The greatest opportunities existing in raising the standards of what goes to the market, for example since the government on Kenya made it compulsory for maize to be fortified, the poor can access more nutritious flour than before. in addition we need more investment by both public and private institutions in scaling up innovations that enhance nutrition e.g. commercialization of more nutritious varieties of crops.
In a number of cases, we've seen that the high value nutritious crops and animals foods fetch on the market makes it challenging to ensure the poorest households - including farmers themselves - have access to these foods. What have you all learned about making sure these products are affordable and accessible?
Another issue we've encountered is perishability. Where nutritious foods have short shelf lives (for example, milk), there's a need to build a supply chain to preserve them, and we've seen lots of technological innovations to do this. But it ultimately adds to the price of the end-product and again, this can put it out of reach. Any lessons to share?
A key limiter is the marketing and branding of nutritious food in our markets. Most of the nutritious foods in the market are sold as premium products other than as essentials which isolates the majority of the population. The private companies need to change their message and positioning of nutrition
Am Mbiyu checking-in from Nairobi and it is a pleasure to join this discussion
It would be interesting to know what would be the definition of "more nutritious" varieties of crops. What are the most important nutrients? What is the current gap? Do we need crops that are higher in protein? MOre vitamin A fortified crops? Iron-rich crops? What are the most important nutrients that can be researched and potentially be targeted for different crops?
Let's move on to the next question:
Q2: How can we build, strengthen and scale up markets that provide nutritious foods to the people who need them most?
I think one thing we've seen is that if the goal is to promote better nutrition for low income households, it helps to focus on the crops they are already producing. For example, the efforts to substitute orange-fleshed (rich in beta carotene) for white-fleshed sweet potato (which is low in micronutrients). The advantages is the supply system was already there, and the food is low cost in local markets.
Dear Aimee, you are spot on on ensuring that the nutrient-dense foods reach the at-risk populations. The most sustainable way of reaching such populations will still remain through markets. Increasingly, markets are becoming the major sources of foods, even among the poor. Finding the right market-driven innovations that deliver nutrients/foods at the right price-points is the sure way to go.
Yes Ewan this is true. I feel that with scale and technology we can have joint storage and distribution channels in order to share overheads. For distribution, we have reduced the cost to the final consumer by reducing on packaging therefore we encourage the customers to bring bottles or containers so that they only pay for the milk. The milk has a longer shelf life after pasteurization. We also encourage then to buy daily since our deliveries are daily.
We need to place greater emphasis on raising awareness about the need for diverse diets and in turn creating demand for nutritious foods among the wider community.
However, demand can only be driven so high without products being available in the market and as a small or medium sized company it can be extremely difficult to access the finance necessary to start and maintain your business through the early stages. Lenders are often risk averse and the amounts required are often low and therefore labour intensive for the lender. There should be mechanisms to innovatively finance such businesses beyond the traditional mechanisms.
Hi all, Jonathan Tench here from the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Business Network.
Under SUN we're seeing many countries wanting to learn how to integrate their agriculture and nutrition plans, we're finding lots of success in increasing agriculture production across African markets - but stunting and malnutrition rates staying stubbornly high. Business can play a key role in developing nutrition sensitive agricultural practices.
We have learnt that it doesn't have to be expensive but sometimes it requires a complete overhaul of the supply chain for the reasons you have mentioned. One challenge is that many businesses are still trying to use the "old" supply chain to deliver a completely new product which makes it impossible or expensive. In some cases you may have to shift to Just-in-time production and get deeper in distribution but many aren't exploring these options. We need more innovation in supply chains more than we need in products
I have heard that even trying to switch mindsets from white-flesh to orange is very challenging based on tradition and levels of education. Have you had any particular success in helping people feel good about switching to a more nutritious food and knowing how they are halping their families? Or is that a challenging hurdle as well?
Welcome, Jonathan.
We've found there are some characteristics about markets for nutritious food that create some challenges for achieving scale and sustainability:
• Reaching the Bottom of the Pyramid. it costs more to distribute products to low income populations, due to poor infrastructure, low population densities, low spending power. So there's the assumption that a business model needs to achieve large scale to get efficiencies
• That's made more challenging by low consumer demand, since most of the potential consumers don't really understand nutritional needs, and may not see it as a priority (this is also a problem in Europe and North America).
• Then there's what we call ‘Invisible nutrition’. The nutritional quality of many foods (especially processed ones) is ‘invisible’. You can't distinguish a package of maize meal and one that has been fortified. And in most countries, the systems to enforce claims on labels and advertisements are not in place. So consumers don’t trust labels and businesses can't really differentiate nutritious products from the rest.
We think to get real scale, programmes and partnerships need to tackle these problems head on. That could mean particular partnerships, platforms or policy efforts.
Welcome, Peter, and thanks for sharing your insights.
Thanks Clement. Sounds like a really innovative model. Is it difficult to be able to reach your customers and convince them to change their behaviour - so they buy daily?
I think that one initiative that should be explored is the introduction of "nutrition hubs" - areas or spaces where SMEs can jointly sell their produce and share overheads. These hubs can then be branded and scaled up in order to create economies of scale which will in turn enable the SMEs to compete with larger companies. With greater numbers and more demand these hubs will offer farmers better prices for their produce and thereby encourage more to produce and thus increase the availability of nutritious food for all.
Hello everyone - Helen Edmundson from DFID joining from the Eurostar - apologies if I get cut off.
Welcome, Helen - great you could join us.