Exclusive Webinar on Nutrition Smart Agriculture Hosted by Krishi Jagran

On May 27, 2022, Krishi Jagran hosted a webinar on "Nutrition Smart Agriculture," which was sponsored by HarvestPlus and GAIN. Nutrition smart agriculture is a set of agricultural and agro-processing technologies and practices that promote nutrition while increasing farm and agribusiness production and profitability.

Nutrition smart agriculture is a strategy that identifies practices and technology and directs public investments in agriculture toward increasing the bottom line for farmers and businesses while also improving local population nutrition. nutrition smart agriculture focuses on enhancing the production and consumption of nutrient-enhanced crops.

The objective of this webinar was to learn from leaders from various sectors about the importance of focusing on Nutrition Smart Agriculture, as well as to highlight the country's current state, upcoming trends, and issues related to nutrition smart agriculture, as well as the integration of biofortification as an approach to combat hunger.

Dr. P. K. Pant, COO, Krishi Jagran, extended a warm welcome to all the participants and shared his thoughts regarding nutrition smart agriculture and its relevance. Siddharth Bhattacharya, Lead-Partner Relationship Agri-Technology Development, IFFCO Kisan, moderated the webinar.

Dr. Naleeni Ramawat, Professor, Jodhpur University spoke about the need to focus on nutrition-smart agriculture practices as a means to increase farmers' income.

Prateek Uniyal, Program Manager HarvestPlus, India, and Nanditha Krishnan, Senior Project Manager, GAIN, discussed the impact of eating biofortified foods as a strategy for reducing malnutrition and poverty in low-income households.

"Climate change directly impacts the nutrients that make up the typical food we eat," said Prateek Uniyal. “Malnutrition could affect 50 million people by 2050. As a tool for combating malnutrition, biofortification is a sustainable solution. Several government bodies have focused on food sufficiency, but we now need to focus on nutrient sufficiency. The current focus is on zinc biofortification of wheat and pearl millet with Iron in India. In the future, we will be adding rice as well.” 

"Our overall goal is to expand the coverage of biofortified nutrient-dense food to at least 190.6 million consumers in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Tanzania by 2022," Nanditha Krishnan said.

Dr. S.K. Malhothra, Former Agriculture Commissioner, Chairman CIB&RC & Project Director (DKMA)  shared the keynote address and specified the relevance of millets, which is an important crop for malnutrition control and can play an important role in Nutrition Smart Agriculture.

Nishi Kant Dixit, Lead-Livelihood UPSRLM, discussed how nutrition smart agriculture can help farmers improve their income and health. He explained their extension model and how they could reach block level to help female farmers fight against malnutrition actively.

Furthermore, Rajeev Daima, MGR, and NABARD Lucknow discussed improving delivery mechanisms for nutrient-enriched crop commercialization across FPOs/ Farmers. He enlisted all the programs and initiatives that NABARD put forward for the development of farmers. He stated that in Uttar Pradesh more than 300 FPOs have been formed. The groups are trained and given capacity-building support and other institutional marketing-related support by NABARD and other stakeholders to promote the concept of aggregation of demand and supply.