دانلود رایگان مقاله کشاورزی، تغذیه و انقلاب سبز در بنگلادش

abstract

This paper explores agriculture and nutrition linkages in Bangladesh, a country that achieved rapid growth in rice productivity at a relatively late stage in Asia's Green Revolution, as well as unheralded progress against undernutrition. To do so, we first outline a simple conceptual model to identify the different impacts that productivity growth in a food staple(s) might have on child nutrition outcomes, with a particular focus on changes in diets at the household and child level. We then apply this framework to a descriptive overview of the evolution of Bangladesh's food system in recent decades. We show that this evolution is characterized rapid growth in yields and calorie availability, but relatively sluggish diversification in both food production and consumption, despite increasing reliance on imports for dietary diversification. Next, we create a multi-round district level panel that links changes in nutrition survey data with agricultural sample survey data over 1996–2011, a period in which rice yields rose by more than 70%. We then use this panel to more rigorously test for associations between yield growth and various anthropometric and child feeding indicators. Consistent with our descriptive evidence on dietary changes, we find that rice yields predict the earlier introduction of complementary foods to young children (most frequently rice) as well as increases in their weight-for-height, but no improvements in their dietary diversity or height-for-age. Since Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child wasting in the world, these significant associations between yields and child weight gain are encouraging, but the lack of discernible effects on children's dietary diversity or linear growth is cause for concern. Indeed, it suggests that further nutritional impacts will require diversifying the Bangladeshi food basket through both supply and demand-side interventions.

6. Conclusions

In this paper we explored the links between rapid productivity growth in rice production, dietary diversification and changes in the nutritional status and feeding patterns of young children during Bangladesh's impressive late Green Revolution period. We first show that diets in Bangladesh are remarkably undiversified, and have only diversified slowly during this period of rapid rice intensification. We also find that increases in rice yields have large and statistically significant associations with child weight gain, which appears to be at least partially explained by increased food consumption for young children, particularly the timelier introduction of complementary foods in the critical early window of child development. This potential impact of yields on child weight gain is important – Bangladesh still has one of the highest rates of child wasting in the world – but it is also somewhat disappointing that we were unable to detect any benefit from increasing rice yields on child growth outcom03 empirical tests may not be granular enough to unravel the complex dynamic linkages between yields and linear growth in young children, both our descriptive and econometric evidence does suggest that this may be explained by the very limited dietary diversification in Bangladesh