What is nutrition-sensitive agriculture?

Agriculture is nutrition-sensitive when it addresses the underlying causes of malnutrition.

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture supports:

Food security

Adequate caregiving resources

Access to health services and a hygienic environment

Looking Beyond Food for Better Nutrition

While a better diet means better health, research shows that food alone won’t solve the problem of malnutrition. In this short video, SPRING explores why and how agriculture can better contribute to nutrition, and introduces tools and expertise to guide development practitioners in making agriculture programs nutrition sensitive.

Identifying Gaps and Charting a Way Forward

Beginning in 2012, SPRING convened a series of regional workshops and conducted a landscape analysis to explore the approaches used in nutrition investments under the Obama Administration’s Feed the Future Initiative (link is external). The findings from the landscape analysis highlighted gaps in efforts to collaborate across sectors to improve nutrition.

We are filling those gaps through:

Global Evidence & Guidance ›

Design & Implementation Tools ›

Learning From Field Experience ›

Global Evidence and Guidance

SPRING's work explores why integration is necessary for better results in nutrition and identifies how to better link agriculture and nutrition programming. To help Feed the Future programs meet their nutritional goals, we developed a framework we call the agriculture-to-nutrition pathways, which shows the ways agriculture improves nutritional outcomes. The resources below share what we've learned so far.

© Scott Wallace/World Bank
Improving Nutrition through Agriculture Technical Brief Series

This collection of briefs addresses gaps in the evidence and guidance for how Feed the Future activities could explicitly link the work to improve agriculture production, grow agriculture markets, reduce poverty AND improve nutrition, especially of women and children, within their zones of influences.

Browse the series

Credit: SPRING
Operationalizing Multi-sectoral Coordination and Collaboration for Improved Nutrition

Reducing undernutrition requires a commitment from multiple sectors, yet documentation on how to collaborate across sectors to reach global goals is scant. Through a three-country assessment and literature review, SPRING investigated approaches to multi-sectoral collaboration for nutrition. This paper highlights lessons that USAID and its implementing partners learned, and provides a series of recommendations to guide the designing, implementing, and monitoring of future collaboration.

Read the brief

Five Ways to Improve Nutrition Through Agriculture

Agriculture plays an important role in providing nutritious foods and sustainable livelihoods. SPRING’s work has revealed several opportunities for agriculture to contribute to improved nutrition, especially for those most at risk. By addressing these opportunities in current and new agricultural activities, USAID and its implementing partners can more effectively contribute to better nutrition.

View the infographic

USAID’s Nutrition-Sensitive Indicators

SPRING is helping define how to measure nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Recognizing that increased household consumption of nutritious crops may not happen automatically with increased production, we conducted research regarding data collection for a new Feed the Future indicator focused on intended consumption of nutrient-rich value chain commodities (NRVCC). USAID released revised data collection guidance incorporating SPRING's work on the NRVCC indicator in its most recent indicator handbook. For more information about SPRING’s field work and findings, you can watch our webinar on the topic.

Design and Implementation Tools

We are developing a suite of tools that will equip international development practitioners with the latest evidence and guidance to design and monitor programs that link agriculture and nutrition. Our early experience underscores the importance of a thorough understanding of local contexts in designing effective nutrition-sensitive agriculture programs. As a result, we developed the Agriculture and Nutrition Context Assessment Tool to use whether creating new programs or amending existing projects.

Agriculture and Nutrition Context Assessment Tool

Conceptual Pathways between Agriculture and Nutrition

Click on an outlined box for a list of associated guidance questions that link to tools to help carry out context assessments. Some components were outside the scope of this activity and are therefore not clickable.

Any assessment requires multiple aspects of inquiry, so SPRING developed specific guidance questions. These questions should help support the conceptualization and planning of a context assessment exercise and analysis or help check the range of assumptions that should be considered in agriculture-nutrition project design.

**As the starting points on the pathways diagram above (Food Production, Income, Women's Empowerment) often reflect outcomes of agricultural value chains, we have added a search category for value chains and market systems.

Adapted for Feed the Future by Anna Herforth, Jody Harris, and SPRING, from Gillespie, Harris, and Kadiyala (2012) and Kadiyala et al. (2014). Learn more about the pathways.

Credit: Cambodia HARVEST
Accelerating Behavior Change in Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture

Making agriculture work for nutrition is fundamentally about changing people’s behaviors. The Accelerating Change in Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture online training course will help implementers address questions such as: What are nutrition-sensitive agriculture practices? How do we select and prioritize those practices for our context and target populations? How do we increase the use of those practices?

View the Training

Credit: USAID/Morgana Wingard
Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Training Resource Package

The SPRING Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Training Resource Package is a collection of our very best training work, including presentations, activities, handouts, and session guides. Successful multisectoral training is key for developing the collaboration that nutrition-sensitive activities require. Successful partnerships hinge on developing a shared understanding of goals, activities, and essential concepts that allow our collaboration to thrive.

View the Package

Learning from Field Experience

Since 2012, SPRING has been working with USAID and its Feed the Future implementing partners to document experiences working along the agriculture-to-nutrition pathways. Our reports provide a snapshot of how development partners are implementing and measuring nutrition-sensitive agriculture practices in different contexts, and the various successes and lessons learned along the way.

Reports \| April 2015 Formative Research: Key Influencers of Household Food Access in the Western Highlands of Guatemala	Training Materials \| March 2015 Farmer Nutrition School Session Guide	Reports \| September 2014 Growing Together? Experiences of Intersectoral Integration in an NGO Nutrition Program	Briefs \| June 2015 Increasing Nutrition Sensitivity of Value Chains: A Review of Two Feed the Future Projects in Guatemala
Reports \| January 2015 The Role of Increased Income and Women’s Empowerment on Nutrition	Reports \| September 2014 Using Agriculture Extension Agents to Promote Nutrition: A Process Review of Three Feed the Future Activities in Ethiopia	Field Notes \| June 2014 Supporting Agriculture and Nutrition Interventions at the Community Level in Senegal	Field Notes \| April 2014 Integration and Coordination in Nepal

Field Notes | April 2014

Training to Integrate Agriculture and Nutrition in Bangladesh

Field Notes | March 2014

Training to Integrate Agriculture and Nutrition in Honduras

Join Us!

SPRING is also implementing a range of components of nutrition-sensitive agriculture and collecting lessons learned in our country programs in Bangladesh, Ghana, Kyrgyz Republic, Senegal, and through community media work we are conducting in partnership with Digital Green in India and Burkina Faso and Niger.

We regularly share results, lessons learned, and other experience implementing nutrition-sensitive agriculture though:

Agriculture and Nutrition Resource Review »

A monthly selection of materials to keep you updated on research and developments related to strengthening linkages between agriculture and nutrition.

Events and Webinars »

SPRING hosts and contributes to a wide range of events that focus on nutrition within global development efforts. These events expand learning and foster experience and evidence exchange to inform nutrition policy and improve programming.

Join Us »

Become part of our community of agriculture and nutrition practitioners and researchers to receive updates on new resources and learning events.

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This website is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of the Cooperative Agreement AID-OAA-A-11-00031 (The SPRING Project), managed by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI).

The contents are the responsibility of JSI, and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

Reports \| April 2015 Formative Research: Key Influencers of Household Food Access in the Western Highlands of Guatemala	Training Materials \| March 2015 Farmer Nutrition School Session Guide	Reports \| September 2014 Growing Together? Experiences of Intersectoral Integration in an NGO Nutrition Program	Briefs \| June 2015 Increasing Nutrition Sensitivity of Value Chains: A Review of Two Feed the Future Projects in Guatemala
Reports \| January 2015 The Role of Increased Income and Women’s Empowerment on Nutrition	Reports \| September 2014 Using Agriculture Extension Agents to Promote Nutrition: A Process Review of Three Feed the Future Activities in Ethiopia	Field Notes \| June 2014 Supporting Agriculture and Nutrition Interventions at the Community Level in Senegal	Field Notes \| April 2014 Integration and Coordination in Nepal