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Nutrition and Agricultural Change in Southern Honduras

Research on the relationship between farming systems [1] and nutrition systems [2-6] in southern Honduras began in 1981 as part of the International Sorghum/ Millet Collaborative Research Support Program (INTSORMIL). The primary purpose of this project was to understand the socio-economic constraints to the production, distribution, and consumption of sorghum, an important crop grown on the Pacific coast of Central American countries. Because substantial biological agricultural research was to focus on improving sorghum in the region, we wanted to determine the most appropriate means by which such improvement might occur, as well as to attempt to predict what the socio-economic and nutritional consequences of such a change might be. This paper briefly discusses the findings of our farming-systems research to provide a background for our discussion of the nutrition-systems approach. Although the focus of the INTSORMIL project was on sorghum, our work attempted to understand the overall political economy of this rural region. An understanding of nutrition systems is especially important for agricultural and rural development because it has become increasingly recognized that several decades of technological modernization and economic growth have not significantly improved the nutritional status of marginal rural populations. Because of this, there have been a number of calls for a re-evaluation of the potential for agricultural research and development projects to address nutritional problems of rural populations directly [7-13]. Arguments for the explicit ] inclusion of nutritional goals in agricultural research and development have followed two related lines. The first is based on the realization that present approaches to improving the nutritional status of economically marginal rural people have not had, and are unlikely to have, a positive impact. Nutrition programmes are probably best suited for the improvement of specific nutritional problems in small target groups at special risk [8, 14, 15]. Overall economic growth, where it has occurred, has frequently bypassed rural areas. The notion the the benefits of development will eventually “trickle down” to the nutritionally at-risk in rural areas has not proved to be true [16]. A second, related line of argument is that the past failure to explicitly include nutritional goals or to anticipate nutritional impacts of agricultural technology may have led to the deterioration of nutritional status in rural populations, especially for small farmers. A 1980 review of nutrition, consumption, and agricultural development concluded that few programmes to improve the productivity of small farmers have had a positive impact on the nutritional status of their families [17]. Some may even have contributed to a decline in nutritional status. Several studies of the impact of Plan Chontalpa in Tabasco, Mexico [18-21], showed similar results. Productivity improved dramatically, but only the nutritional status of urban populations was improved; that of the children of farm families showed no real improvement. Post mortems such as these have led to an increasing realization that, while agricultural technology is not nutritionally neutral, the ways in which changes in it and in agricultural development projects affect nutritional status are not clearly understood [22].