After food security, let’s go for nutritional balance
THE need to move from emphasising food security to nutrition security is getting louder among many Africans with concern on what they are eating and the future of food in African communities.
Many people, including farmers are beginning to realise that high yields and more production does not translate to better income or better household nutrition.
In the face of market failure caused by local gluts, at least farmers should be able to meet their household nutritional requirements. However, balancing the economic and nutritional balance remains a challenge for the majority of African farmers and ordinary households who depend on a few mono-crops.
High productivity in one commodity is inadequate without other commodities to generate a balanced nutritional basket both for the market and for subsistence. Too much of one commodity leads to economic and nutritional imbalance.
One of the vexing questions is: How can we tap into the resilience and flexibility of smallholder farmers, traders and informal markets to build national nutritional security and food baskets for the next generation?
A leaf from the informal market
The capacity of African informal food markets to mobilise, redistribute and rationalise nutritional baskets offers a pathway to transitioning from food security to nutrition security in most African countries.
These markets are demonstrating their capacity to harness the convening power of urban centres to pull together a nutritional food basket from diverse farming areas.
As the informal market breaks bulk it mixes and matches commodities according to diverse nutritional and other needs. Commodities can travel in bulk from Mbare Market in Harare to other markets in Bulawayo, Gweru, Chinhoyi and Masvingo where the local market consolidates food baskets for consumers.
This mixing and matching role needs to be fully understood because it influences consumption patterns. When the consumer budget is trained, some commodities are not prioritised. For instance, luxuries like carrots, onions, peas and cauliflower can be foregone in preference for tomatoes and leafy vegetables. This is how commodities are given weight in terms of whether they are necessities or luxuries.
A necessity is hardly substituted fully and that is why a tomato is always in the market because it is a necessity. The tomato has a marked price range, especially when it is less perishable. For those that are considered necessities, when demand is high, prices tend to be high due to a built-in tendency for consumers to have an appetite for them.
Lettuce, carrots, peas and fine beans are not produced in large quantities because they are sometimes considered luxuries not necessities.
Unfortunately, while these are highly perishable, we have not developed preservation methods for them. Besides refrigerating them (which affects taste), you cannot dry carrots, lettuce and cauliflower. The market as a nutrition basket and how it responds to seasonality
In Southern African countries including Zimbabwe, commodities flow into informal markets from January into the winter season that stretches all the way to end of July. This period accommodates 90 percent of commodities and their varieties.
The diversity covers field crops, staple foods, cash crops, legumes and small grains. After harvesting, around March and April or May, farmers re-allocate their time from field crops to horticulture.
They start producing tomatoes and all kinds of vegetables. As the winter season comes to an end and water becomes low, farmers switch to commodities like carrots, peas and broccoli which do not occupy larger spaces and use less water compared those which occupy bigger pieces of land.
Seasonal demand and supply dynamics
The market has unique ways of bringing together commodities from different climatic regions. It can pull together commodity and nutritional baskets from Gokwe, Chipinge, Murewa, Rutenga, Masvingo, Rusape, Guruve, Macheke, Dande and others.
Rarely can one district, province or region possess a complete nutrition basket. A resident of Gokwe will lack nutritional elements that are found in commodities that come from Chipinge. Through its convening power, the market brings together and consolidates a coherent nutritional basket.
However, lack of preservation remains the main challenge. That is why at one time a nutritional basket is 100 percent but down a few months down the line, many nutritional elements that were available a few months ago become scarce.
While seasonal changes influence the demand and supply of different commodities, winter tends to have the biggest variety of commodities in Zimbabwe which probably translate to better nutrition for people compared to summers which are dominated mainly by animal nutrition. People consciously decide what they can eat in the cold season.
While mutakura and tea is common during colds, bread comes into the picture during the hot season as well as mahewu which also drives the price of small grains. During colds, small grains demand tends to be fair but picks up during the hot season. In winter Mondays, consumers take advantage of low prices to buy in bulk to avoid braving the winter cold going to the market.
However, during the hot season, consumers buy in small batches because trips to the market may not be affected by the weather. When bulk buyers come to the market once a week, commodity prices tend to be reduced during the middle of the week.
The diversity of commodities on the market compels consumers to rationalise their budgets and select commodities through nutritional lenses. They try to ensure their budgets accommodate fruits, vegetables, tubers, field crops — building a complete nutrition basket. In most cases they do it unconsciously without knowing specific nutrition elements or vitamins in their choice of commodities.
Knowledge as a builder and conveyor of nutrition baskets
Farmers who come to the market always speak to consumers so that they fully understand market requirements. Sharing knowledge makes it possible for them to become aware where tomatoes are being produced in abundance so that they decide to change to other commodities rather than going back home to produce what other areas are producing better and in more volumes.
Knowledge becomes a builder and conveyor of nutrition baskets. During winter, most smart farmers who participate in the market acquire knowledge which they use to plan for the next season’s production.
They get to learn what type of commodity to grow and when? Exchange of nutritional knowledge is also high during this period. Nutritional knowledge is associated with commodities and source areas.
Each commodity has nutritional explanations from the areas where it is produced and used for subsistence. That knowledge is extended to the market. This becomes a Unique Selling Proposition for particular commodities.
People who produce tsangamidzi or tsenza in Chihota or Rusape are more knowledgeable about the nutritional components of these commodities before scientific knowledge comes on board.
Farmers and traders from Gokwe and Buhera know more about the nutritional components of tsvubvu and mawuyu, among other commodities produced in their areas.
People in masawu areas like Dande will tell you more about the nutritional and medicinal parameters of this commodity because they practically use it in various ways.
People in areas where macimbi are common are more informed about the nutritional components of macimbi.
Every explanation about a commodity has an element of nutrition. That is how such knowledge travels to other communities through the market.
Need for nutritional evidence gathering
Strong preservation techniques will plug nutritional gaps during other seasons like summer and also preserve foods that are abundant in summer for use in other seasons.
Continuous evidence gathering is also critical for identifying and updating nutrition basket drivers from various climatic regions.
Such evidence should be built into models and investment plans towards a national nutrition security reserve. Just as we build food reserves in the form of maize silos, we need to focus on building reserves of other nutritional components in order to balance the national nutrition equation.
Up to date evidence can enable increasing the shelf life and consistency in the supply of nutritional commodities. Ultimately, it should be possible to build an all year round nutritional basket up to the next season.
Informal markets function on indigenous knowledge mental software from different sources of commodities like Murewa, Mutoko, Dande, Chihota, Chipinge, Chimanimani, Nyanga and others.
An important part of evidence gathering is documenting such indigenous nutritional knowledge and practices.
That evidence will make it possible to answer questions like: What are some of the knowledges, perceptions and attitudes around madhumbe from Chipinge, macimbi from Matebeleland and bananas from Honde Valley?
Where idigenous knowledge systems may have misinformed communities and generations, it is important to validate some of this knowledge and perceptions with modern nutritional knowledge.
It also becomes important to examine knowledge, perceptions and attitudes by gender, age, tradition or culture.
Is the fact that some wild fruit trees are not allowed to be cut in a particular community influenced by culture, nutrition or environmental awareness? How do community culture and religion preserve or influence the preservation or rejection of some food components or systems?
Financing nutrition baskets requires thorough evidence gathering in the form of feasibility and longitudinal studies. That is how nutritional drivers from each region can be identified and supported.
Financing can then be tailored accordingly rather than congesting funding in a few commodities in ways that skew the national nutritional balance. This big picture can only result from connecting the dots.
To the extent that focus on value chains results in most of the support going to a few value chains, transformative agriculture can result from a unified nutritional basket framework approach.
That way, financial institutions move from financing over-subscribed value chains to funding elements of a nutritional basket, informed by gaps in the nutritional framework.
◆ Charles Dhewa is a proactive knowledge management specialist and chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa (Pvt) (www.knowledgetransafrica.com ) whose flagship eMKambo (www. emkambo.co.zw ) has a presence in more than 20 agricultural markets in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on: charles@knowledgetransafrica. com ; Mobile: +263 774 430 309 / 772 137 717/ 712 737 430.