no impact was observed for IFA and calcium consumption during pregnancy. Impacts were observed for early initiation (20pp), exclusive breastfeeding (45pp), introduction of solid or semi-solid foods (28pp), and egg and/or flesh food consumption (33pp) among children. Minimum dietary diversity and acceptable diet remained low in both arms.
Conclusions: Intensifying nutrition in government-aligned health services delivered by experienced NGO-run facilities is a feasible model to address the urban health gap, nutrition services coverage, and improved practices.

× A long history of empirical research has focused on testing whether and when household consumption and production decisions are separable. If markets were perfect, household consumption would be independent of production. In this article, we propose that market channel choice complicates this relationship. Our analysis of household panel data from rural India, focusing on dairy, leads us to four key conclusions. First, milk consumption is correlated with production, and markets are not a complete substitute for household production. Second, a large presence of formal milk buyers in a village is associated with lower milk consumption in dairy households, overturning the positive association of participation in formal value chains with household milk consumption. Third, contrary to expectations, for households that do not own dairy animals and net buyers, the presence of formal value chains remains uncorrelated with milk consumption. Fourth, we infer, test for and find suggestive evidence of segmented milk markets, that is, different types of households participate in different markets for milk that do not seem to interact with each other. Policymakers focused on market development or production-based strategies need to factor in the possibility of market segmentation based on market channels while designing interventions.

× Background: Recent evidence suggests that diet inequities between men and women may have diminished within rural Bangladeshi households. However, this has not been directly tested with appropriate physiologic adjustments and it is unclear whether changes have occurred across socioeconomic strata. Understanding intrahousehold dietary patterns at different points on the income and food-security distribution in rural Bangladesh—particularly, within ultrapoor and farm households—is important for appropriate design of gender-sensitive and nutrition-sensitive interventions, which often target these groups.
Objective: Using 2012 and 2016 data, we aimed to examine gender differences in diet quantity and quality among ultrapoor and farm households in rural Bangladesh.
Methods: The study used baseline 24-h dietary data from 2 randomized control trials conducted in rural Bangladesh: the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (ultrapoor households) and the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages project (farm households). Ordinary least squares regressions with household-level fixed effects tested for gender differences among constructed diet measures, such as caloric intake, caloric adequacy ratio, dietary diversity score, global diet quality score, and probability of consuming moderate or high levels of healthy food groups.
Results: In both samples, on average, women consumed fewer calories than men in the same households but consumed near equal or more in reference to their caloric needs. Women scored <1% lower than men on diet quality indicators and showed similar probabilities to men of consuming healthy foods. Most men and women in both samples were calorically inadequate (>60%) and recorded poor diet quality scores that indicated high risk of nutrient inadequacy and chronic disease (>95%).
Conclusions: In both ultrapoor and farm households, although men record higher intake quantities and diet quality scores, the apparent male advantage disappear when energy requirements and the magnitudes of difference are considered. Diets of men and women in these rural Bangladeshi households are equitable but suboptimal.

× Background: Bolstering farm-level crop diversity is one strategy to strengthen food system resilience and achieve global food security. Women who live in rural areas play an essential role in food production; therefore, we aimed to assess the associations between women's empowerment and crop diversity.
Methods: In this secondary analysis of cross-sectional data, we used data from four cluster-randomised controlled trials done in Burkina Faso, India, Malawi, and Tanzania. We assessed women's empowerment using indicators from the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Farm-level crop diversity measures were the number of food crops grown, number of food groups grown, and if nutrient-dense crops were grown. We used a two-stage modelling approach. First, we analysed covariate-adjusted country-specific associations between women's empowerment and crop diversity indicators using multivariable generalised linear models. Second, we pooled country-specific associations using random-effects models.
Findings: The final analytic sample included 1735 women from Burkina Faso, 4450 women from India, 547 women from Malawi, and 574 women from Tanzania. Across all countries, compared with households in which women provided input into fewer productive decisions, households of women with greater input into productive decisions produced more food crops (mean difference 0·36 [95% CI 0·16–0·55]), a higher number of food groups (mean difference 0·16 [0·06–0·25]), and more nutrient-dense crops (percentage point difference 3 [95% CI 3–4]). Across all countries, each additional community group a woman actively participated in was associated with cultivating a higher number of food crops (mean difference 0·20 [0·04–0·35]) and a higher number of food groups (mean difference 0·11 [0·03–0·18]), but not more nutrient-dense crops. In pooled associations from Burkina Faso and India, asset ownership was associated with cultivating a higher number of food crops (mean difference 0·08 [0·04–0·12]) and a higher number of food groups (mean difference 0·05 [0·04–0·07]), but not more nutrient-dense crops.
Interpretation: Greater women's empowerment was associated with higher farm-level crop diversity among low-income agricultural households, suggesting that it could help enhance efforts to strengthen food system resilience.

× This paper examines whether the combined participation in workfare and food grain subsidy programmes in India impacts the nutritional and health status of women and children, using body mass index (BMI) and short-term morbidity as indicators. Based on a nationally representative panel data survey conducted in 2005 and 2012, we estimate the participants’ average treatment effects by applying a semi-parametric differences-in-differences (DID) approach on the full sample and a regression-based DID approach on a matched sample. We find that simultaneous participation in these programmes lowers women’s morbidity by at least 25%, but women’s BMI increases only in states implementing those programmes well. For children, there is no robust evidence of impacts. Our results suggest that various social protection programmes can operate synergistically and deliver positive impacts on children and women’s nutrition or health, even though this is not their main objective. However, the effects are heterogeneous and confirm that the nutrition and health benefits, reached through a combination of the two social protection programmes, are mediated by intrahousehold dynamics. Synergistic and mediating effects must be considered in future efforts to upscale social protection in the Global South in order to deliver simultaneous progress across the Sustainable Development Goals.

× The rapid growth of aquaculture in Bangladesh over the past three decades has been facilitated by increasing supplementary feed use and increasing numbers of feed suppliers, but little is known about the organization and behavior of the feed supply segment of aquaculture value chain. We conducted a comprehensive survey with 79 feed suppliers of two types: ‘dealers’ linked to feed companies (n = 34) and independent retailers (n = 45), in the seven main aquaculture producing districts of southern Bangladesh in 2021 to address this knowledge gap. We found the following. (1) Over the past 10 years, the number of traders increased 70% and the volume of feed traded almost doubled. (2) Feed supply is shifting from traditional agricultural byproducts to formulated feeds (47% of total feed), and floating feeds as a subset of those (54% of formulated feed), contributing to increasing farm productivity. (3) The formulated fish feed market in Bangladesh is diverse, but quite concentrated. Feed suppliers sold formulated feed produced by 35 companies, with eight companies accounting for 74% of sales. (4) Feed handling practices are efficient. Traders sell feeds quickly (average turnover time 10 days) and storage practices are adequate to maintain quality. (5) No traders reported experiencing any waste or loss of feed during their most recent completed transaction, and only 5% of traders reported losing a small portion of feed (1.7%) during transport. (6) The average profit margin earned by feed suppliers is a modest 6.2%. (7) Feed trading creates substantial employment: 43,937 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs in the seven surveyed districts. In sum, the feed supply segment of the aquaculture value chain in southern Bangladesh is dynamic, well-developed, and relatively competitive and efficient. This finding is contrary to the conventional wisdom, which often portrays the sector as inefficient and beset by problems.

× Background: Maternal undernutrition during pregnancy remains a critical public health issue in India. While evidence-based interventions exist, poor program implementation and limited uptake of behavior change interventions make addressing undernutrition complex. To address this challenge, Alive & Thrive implemented interventions to strengthen interpersonal counseling, micronutrient supplement provision, and community mobilization through the government antenatal care (ANC) platform in Uttar Pradesh, India.

Objective: This qualitative study aimed to: (1) examine pregnant women’s experiences of key nutrition-related behaviors (ANC attendance, consuming a diverse diet, supplement intake, weight gain monitoring, and breastfeeding intentions); (2) examine the influence of family members on these behaviors; and (3) identify key facilitators and barriers that affect behavioral adoption.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative study with in-depth interviews with 24 pregnant women, 13 husbands, and 15 mothers-in-law (MIL). We analyzed data through a thematic approach using the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavior (COM-B) framework.

Results: For ANC checkups and maternal weight gain monitoring, key facilitators were frontline worker home visits, convenient transportation, and family support, while the primary barrier was low motivation and lack understanding of the importance of ANC checkups. For dietary diversity, there was high reported capability (knowledge related to the key behavior) and most family members were aware of key recommendations; however, structural opportunity barriers (financial strain, lack of food availability and accessibility) prevented behavioral change. Opportunity ranked high for iron and folic acid supplement (IFA) intake, but was not consistently consumed due to side effects. Conversely, lack of supply was the largest barrier for calcium supplement intake. For breastfeeding, there was low overall capability and several participants described receiving inaccurate counseling messages.

Conclusion: Key drivers of maternal nutrition behavior adoption were indicator specific and varied across the capability-opportunity-motivation behavior change spectrum. Findings from this study can help to strengthen future program effectiveness by identifying specific areas of program improvement.

× This study examines malnutrition’s triple burden, including anaemia, overweight, and stunting, among children aged 6–59 months. Using data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–2021), the study identifies risk factors and assesses their contribution at different levels to existing malnutrition burden. A random intercept multilevel logistic regression model and spatial analysis are employed to identify child, maternal, and household level risk factors for stunting, overweight, and anaemia. The study finds that 34% of children were stunted, 4% were overweight, and 66% were anaemic. Stunting and anaemia prevalence were higher in central and eastern regions, while overweight was more prevalent in the north-eastern and northern regions. At the macro-level, the coexistence of stunting, overweight, and anaemia circumstantiates the triple burden of childhood malnutrition with substantial spatial variation (Moran’s I: stunting-0.53, overweight-0.41, and anaemia-0.53). Multilevel analysis reveals that child, maternal, and household variables play a substantial role in determining malnutrition burden in India. The nutritional health is significantly influenced by a wide range of determinants, necessitating multilevel treatments targeting households to address this diverse group of coexisting factors. Given the intra-country spatial heterogeneity, the treatment also needs to be tailor-made for various disaggregated levels.

× Integrated aquaculture–agriculture (IAA) is a form of crop diversification where aquatic and terrestrial foods are grown together on a single parcel of land. We compare economic and nutrient productivity per hectare for 12 distinct IAA combinations, identified from a representative survey of 721 farms in southern Bangladesh. Just under half of households integrate agriculture into their aquaculture production. Regression analyses show positive associations between the integration of terrestrial foods into aquatic farming systems and nutrient productivity, but that nutrient productivity is partly disconnected from economic productivity. However, we find that production of specific combinations of aquatic foods and vegetables can simultaneously improve nutrient productivity and economic productivity, thereby promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA). The approach demonstrated here can be applied to the design of NSA programmes that are important for realizing nutrition-sensitive food systems.

× This study uses social accounting matrix multipliers and structural path analyses to estimate effects of COVID-19 and related fiscal stimuli on five household groups. The COVID-19 lockdown increased poverty in Pakistan by 15%, which was addressed using a $1.5 billion, digitally implemented Ehsaas Emergency Cash (EEC) program that reached 14.8 million poor households. The study's models show that the largest multipliers from Ehsaas program finance were in agriculture, as a 1 Rupee shock adds 0.225 Rupee income to households. About 30% of that gain was estimated to go to poor farm families. In contrast, our models find that construction and trade growth added three times as much income to poor nonfarm and urban households as to farm households. However, those sectors added only one third as much total income as agriculture. From the structural path analysis, the importance of capital assets in generating income was seen, as was the possibility of greater poverty reduction from sectors with proportionally fewer intermediate inputs and more value added.

× Background
The double burden of malnutrition (DBM), characterized by concurrent undernutrition and overnutrition, is a growing global concern. Families share resources and eating behaviors and programs often target households, yet evidence of the DBM at the family level is scarce.
Objectives
This study examined trends and inequality in the intrahousehold DBM in India between 2006 and 2021.
Methods
Data were from 3 waves of India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2006, 2016, and 2021). We examined 3 types of household member (with children aged <5 y) combinations: mother–child (N = 328,039 across 3 waves), father–child, and parent (mother and father)–child (N = 47,139 for each pair). The DBM was defined as one or more individuals with undernutrition (either wasting or stunting in children or underweight in adults) and one or more overweight individuals within the same household. DBM was examined over time, at national and subnational levels, and by residence and wealth. Results Nearly all DBM was in the form of an overweight parent and an undernourished weight or stunted child. The prevalence of parent–child DBM increased from 15% in 2006 to 26% in 2021. Father–child pairs experienced the most rapid DBM increase, from 12% in 2006 to 22% in 2021, an 83% increase, driven by increasing overweight among men. In 2021, the DBM was highest in North-Eastern and Southern states, and among relatively rich households from urban areas. The increase in the DBM was faster in rural areas and among poor households compared with that in urban areas and rich households. Urban–rural and rich–poor inequalities in the DBM have decreased over time. Conclusions The intrahousehold DBM has increased over time, affecting 1 in 4 households in India in 2021. Family-based interventions that can simultaneously address child underweight and parent overweight are required to address India’s increasing intrahousehold DBM.

× CONTEXT: India's agricultural systems are increasingly affected by climate change's adverse effects. The Government of India has an impressive set of programs to address this issue, but they have substantial shortcomings, especially in reaching women farmers.
OBJECTIVE: We aim to understand policy and implementation gaps in reaching women farmers with climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices and study how women and men farmer's different roles in agriculture shape their needs and access to complementary services needed to adapt to climate change.
METHODS: An extensive review of India's agriculture and climate policies and program and a series of focus group discussions with farmers in Gujarat, India to discuss constraints and potential entry points for better reaching women farmers with CSA practices.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Women's increased vulnerability to climate change and reduced access to CSA practices can be attributed to limited land ownership, poor access to credit, reduced access to information and formal extension, and multiple pressures on their time. Village cooperatives and self-help groups can be leveraged to support women's access to agricultural information and adoption of CSA practices.
SIGNIFICANCE: This paper highlights constraints to information and extension access by Indian women farmers that could impede the widespread adoption of CSA practices. It fills an important knowledge gap in designing gender-responsive policies and inclusive agricultural extension systems to promote adoption of CSA practices among smallholder farmers.

× Poverty is endemic in the highly populated Eastern Gangetic Plains where agriculture is critical to more than half the population. However, the mechanisms to support agriculture for development are contested. For example, some have advocated a strong role for government support and assistance due to market weaknesses, while others have promoted the need for more market-oriented approaches. We use an elicitation process focussed on expert policymaking communities, employing stated preference techniques to explore these options. Differences in perceptions about the effectiveness of policies and their delivery are reported between countries, while also empirically examining the influence of the respondents' organisational background. The results show support for policies that improve farmers' access to inputs, especially when delivered by private sector actors. The research provides an important contribution to the literature on policies for agricultural development.

× This study used a panel data model to examine the relationship between agricultural diversification and dietary diversity of farm households across three waves of nationally representative Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey data (BIHS- 2011-12, 2015, and 2018). Prior research measured diversification in terms of crop cultivation and livestock rearing. However, this study takes a different approach to measuring agricultural diversification by combining the three major sectors—crop, fish, and livestock production—at the farm household level to evaluate the impact of such agricultural diversification on the diversification of diets in households. The panel data allows us to establish that agricultural production diversification has a significantly positive effect on the dietary diversity of farm households. Moreover, other important factors that impact agricultural diversification to improve dietary diversity, like women’s employment, market access, engagement with non-farm income sources, and access to information also have a strong association in improving the dietary status, food and nutritional security of households. Participation in the market helps farming households to become more commercially oriented but negatively affects the dietary diversification of the households. However, participation in non-farming activities was reported to have a significant positive influence on dietary diversity, though not as much as agricultural diversification. From the perspective of policy that requires nutrition into consideration, the findings suggest to focus on providing support for diversified farming systems can directly increase the nutritionally enriched dietary intake, increasing the employability of women. Promoting market participation through modern infrastructural facilities should be prioritized to improve the current scenarios.

× Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is the staple cereal and is the primary source of protein for millions of people in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Sorghum grain value has been increasing in tropical countries including India owing to its gluten-free nature, anti-oxidant properties and low glycemic index. However, the nutrient composition of modern cultivars is declining thus necessitating genetic biofortification of sorghum to combat malnutrition and improve nutritional balance in the human diet. Keeping this in view, efforts were made to utilize valuable alleles, associated with nutrient composition, that might have been left behind in the varietal development in sorghum. The study aimed to determine the genetic improvement for nine nutritional and quality parameters (crude protein, in vitro protein digestibility (IVPD), total iron (Fe), total zinc (Zn), bioavailable Fe (%), bioavailable Zn (%), total phenolics, tannins and antioxidant activity) in the grains of 19 sorghum genotypes (high yield, drought and grain mold tolerant) developed from 11 superior India's landraces. After selection and advancement made from 2017-2022 through single seed descent method, the improvement in the nine nutritional and quality parameters was assessed. Significant variation was observed for all the nine parameters among the landraces and the genotypes. Sorghum genotypes PYPS 2 and PYPS 13 recorded the highest crude protein (13.21 and 12.80 % respectively) and IVPD (18.68 and 19.56 % respectively). Majority of the sorghum genotypes recorded high Fe (14.21 -28.41 mg/100g) and Zn (4.81 -8.16 mg/100g). High phenolics and antioxidant activity were recorded in sorghum genotypes PYPS 18 (85.65 mg/g gallic acid equivalents) and PYPS 19 (89.78 %) respectively. Selections through SSD method revealed highest improvement in genotype PYPS 10 for crude protein (32.25 %), total phenolics (18.48 %) and antioxidant activity (15.43 %). High improvements in genotypes PYPS 12 (23.50%), PYPS 3 (26.79%), PYPS 15 (21.18 %) were recorded for total Fe, available Fe and high tannins respectively.The study demonstrated that landraces could be effectively utilized as a potential, low-cost and ecofriendly approach in sorghum genetic biofortification to improved sorghum productivity and nutritional supply in semi-arid tropics.

× In India, the production of rice and wheat account for more than 80% of its total agricultural water use. As farming is highly dependent on water availability, rapidly receding water levels require urgent measures to manage withdrawals. We assess policy instruments that can reduce pressures on water resources, while at the same time limiting adverse impacts on water-intensive cereal production systems, land-use changes and economic welfare. To this end, we use a dynamic and integrated partial equilibrium model of agricultural production and its impact on the environment to reflect two options: an increase in energy costs for irrigation water (price-related effects), and alternatively, physical quotas on water withdrawals (quantity-related effects). We conclude that it is possible to increase energy prices for agriculture with minimal impacts on agricultural production, agricultural prices, and trade in cereal crops, and moderately reduce water withdrawals by 2050. We find that the intermediate effects of pricing policies are negative for all indicators as compared to quota policies. However, by 2050, both policies yield similar outcomes for all indicators. Our results offer insights into ways in which these policies drive different mechanisms and trade-offs on important agro-economic indicators, and they offer the choice for water conservation policy decision-making based on other critical factors such as implementation costs.

× Poor nutritional quality and micronutrient deficiency are major barriers to achieving goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (ensuring food security and nutrition for better health), especially in developing countries, including the least developed countries. Biofortifi cation has been widely adopted as a relevant solution with potential for expansion and diversifi cation. New technological options such as crop genome editing and nanotechnology offer the scope to make biofortification more effective. However, biofortification cannot be a stagnant solution that can be considered a panacea. This policy brief recommends evaluating biofortification as a solution and suggests a responsible research and innovation approach to improve it continually. The brief further proposes that the G20 commits to international initiatives that consider the needs and consumer preferences in biofortification, while also localising it.

× Climate change poses a greater threat for more exposed and vulnerable countries, communities and social groups. People whose livelihood depends on the agriculture and food sector, especially in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), face significant risk. In contexts with gendered roles in agri-food systems or where structural constraints to gender equality underlie unequal access to resources and services and constrain women's agency, local climate hazards and stressors, such as droughts, floods, or shortened crop-growing seasons, tend to negatively affect women more than men and women's adaptive capacities tend to be more restrained than men's . Transformation towards just and sustainable agri-food systems in the face of climate change will not only depend on reducing but also on averting aggravated gender inequality in agri-food systems. In this paper, we developed and applied an accessible and versatile methodology to identify and map localities where climate change poses high risk especially for women in agri-food systems because of gendered exposure and vulnerability. We label these localities climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspots. Applying our methodology to LMICs reveals that the countries at highest risk are majorly situated in Africa and Asia. Applying our methodology for agricultural activity-specific hotspot subnational areas to four focus countries, Mali, Zambia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, for instance, identifies a cluster of districts in Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions in Bangladesh as a hotspot for rice. The relevance and urgency of identifying localities where climate change hits agri-food systems hardest and is likely to negatively affect population groups or sectors that are particularly vulnerable is increasingly acknowledged in the literature and, in the spirit of leaving no one behind, in climate and development policy arenas. Hotspot maps can guide the allocation of scarce resources to most at-risk populations. The climate-agriculture-gender inequality hotspot maps show where women involved in agri-food systems are at high climate risk while signaling that reducing this risk requires addressing the structural barriers to gender equality.

× We cannot overcome the multiple crises facing our world, including the climate crisis, the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing food and energy price crisis linked to the war on Ukraine, without integrating a gender perspective into resilience interventions, particularly in the agri-food sector where women have particular roles.

However, to date, most climate change policies, investments, and interventions remain gender-blind. As a result, they might exacerbate gender inequalities in food systems by, for instance, increasing women’s labor burden and time poverty, reducing their access to and control over income and assets, and reducing their decision-making power.

× The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Irrigation and Mechanization Systems (ILIMS), led by the University of Nebraska’s Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) (Nebraska-ILIMS), was fittingly launched at this year’s World Food Day with the theme “Water is Life, Water is Food. Leave No One Behind.”

The research program’s five areas of inquiry will develop socio-technical bundles that support uptake of mechanization and irrigation, strengthen institutions for natural resource governance and climate resilience, enable scaling of suitable technologies and support development of human resources. The fifth area of inquiry makes a leap from technology to nutrition and health, with the specific aim to “formulate strategies for nutrition-sensitive mechanization and irrigation that safeguard and enhance health and inclusivity.”

× Farmers usually do not know the precise output that is affected by climatic factors such as temperature and rainfall and are characterized by inter-annual variability, part of which is caused by global climate change. No study covers the influences of climate factors on yield and yield risk in the context of chickpea farming in Andhra Pradesh, India. In this context, this study aimed to investigate the trends in climate change variables during Rabi season (October to January, 1996-2020) and evaluated their variability on chickpea yields across different agro-climatic zones in Andhra Pradesh by employing Just and Pope production function. Four non-parametric methods-Alexandersson’s Standard Normal Homogeneity Test, Buishand’s Range Test, Pettitt’s Test and Von Neumann’s Ratio Test are applied to detect homogeneity in the data. Mann–Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s slope (SS) method were employed to analyze monthly rainfall trends and minimum and maximum temperature trends. Results of Just and Pope (panel data) quadratic and Cobb-Douglas methods revealed that monthly minimum temperature positively influenced the mean yield of chickpea (0.22% and 0.16%, respectively). However, rainfall (-0.41% and -0.31%) and maximum temperature (-0.08% and -0.04%) negatively influenced the mean yield of chickpea under quadratic and Cobb-Douglas models, respectively. Accordingly, rainfall (0.08% and 0.06%) and maximum temperature (0.83% and 0.72%) positively influenced the yield variability and minimum temperature (-0.77% and -0.67%) reduced yield variability of chickpea under quadratic and Cobb-Douglas models respectively. In view of these findings, it is imperative to advocate the farmers about the importance of cultivating drought-tolerant chickpea varieties, drought-proofing and mitigation strategies, micro-irrigation practices and improving their access to agro-meteorological information towards sustainable chickpea cultivation in Andhra Pradesh.

× In the context of a wider trend in India of young people’s reluctance to pursue farming as an occupation, the experience of young farmers in Madhya Pradesh provides evidence to the contrary. This case study of two districts in Madhya Pradesh suggests that several young farmers, given a choice, would rather engage in agriculture as a full-time activity. In this, the main barriers for young farmers are in the form of larger constraints such as water availability, the quality of land, and these farmers’ limited ability to expand farm size through land purchase. To be sure, several young farmers feel stuck in agriculture and are waiting to find off-farm jobs. Even for this group of farmers, however, agriculture seems to provide a fallback option, in a context where these off-farm jobs are difficult to obtain and often are of poor quality. As in many other contexts, significant differences exist between young men and women in terms of their aspirations to become farmers and their ability to fulfill these aspirations.

× India’s total food grain production in 1950–1951 was low at 50.8 million tonnes, with a population of 361 million. Thus, the food grain production in 1950–1951 was 140.7 kg per person per annum or 0.39 kg per day. Thanks to Indian farmers and agricultural scientists who worked hard to increase the food grain production through new crop varieties and production technologies, along with the supportive policies of the governments that paved the way for the Green Revolution in Indian Agriculture. Achievements of the green revolution further led to achievements in other agricultural and allied sectors like the white revolution with substantial gains from milk production, followed by the yellow revolution with a significant increase in edible oilseed production, and the pink revolution with an increase in meat and poultry production to a significant extent.

This chapter mainly discusses where does India stand today in terms of its agriculture when compared to its independence in 1947? As the data for 1947 for most of the indicators is not available, 1951 is considered the base year and compared the various indicators for the year 2021.

× Fifty-four per cent of India’s population is under 25 years of age and, as per the 2011 Population Census, close to 34 per cent of India’s rural population belonged to the age group 15–34. While the presence of a sizeable young population is believed to offer a demographic dividend, policy efforts to realize the dividend have not met with success. Poor prospects for livelihoods within agriculture, its declining importance as a sector in the national economy, and aspirations of rural youth and their parents to find futures in nonfarm sectors suggest that, like elsewhere, agriculture today is an unlikely option for the young in India. The chapter brings the question of youth in agriculture into focus. Despite a large share of rural youth involved in farming, there is limited research or policy attention on the issues and challenges that they face around farming, non-farm opportunities, succession, and intergenerational transfer of resources and knowledge. It makes the case for improving the livelihood prospects within agriculture in a context of changing youth aspirations. We argue that a clearer understanding of the issues is essential to frame a nuanced approach to support the role of youth in agriculture and the role of agriculture in youth livelihood strategies.

× In the Indian family setting, women play a crucial role in the overall development of the households. Hence, development agencies and government programs mainly target women, assuming that empowering women would improve families. Given this background, we aim to construct a women's empowerment index (WEI) that encompasses all these domains and captures nutrition improvement for their and their
family members. We assigned the weights based on principal component analysis (PCA). Then, we examine the extent of empowerment and nutrition outcomes of the family members across the wealth category and place of residence (rural-urban setting). Finally, we validate the WEI by analyzing the relationship between WEI and nutrition outcomes of family members through logit analysis. We used Uttar Pradesh data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS) -5 conducted in 2019-21 for the study. We found a positive relationship between household wealth and women's empowerment, indicating the vulnerability of women in poor families, especially in rural areas. Our results also suggested that women's
empowerment differs across educational backgrounds and places of residence. Finally, we found that the prevalence of malnutrition is negatively associated with women's empowerment, especially children and women. These findings highlight the need for promoting women's empowerment-based policies and interventions to address the malnutrition problem

× We assess whether ownership of dairy cows is associated with a greater likelihood of consuming dairy products and with child anthropometric status in rural Bangladesh. Consistent with the assumption of imperfectly functioning markets for dairy products, ownership of dairy cows increases the likelihood that a child 6–59 months consumes milk by 7.7 percentage points with no difference in this association between boys and girls. This association nearly doubles in magnitude when we consider households that own a dairy cow that produced milk in the last year. This result is robust to the controls we use and the way in which we measure dairy cow ownership. Even when we saturate our model with child, maternal, household, wealth, as well as village fixed effects, we retain an association between dairy cow ownership and height-for-age z scores (HAZ) that is meaningful in magnitude – 0.13 standard deviations – and statistically significant at the one percent level. For children in the 12–23.9 month age group, ownership of a dairy cow is associated with a 0.37 SD increase in HAZ and a reduction of 11.3 percentage points in stunting. There is no statistically significant association with weight-for-height or wasting. These associations do not differ between boys and girls.

× Along with rising trade interdependency between the Global South and the Global North countries, there is growing pressure to implement ‘greener’ supply chains to ensure that traded commodities comply with sustainability norms. Sustainable standards and regulations are broadening their scope to take into account such concerns. Northern stakeholders play a far more extensive role in these processes, while their Southern counterparts are relegated to mere standard-takers as producers. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly challenging for Southern countries to meet sustainability standards, as these drive up their social and economic expenses. To address this, both sides need to make a concerted effort, in accordance with the reforms driving the development of these standards and regulations. Standards need to be globally agreed upon, built through multi-stakeholder forums, and followed up by cushioning financing facilities and mechanisms.

× Introduction: Small indigenous fish species (SIS) can be particularly rich in micronutrients and make a crucial contribution toward improving human nutrition. The introduction of mola (Amblypharyngodon mola), an SIS, which is particularly rich in vitamin A, into smallholder carp aquaculture systems has been widely promoted over the past decade as a promising nutrition-sensitive innovation. However, standardized techniques for the hatchery mass production of mola do not yet exist. We hypothesized that the lack of commercial hatchery mass-production techniques for mola seed is the key barrier limiting potential for widespread adoption of carp–SIS polyculture.

Methods: To address this gap, we conducted breeding trials at a private hatchery in Odisha, India, from July to September 2022, to identify standardized methods for the hatchery-based mass production of mola seed. Breeding was induced using a synthetic gonadotropin-releasing hormone analog (SGnRHa) at 0.5 mL and 0.25 mL per kg of body weight of female fish and male fish, respectively. Fish spawned in double hapas in breeding tanks.

Results: The average fertilization, spawning, and hatching rates over 10 breeding cycles were 81%, 82%, and 85%, respectively. A total of 8.5 million fertilized eggs and 6.4 million hatchlings were produced. The survival of fry during larval rearing trials at a stocking rate of 500 hatchlings/m2 was 58% after 22 days. The mola hatchlings and fry were sold to 29 farmers at prices comparable to those of Indian major carp.

Discussion: This article makes a unique contribution to the literature by documenting the entire process of hatchery-based mass mola seed production, including broodfish collection and maintenance, hormone dose optimization, breeding arrangements, breeder characteristics, breeding behavior and performance fecundity, larval rearing, and seed sales to farmers. This information is intended to serve as a protocol to be followed by any individual or institution with an interest in mola breeding and represents an important contribution to the development of nutrition-sensitive aquaculture.

× Deepor Beel, located in the state of Assam in India, is a Wetland of International Importance with a Wildlife Sanctuary and is the only RAMSAR site in the state. Though of invaluable ecological significance, the wetland is facing anthropogenic stressors, leading to rapid degradation of ecological health. In December 2022, surface water was collected from six stations of Deepor Beel to elucidate biological communities using the eDNA approach. At the time of sampling, in-situ environmental parameters were measured in triplicates. The dissolved nutrients and concentrations of metals and metalloids were estimated using UV–Vis Spectrophotometry and ICP-MS approaches respectively. The study revealed a high concentration of dissolved nitrate in the surface water. High-throughput sequencing using Nanopore sequencing chemistry in a MinION platform indicated the overwhelming abundance of Moraxellaceae (Prokaryotes) and Eumetazoa (Eukaryotes). The abundance of Cyprinidae were also encountered in the studied wetland reflecting the biodiversity of fish populations. High nitrate along with elucidated microbial signals are crucial to designate ecological health status of Deeper Beel. This study is aimed at generating baseline information to aid long-term monitoring and restoration of the Deepor Beel as well as the first comprehensive assessment of a RAMSAR Site located in northeast of India.

× Objective:
An annualised linear growth velocity (LGV) reference can identify groups of children at risk of growing poorly. As a single velocity reference for all preschool ages does not exist, we present an interim tool, derived from published, normative growth studies, for detecting growth faltering, illustrating its use in Nepali preschoolers.

Design:
The WHO Child Growth Velocity Standard was adapted to derive 12-month increments and conjoined to the Tanner-Whitehouse Height Velocity Reference data yielding contiguous preschool linear growth annualised velocities. Linear restricted cubic spline regressions were fit to generate sex-specific median and standard normal deviate velocities for ages 0 through 59 months. LGV Z-scores (LGVZ) were constructed, and growth faltering was defined as LGVZ < –2. Setting: Use of the reference was illustrated with data from Nepal’s Tarai region. Participants: Children contributing the existing growth references and a cohort of 4276 Nepali children assessed from 2013 to 2016. Results: Fitted, smoothed LGV reference curves displayed monotonically decreasing 12-month LGV, exemplified by male/female annual medians of 26·4/25·3, 12·1/12·7, 9·1/9·4, 7·7/7·8 and 7/7 cm/years, starting at 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months, respectively. Applying the referent, 31·1 %, 28·6 % and 29·3 % of Nepali children <6, 6–11 and 12–23 months of age, and ∼6 % of children 24–59 months, exhibited growth faltering. Under 24 months, faltering velocities were more prevalent in girls (34·4 %) than boys (25·3 %) (P < 0·05) but comparable (∼6 %) in older preschoolers. Conclusions: A LGV reference, concatenated from extant data, can identify preschool groups at-risk of growth faltering. Application and limitations are discussed.

× It is widely recognized that periods of crisis affect men and women differently, mediated by their access to resources and information, as well as social and institutional structures that may systematically disadvantage women from being able to access relief, institutional support, and rehabilitation. To capture the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, we conducted phone surveys in seven countries spread across Asia and Africa. The study was designed as a longitudinal panel study with five rounds of data collection in Ghana, Nepal, Nigeria, and Senegal, and three rounds of data collection in Kenya, Niger, and Uganda. Both men and women were administered the same survey, with some modifications made across countries to adapt to local contexts. This report gives an overview of our findings covering several topics including income loss, coping strategies, labor and time use, food and water insecurity and child education outcomes. We find widespread reports of income loss, which declined over time, but increased again as countries experienced a resurgence in COVID-19 cases and fatality. We find that households first depleted savings when faced with income loss and over time, use of savings reduced while other measures began to be adopted. Women reported greater food and water insecurity compared to men, including worrying about insufficient food and eating less than usual. This is particularly worrying since a large proportion of women also did not have adequately diverse diets. Moderate to severe water insecurity was reported in many of the countries, and as with food insecurity, women were more likely to report issues with accessing water for drinking and other household activities. In some countries, additional modules were added to capture country specific issues of policy relevance, such agriculture extension, mental health, and child marriage. The results make it clear that proactive investments will be needed, including social safety nets, favorable credit policies, nutrition and water investments, to ensure that the crisis does not further widen the gender gap in resources and achievements in rural areas of low- and middle-income countries.

× Home to one-quarter of humanity—one-fifth of whom are youth—South Asia has the world’s largest concentration of poverty and malnutrition (1–3). Despite producing one-quarter of the world’s consumed food, the region’s agrifood systems face formidable challenges in producing an adequate and affordable supply of the diverse foods needed for sustainable healthy diets (4,5). Unhealthy food consumption is rising, and farming systems are threatened by unsustainable groundwater withdrawal due to poorly developed food and energy policies. In addition, South Asia’s farmers are both contributors and victims of climate change and extreme weather, which contributes to rural out-migration—particularly of youth—resulting in rising labor scarcity and increased production costs.
TAFSSA (Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia), a CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative, aims to address these challenges by delivering actionable evidence and scalable innovations across these regions through a coordinated program of research and engagement from farmer to consumer.
One of the roadblocks to addressing these challenges is the lack of credible and high-resolution data on food systems in the region. The TAFSSA food systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. It is intended to be a multi-year assessment.

× ABOUT THIS NOTE
This research note presents findings on the availability of diet-related data in publiclyavailable population-based surveys conducted in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan in the last decade. It is intended to be used by researchers and policymakers to understand the data landscape and identify measurement priorities for future surveys.
KEY FINDINGS
• Data on diets for older children and adolescents are captured less frequently than
for younger children and women of reproductive age.
• Data are mostly available on food group consumption and for infants and young
children; data on consumption of unhealthy foods is poor.
• Few surveys capture quantity of foods consumed; estimating nutrient intake from
population-based surveys is therefore not possible.
• Only Bangladesh currently has large-scale publicly available and repeated rounds of
data on dietary intakes for multiple age groups.
• Dietary data are essential to shape public policy on nutrition; financial and technical
investments are needed to scale up data availability in South Asia.

× Designing survey questions that clearly and precisely communicate the question's intent and elicit responses based on the intended interpretation is critical but often undervalued. We used cognitive interviewing to qualitatively assess respondents' interpretation of and responses to questions pertaining to maternal and child nutrition intervention coverage. We conducted interviews to cognitively test 25 survey questions with mothers (N = 21) with children less than 1 year in Madhya Pradesh, India. Each question was followed by probes to capture information on four cognitive stages—comprehension, retrieval, judgement, and response. Data were analysed for common and unique patterns across the survey questions. We identified four types of cognitive challenges: (1) retention of multiple concepts in long questions: difficulty in comprehending and retaining questions with three or more key concepts; (2) temporal confusion: difficulty in conceptualizing recall periods such as “in the last 6 months” as compared to life stages such as pregnancy; (3) interpretation of concepts: mismatch of information being asked, meaning of certain terms and intervention scope; and (4) understanding of technical terms: difficulty in understanding commonly used technical words such as “breastfeeding” and “antenatal care” and requiring use of simple alternative language. Findings from this study will be useful for stakeholders involved in survey design and implementation, especially those conducting large-scale household surveys to measure coverage of essential nutrition interventions.

× As many other countries, India leverages on a pre-existing workfare programme as a COVID-19 response. We combine monthly administrative data with migration and poverty statistics and provide four insights on the recent expansion of the programme. First, poorer districts include more households, that is, increasing extensive margin. Second, in districts with a high proportion of return migrants, there is no increase, and third, unmet demand for work is higher than the national average of 22.7%. Fourth, despite the expansion, the programme provided just 13.5 days per rural household. The programme requires attention to fulfil its promise as a credible safety net.

× The expansion of contract farming schemes through regions of the developing world in the era of the globalization of agriculture raises questions that are central to the study of agrarian political economy. Contract farming has extended the footprint of commodity production and integrated land and labour not otherwise captured in forms of direct production and marketing. 25 years after the publication of Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, a foundational collection edited by Peter Little and Michael Watts, it is necessary to take stock of the most prominent developments in the practice of contract farming and in the political economy literature studying it. The ultimate contribution of Living Under Contract was framing contract farming as expressing the unevenness of power relations in agriculture and grounding it in specific political, historical and social contexts that were not examined in the mainstream accounts. This introduction to the special issue revisits the questions that have remained relevant or re-emerged in the political economy literature on contract farming; it raises new questions that reflect contemporary developments and it explains how the papers in this collection contribute to the expansion of the theoretical and empirical horizons of the research on contemporary contract farming in low and middle-income countries.

× Measuring empowerment is both complicated and time consuming. A number of recent efforts have focused on how to better measure this complex multidimensional concept such that it is easy to implement. In this paper, we use machine learning techniques, specifically LASSO, using survey data from five Indian states to abbreviate a recently developed measure of nutritional empowerment, the Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI) that has 33 distinct indicators. Our preferred Abridged Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (A-WENI) consists of 20 indicators. We validate the A-WENI via a field survey from a new context, the western Indian state of Maharashtra. We find that the 20-indicator A-WENI is both capable of reproducing well the empowerment scores and status generated by the 33-indicator WENI and predicting nutritional outcomes such as BMI and dietary diversity. Using this index, we find that in our Maharashtra sample, on average, only 35.9% of mothers of children under the age of 5 years are nutritionally empowered, whereas 77.2% of their spouses are nutritionally empowered. We also find that only 14.6% of the elderly women are nutritionally empowered. These estimates are broadly consistent with those based on the 33-indicator WENI. The A-WENI will reduce the time burden on respondents and can be incorporated in any general purpose survey conducted in rural contexts. Many of the indicators in A-WENI are often collected routinely in contemporary household surveys. Hence, capturing nutritional empowerment does not entail significant additional burden. Developing A-WENI can thus aid in an expansion of efforts to measure nutritional empowerment; this is key to understanding better the barriers and challenges women face and help identify ways in which women can improve their nutritional well-being in meaningful ways.

× Pakistan is mainly an agricultural economy. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2020-21, agriculture accounts for a share of 19.2 percent in GDP and constitutes a significant portion of exports at 60 percent. The agriculture sector is a major employer in the country with a bulk of 45 percent in the labour force and a source of livelihood for about 68 percent of the rural population.

× Given its size and level of income, India faces unique challenges in the labor market. In the urban labor force of nearly 100 million, half of the workers engage in regular wage/salaried employment including in short-term contracts, yet a large number are either self-employed or work as casual labor. This vast pool of employees in the urban sector exists without job contract (92%), social security (90%) or paid leave (89%) barely earning subsistence wages, many close to the poverty threshold. This paper looks at the types of employment (TOE) for urban workforce and its effects on worker outcomes (earnings, hours worked, job loss). The assessment of the effects of TOE remains mostly instinctive without rigorous empirical research. Using latest three rounds of nationally representative Periodic Labor Force Surveys (PLFS), we assess the outcomes for urban workers based on TOE. We estimate the probability of being poor based on TOE and occupation where urban casual labor is associated with 7 percentage points higher likelihood of being poor and nearly 17% lower earnings. We uniquely assess the extent of job turnovers for urban workers and falling into unemployment at high frequency based on TOE. Analysis of urban panel after accounting for unobserved worker level factors captures the extent of fall in income due to job switching and loss of employment. Results indicate significant potential for poverty if worker is not socially protected, engaged in distress entrepreneurship or as casual labor.

× Community health workers (CHWs) increasingly provide interpersonal counselling to childbearing women and their families to improve adoption of recommended maternal and child nutrition behaviours. Little is known about CHWs' first-hand experiences garnering family support for improving maternal nutrition and breastfeeding practices in low-resource settings. Using focused ethnography, we drew insights from the strategies that CHWs used to persuade influential family members to support recommendations on maternal diet, rest and breastfeeding in a behaviour change communication trial in rural Bangladesh. We interviewed 35 CHWs providing at-home interpersonal counselling to pregnant women and their families in seven ‘Alive & Thrive’ intervention sites. In-depth probing focused on how CHWs addressed lack of family support. Thematic coding based on Fisher's narrative paradigm revealed strategic use of three rhetorical principles by CHWs: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic). CHWs reported selectively targeting pregnant women, husbands and mothers-in-law based on their influence on behavioural adoption. Key motivators to support recommended behaviours were improved foetal growth and child intelligence. Improved maternal health was the least motivating outcome, even among mothers. Logically coherent messaging resonated well with husbands, while empathetic counselling was additionally required for mothers. Mothers-in-law were most intransigent, but were persuaded via emotional appeals. Persuasion on maternal rest was most effort-intensive, resulting in contextually appealing but scientifically inaccurate messaging. Our study demonstrates that CHWs can offer important insights on context-relevant, feasible strategies to improve family support and uptake of nutrition recommendations. It also identifies the need for focused CHW training and monitoring to address scientifically flawed counselling narratives.

× Fortification of staple foods is among the most cost-effective public health interventions. In settings where mandatory fortification is not feasible, providing fortified foods through public safety net programs and building private demand can be implemented in parallel to maximize coverage. However, little is known about what marketing messages are most effective at increasing the demand for fortified foods. Further, as governments scale up fortification of foods distributed through safety net programs, understanding the effect of knowledge about this on consumer demand will be important for crafting communication strategies. Drawing on insights from the literature on marketing and consumer behavior, we hypothesize that a message linking fortified rice, an unfamiliar product in this setting, to a known, aspirational product, can increase demand. We test the individual and joint impacts of an aspirational marketing message and information about the public distribution of fortified rice through a framed field experiment eliciting willingness to pay for rice fortified with six micronutrients in Chandpur District, Bangladesh. We find that a message which combines aspirational positioning and information on public distribution increases the proportion of participants willing to pay a premium at least equal to the cost of fortification by 19 percentage points. The results suggest that any negative impact on willingness to pay associated with free distribution is outweighed by the credibility distribution lends to health claims about the product.

× The present study analyses the income, saving and saving gap among agricultural households (HHs) to understand their investment behaviour, using the data obtained from the NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) 2016-17, which was conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). The NAFIS had the crop year 2015-16 (kharif and rabi seasons) as the reference year. It covered more than 40,000 households, of which 55% were agricultural HHs and the remaining were non-agricultural HHs. The sample was drawn from all the states, and covered farmers with different size of land holdings. Direct enquiries were made about HHs income, expenditure on food and non-food items including farm inputs, amount deposited in bank and invested in financial and physical assets, outreach of institutional credit, financial inclusion and so on.

× Why is agricultural marketing so crucial for the farmer? Agriculture and allied sectors accounted for only 17.7 per cent of the GDP of India in 2020. Yet, as much as 54.6 per cent of India’s workforce, as per the Census of 2011, relied on this sector for employment and incomes. Although agricultural households earned incomes from several sources, a major portion was still earned from agriculture and allied activities. As per the 2013 Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households (SAS), agricultural households earned 48 per cent of their income from crop cultivation, 12 per cent of their income from animal husbandry and 32 per cent of their income from wages.