GREEN GAINS?
Source: Flickr (IFPRI South Asia)
Mother and child in Saturia, Bangladesh
Nutrition outcomes in post-Green Revolution Bangladesh
Cross-posted from the IFPRI website written by Rebecca Sullivan
While gains in agricultural productivity and poverty reduction achieved during the Green Revolution have been widely recognized, little is known of how these shifts in practice and production impacted the nutritional status of individuals in these countries, particularly women and children.
The mix of policies to promote inputs such as irrigation and fertilizers, in conjunction with high-yield varieties of rice, wheat, and maize—known collectively as the Green Revolution—helped Asia to scale up food production dramatically over the last 40 years.
Although Bangladesh was a late adopter of many Green Revolution technologies, rice yields in the country increased by approximately 150 percent and wheat by approximately 250 percent since the 1960s, according to the FAO. The observed agricultural growth has been astonishing; however, substantial information gaps exist about how this growth has influenced the nutritional status of those in Bangladesh.
In their discussion paper, Agriculture, Nutrition, and the Green Revolution in Bangladesh, IFPRI senior researcher Derek Headey and colleague John Hoddinott take a closer look at the linkages between agriculture and nutrition in Bangladesh.
