Agriculture, Health, and Nutrition: Toward Conceptualizing the Linkages

Agriculture and health and nutrition have long occupied separate realms. Analyses of agricultural production seldom recognize that health status affects productivity, nor do they recognize that agricultural goods and processes have health consequences. At the policy and programmatic levels, agriculture and health operate in separate silos, seldom considering the consequences of their actions on sectors outside their own. This separation is strange given that agriculture and health and nutrition are tightly wedded. Agriculture is the primary source of calories and essential nutrients and is a major source of income for the world’s poor, while agriculture-related health losses are massive. Strengthening the policy and programmatic links between agriculture and health and nutrition requires a means of seeing how their myriad links fit together. This chapter sketches a framework that elucidates the channels through which agriculture affects health and nutrition and vice versa. While this framework can be applied at the global or national level, here it is focused on households and individuals, given that improving individual welfare is the ultimate goal of public policy.