Agriculture and Nutrition – connects and disconnects: NSI Conference sums up that experts in both fields have huge role to play

As LANSA researchers keen to understand how Agriculture and Nutrition can be linked to improve Health in India, D J Nithya and Sarah H Kehoe were delighted that the theme of the 47^th Annual National Conference of Nutrition Society of India (NSI) was ‘Nutrition and Agriculture - the connect and disconnect.’

Both researchers presented LANSA research study posters on ‘Community nutrition’ and ‘Nutrition education, communication and policy research’ topics at the conference.

With the Conference so close to LANSA's work in South Asia, LANSA-MSSRF also took up a stall at the NSI Exhibition. LANSA communication material and research products were made available for distribution to the conference participants. 

Posters on the Farming System for Nutrition (FSN) study India was a huge attraction. The short documentary film on FSN was screened at the stall as well. 

Visitors to the conference and exhibition included scientists, academics, researchers, students, farmers and media persons from different parts of the country

Leading scientists debate on who is responsible

Held at National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) Hyderabad on October 9 and 10 with Kamala Krishnaswamy, ex-Director, NIN, flagging off the debate for the conference.

“What happened to whole grain consumption after the Green Revolution? Why has consumption of fruit and vegetables decreased over time despite increased production? What’s happened to post-harvest technologies to reduce food wastage?” etc, was the demanding tone with which the discussion on how connected or rather disconnected agriculture and nutrition actually are!

V Prakash, VP IUNS spoke next on how agriculture policies are the cause of the current nutritional status in India, while Anura Kurpad (NSI’s President) pointed out that NSI has been actively communicating with policymakers, lobbying to retain the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) database in fact.

Debates on the Food Security Bill have happened at several such conferences, and this time too there was G Chandersekar and Veena Rao arguing for and against ‘food and agriculture policies are responsible for the current nutritional status in India’.

Many key points raised including the one on the age distribution of Indians and the question of whether young people will or even want to engage in agriculture; food price inflation; the shrinking proportion of GDP available to the poorest, and not to mention fragmentation of government departments – all formed for interesting discussion. In the end conclusion came that the current policies must be designed and implemented in a way that they focus on the current nutritional status in India rather than on significantly old data.

Bridging the agriculture-nutrition gap

During the symposium ‘Bridging the gap between agriculture and nutrition’, Paduman Kumar discussed how food expenditure and consumption patterns had changed between 1983 and 2011. He pointed out the ‘supply-demand gap’ in pulses and despite good vegetable production, post-harvest losses mean that demand is not met.

Mahtab Bamji stressed the importance of nutrition-sensitive and environment-sustainable agriculture, mentioning the challenge of food taboos in Indian society, while Kiran Sharma talked of bio-fortified crops and the huge potential with caution. A Srivastava presented on the nutritive value of milk, recognising India as largest milk producing country but lacking quality control and poor storage.

Distinguished scientists from various institutions, presented on various interesting and innovative topics. Students and faculties from various institutions presented papers on nutrition and around 200 posters on community nutrition, experimental nutrition, clinical nutrition, food science and nutrition, nutrition education, communication and policy research, etc., were presented.

LANSA researchers D J Nithya and Sarah H Kehoe presented LANSA research study posters on ‘Community nutrition’ and ‘Nutrition education, communication and policy research’ topics at the conference.

Pre-conference parallel workshops were conducted on October 8 on ‘Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices’ and ‘Food Labelling: What a Nutritionist should know’ for the participants.

We look forward to the next NSI Conference to be held at St John’s Research Institute, Bangalore in 2016!