January 29, 2014

For Kids in Africa, Balanced Nutrition Grows on Trees

Smallholders in Africa often look to clear trees on their land to make way for more crops. Around the world, from subsistence farmers to giant agriculture operations, clearing trees from land is a common response to increasing pressure to produce more food for more mouths. But for a farmer with hungry children, those fallen trees might represent something else besides a path to grow more food in the future— they might immediately mean a less diverse diet for their children, one with far fewer healthy foods like fruits and nuts.

Prompted by this conundrum, as well as recent papers that suggest that the presence of forests may benefit people’s diets, a new statistical study titled “Dietary Quality and Tree Cover in Africa” by Amy Ickowitz and others at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) sought to find out if a relationship exists between the quality of African children’s diets and the tree cover in the area where they live.

Dietary intake data from 2010 was collected for 93,000 children between the ages of one and five  in 21 countries in Africa and compared to regional tree cover. The diversity of children’s diets was scored based on their consumption of ten food groups over the last twenty-four hours. Nutrition was scored based on their consumption of fruit, vegetables, nuts, and animal source foods. Researchers controlled for breastfeeding status, gender, and children who had not eaten in the past 24 hours. They also examined relationships with household and community-level variables which may impact diets, such as family assets, parent education levels, and proximity to roads and cities.

The results of the study show a statistically significant positive linear relationship between tree cover and dietary diversity. In addition, the authors found that fruit and vegetable consumption increases as the amount of tree cover increases, up to 45% cover. No relationship was found between tree cover and intake of animal-sourced foods, including meat and eggs.

The study states that there are at least three possible ways in which a child’s health could be affected by the presence and density of trees where they live. First, people near forests may benefit from access to wild edibles not present in other ecosystems. Second, households practicing agroforestry are able to harvest fruits and nuts from their trees. Last, farming techniques used in forested areas, such as shifting cultivation, may add diversity to local diets due to their reliance on a “complex mosaic” of crops.

We often assume that it is necessary to have a higher income in order to access more nutritious foods. In some rural regions, however, nutritious foods may be relatively inexpensive to grow, but carry a high market price due to transportation, labor, and other costs. Low-income residents of rural forested areas who are able to produce or obtain fruits and nuts may therefore have greater access to nutritious foods than low-income people in less forested areas.

This study joins several others showing a positive association between residence in a forested area and certain dietary characteristics. The results leave us with many additional questions to answer. What is the difference in nutritional benefits provided by natural forests and agro-forests? What are the dietary effects of purchasing food that comes from forested regions? By adding to a body of knowledge that connects forests to better nutrition, and creating new questions, this study plants another seed for inquiry on the importance of agroforestry.

For more information about this study, and to read it, visit http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378013002318

Read More:
Can we enhance the productivity of our forests through agroforestry? – by Dr. Chandra Shekhar Sanwal, Indian Forest Service, DCF Uttarakhand cadre, World Congress on Agroforestry 2014 Blog

Agroforestry can be a long term solution to closing Africa’s food gap – by Kate Langford, Agroforestry World (ICRAF)

Filling the Emissions Gap with Tree-Based Ecosystem Approaches – Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Blog

Photo “Uganda contd 3” by Neil Palmer of CIAT: International Center for Tropical Agriculture

No comments

  • shrikant
    January 30, 2014 at 2:51am

    Day by day the avilability of land for cultivation is dereasing and the pressure of incresing population is incresing the yield of crops in irrigated areas stagnetedin such ascenario it is very difficult to maintain the balace. one thing for sure we need to feed te burgeoing popolation.It si high time the right thinking takes us to find the solution to the problem.

  • Roddy Hale
    January 29, 2014 at 4:11pm

    Interesting study. The question is, as is often is the case, can we transfer this knowledge into changed practice?

  • Linked from Nibbles: Quinoa, Millet, Prize, Agroforestry, Herdwick sheep, Plant breeding, Hot chocolate, Spices   January 30 5:03am

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