Behaviour Change Communication Strategy for Food Security and Agriculture Productivity Project: “You are what you eat!”

Behaviour Change Communication Strategy for Food Security and Agriculture Productivity Project: “You are what you eat!”
Author: ?Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 25
Release: 2022-08-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9251366675

The BCC strategy document contains a collection of communication processes and strategies used in programming to influence social change and individual behaviour. The strategies outlined in the document focuses on messages including a set of technical themes linking nutrition, health, food safety, dietary diversity, and production innovations within a food systems approach, where different activities and products are correlated and allow building up of basic to technical knowledge and practice. The strategy document, which is presented in a theme-based booklet, is prepared for community resource persons and agriculture extension officers to equip them in bringing about desired changes in knowledge, attitudes, and practices of farmers in terms of crop production and consumption behaviours via sensitisation/training of producing and consuming nutrient dense crops at individual, household and community level. The BCC efforts follow the strategic objectives delineated in the National Food and Nutrition Security Strategy, Bhutan. The key messages, therefore, have been developed to improve the identified behaviours in order to achieve the strategic objectives of the National Food and Nutrition Security Strategy. The messages will be disseminated to the right target audiences through a multipronged communication approach to facilitate behaviour changes.

Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture

Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture
Author: Petra Moser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-10-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 022677905X

"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--

Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development
Author: Juha I. Uitto
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2017-01-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 331943702X

This book is open access under a Creative Commons license. This authoritative book presents the ever progressing state of the art in evaluating climate change strategies and action. It builds upon a selection of relevant and practical papers and presentations given at the 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development held in Washington DC in 2014 and includes perspectives from independent evaluations of the major international organisations supporting climate action in developing countries, such as the Global Environment Facility. The first section of the book sets the stage and provides an overview of independent evaluations, carried out by multilateral development banks and development organisations. Important topics include how policies and organisations aim to achieve impact and how this is measured, whether climate change is mainstreamed into other development programs, and whether operations are meeting the urgency of climate change challenges. The following sections focus on evaluation of climate change projects and policies as they link to development, from the perspective of international organisations, NGO’s, multilateral and bilateral aid agencies, and academia. The authors share methodologies or approaches used to better understand problems and assess interventions, strategies and policies. They also share challenges encountered, what was done to solve these and lessons learned from evaluations. Collectively, the authors illustrate the importance of evaluation in providing evidence to guide policy change to informed decision-making.

Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems

Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems
Author: Mark Lawrence
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019-10-18
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1351189018

This comprehensive text provides the latest research on key concepts, principles and practices for promoting healthy and sustainable food systems. There are increasing concerns about the impact of food systems on environmental sustainability and, in turn, the impact of environmental sustainability on the capacity of food systems to protect food and nutrition security into the future. The contributors to this book are leading researchers in the causes of and solutions to these challenges. As international experts in their fields, they provide in-depth analyses of the issues and evidence-informed recommendations for future policies and practices. Starting with an overview of ideas about health, sustainability and equity in relation to food systems, Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems examines what constitutes a food system, with chapters on production, manufacturing, distribution and retail, among others. The text explores health and sustainable diets, looking at issues such as overconsumption and waste. The book ends with discussions about the politics, policy, personal behaviours and advocacy behind creating healthy and sustainable food systems. With a food systems approach to health and sustainability identified as a priority area for public health, this text introduces core knowledge for students, academics, practitioners and policy-makers from a range of disciplines including food and nutrition sciences, dietetics, public health, public policy, medicine, health science and environmental science.

Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture

Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture
Author: Douglas J. Kennett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2006-01-02
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0520246470

"For the newcomer to the literature and logic of human behavioral ecology, this book is a flat-out bonanza—entirely accessible, self-critical, largely free of polemic, and, above all, stimulating beyond measure. It's an extraordinary contribution. Our understanding of the foraging-farming dynamic may just have changed forever."—David Hurst Thomas, American Museum of Natural History

Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior

Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior
Author: Wolfram Schlenker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-11-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 022661980X

Agricultural yields have increased steadily in the last half century, particularly since the Green Revolution. At the same time, inflation-adjusted agricultural commodity prices have been trending downward as increases in supply outpace the growth of demand. Recent severe weather events, biofuel mandates, and a switch toward a more meat-heavy diet in emerging economies have nevertheless boosted commodity prices. Whether this is a temporary jump or the beginning of a longer-term trend is an open question. Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior examines the factors contributing to the remarkably steady increase in global yields and assesses whether yield growth can continue. This research also considers whether agricultural productivity growth has been, and will be, associated with significant environmental externalities. Among the topics studied are genetically modified crops; changing climatic factors; farm production responses to government regulations including crop insurance, transport subsidies, and electricity subsidies for groundwater extraction; and the role of specific farm practices such as crop diversification, disease management, and water-saving methods. This research provides new evidence that technological as well as policy choices influence agricultural productivity.

Reframing Health Behavior Change With Behavioral Economics

Reframing Health Behavior Change With Behavioral Economics
Author: Warren K. Bickel
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2000-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135683298

With contributions from experts in experimental and clinical psychology & economics, this book examines the latest behavioral economic research on smoking, drug & alchohol abuse, obesity, gambling,etc. Ideal for psychologists, economists,& policy makers

Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone

Impact of a gender and nutrition behavioral change communication amid the COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone
Author: Myanmar Agriculture Policy Support Activity (MAPSA)
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 29
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Social behavior change communication (SBCC) interventions on gender and nutrition are now commonly implemented, but their impact on diet quality and empowerment is rarely assessed rigorously. We estimate the impact of a nutrition and gender SBCC intervention on women’s dietary diversity and empowerment in Myanmar during an especially challenging period—the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The intervention was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 30 villages in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone. Our analysis employs data from the baseline survey implemented in February 2020 and a phone survey implemented in February–March 2021 and focuses on women’s dietary diversity and sub-indicators of the project-level women’s empowerment in agriculture index (pro-WEAI). Two indicators of women’s empowerment―inputs to productive decisions and access to and decisions over credit―improved, indicating that SBCC interventions can contribute to changing gendered perceptions and behaviors; however, most of the empowerment indicators did not change, indicating that much of gendered norms and beliefs take time to change. Women’s dietary diversity scores were higher by half a food group out of 10 in treatment villages. More women in treatment villages consumed nuts, milk, meat or fish, and Vitamin A–rich foods daily than in control villages. We show that even in the setting of a pandemic, a SBCC intervention can be delivered through a range of tools, including household visits, phone-based coaching, and voice-based training, that are responsive to local and individual resource limitations. Gender messaging can change some gendered perceptions; but it may take more time to change deeply ingrained gender norms. Nutrition messaging can help counter the declines in dietary quality that would be expected from negative shocks to supply chains and incomes.