Sharing Knowledge and Best Practices through Agriculture-Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange

An important part of the U.S. Government’s strategy to advance global food security under Feed the Future focuses on improving our understanding about which approaches are the most effective and sustainable for addressing the root causes of poverty and hunger. We still face gaps in evidence on what works best to achieve food security, so the goal of strategic learning to help answer these critical questions is built into Feed the Future’s project design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and knowledge management systems.

One tool for this strategic learning is the series of Global Learning and Evidence Exchanges that USAID’s Bureau for Food Security has been spearheading over the past year on topics ranging from value chains to nutrition to gender.

The exchanges bring together stakeholders from a variety of sectors, primarily U.S. Government representatives and non-government partner organizations working in the field, in order to share knowledge and best practices that will build practitioners’ skills and ability to apply evidence in the specific plans of developing countries to improve food security outcomes.

From December 2012 to March 2013, the Bureau for Food Security partnered with USAID’s Bureau for Global Health to sponsor three regional workshops as part of the Agriculture and Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange. In Uganda, Guatemala, and Thailand, these events aimed to build understanding of existing evidence on the links between economic growth, agriculture and nutrition outcomes and to identify the major gaps in Feed the Future nutritional program design and implementation. Participants also examined what is currently working best in terms of improving nutrition through Feed the Future programs and considered how those successes might be scaled up in the future.

Workshop participants discussed topics such as how best to link agriculture and nutrition in various contexts; appropriate indicators for monitoring and evaluation; social and behavior change communication; and the role of factors like micronutrients, water and aflatoxins in impacting nutrition outcomes. Participants also presented case studies from Senegal, Tanzania, Honduras, Guatemala, Nepal and Bangladesh that demonstrated the importance of integrating nutrition into the design phase of food security programming.

Find more information and resources on the regional workshops or visit Agrilinks to join the Agriculture and Nutrition Global Learning and Evidence Exchange working group.