The Guidelines for the Design and Implementation of African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) Home Grown School Feeding Programmes in Africa is the result of a collaborative effort supported by the African Union Commission for Education, Science, Technology and Innovations (AUC-ESTI) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
Home Grown School Feeding has been recognized by African leaders for its contribution to human resources and capital development in the continent and for having an important role in inclusive development, health, rural development, gender equality and inclusive education, particularly for the poor and socially marginalised communities.
These HGSF guidelines are meant to provide general direction or guidance to African Union Member States who wish to establish HGSF programmes or review existing school feeding programmes to link them more directly with smallholder farmers and other role players in the school food value chain, while addressing the nutrition component more adequately.
The five school feeding quality standards form the organizational structure of these guidelines, namely, i) policy and legal framework, ii) financial capacity and stable funding, iii) institutional capacity for implementation and coordination, iv) design and implementation, v) and community participation.
The mandate ofAUDA-NEPAD is to: a) Coordinate and Execute priority regional and continental projects to promote regional integration towards the accelerated realisation of Agenda 2063; and b) Strengthen capacity of African Union Member States and regional bodies, advance knowledge-based advisory support, undertake the full range of resource mobilisation and serve as the continent’s technical interface with all Africa’s development stakeholders and development partners.
This African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) Handbook was prepared primarily based on the experience and lessons from Botswana, Ghana and Nigeria.
These three countries are among the most advanced countries in implementing HGSF which are supported and led by their national government.
The handbook is one of the tools to share an example of a multi-tiered approach to country level interventions for effective delivery on nutrition and food systems.
The mandate of AUDA-NEPAD is to: a) Coordinate and Execute priority regional and continental projects to promote regional integration towards the accelerated realisation of Agenda 2063; and b) Strengthen capacity of African Union Member States and regional bodies, advance knowledge-based advisory support, undertake the full range of resource mobilisation and serve as the continent’s technical interface with all Africa’s development stakeholders and development partners.
NeverEndingFood (NEF) Permaculture is a home and community outreach that demonstrates approaches to all aspects of sustainable living, focused on resources indigenous to Malawi.
The United Nations World Food Program’s Sustainable Nutrition Manual is free to download and shares NEF’s work and insights and highlights that “true solutions to…food and nutrition problems lie with the people themselves and the agricultural systems they are using to feed themselves”. There are multiple manuals, flyers, posters, and images to download from the link.
People create sustainable designs for their homes, offices, schools, churches, cities, etc. such as food forests, fuel efficient kitchens, water harvesting, composting toilets etc. for diverse production of foods, fuel, fodder, fibres, medicines, etc. for better nutrition, water and soil conservation and to transition away from synthetic seed and chemical inputs.
Ripple effects: projects such as the Permaculture Paradise Institutein Mchinji were started by Malawians who learned with NeverEndingFood.
In April of 1997, Stacia and Kristof Nordin came to Malawi through the U.S. Peace Corps to do HIV prevention work. Stacia is a Registered Dietitian and Kristof is a social worker by training. Over time, they came to see HIV in the way that the village they were in saw it—as part of a whole. They began to see that a disease that attacks the immune system is connected to malnutrition that compromises the immune system which is connected to the diversity of foods being grown locally which is connected to soil fertility and fresh water availability and so on—an interconnected cycle.
During this time they were introduced to the concepts of permaculture which emphasize:
Care for the earth
Care for people
Fair share of all resources
The Nordins, joined by their daughter Khalidwe in 2001, integrate permaculture into all aspects of their life. They created NeverEndingFood (NEF), their home in Chitedze, a small village about 30 km from the capital city, Lilongwe. Their home serves as a permaculture demonstration as well as a space to train interns and host visitors.
At NEF, they implement a well-design system that provide perennial, year-round access to diverse and nutritious foods and medicines. This approach helps families be more self-sufficient, have access to better nutrition, save money by reducing dependency on expensive agricultural inputs, and access additional income through food processing, diversified markets and unique product ideas. They multiply indigenous resources and share them for others to multiply further.
The advent of input-dependent, mono-culture farming on much of Malawi’s agricultural land led to an agricultural focus and dependence on maize as the primary crop. In spite of being blessed with a tropical climate and plentiful water, most farms now produce one maize crop a year leading to malnutrition due to the reliance on a single crop for the bulk of people’s nutritional needs. In line with traditional farming practices around the world, permaculture diversifies agriculture production to include local fruits and vegetables, animals and animal products, spices and fibres. This improves nutrition while conserving water, improving soil fertility and converting organic matter into a resource!
The Nordins believe that “all solutions come from the people themselves, which helps to provide the self-confidence and ownership that it will take to address future problems in a sustainable way.” Along with the work happening in Chitedze, the efforts and relationships at NEF have initiated and inspired many other projects that use an integrated permaculture approach to address sustainability and nutrition. Recognizing and incorporating these interconnections means that many of the initiatives simultaneously contribute to healthier and more diverse ecosystems, better human health and nutrition, community wellness, and economic resilience.
Food for Thought What indigenous species do YOU know where YOU are? How are the global, industrialized food and agriculture systems influencing food production in your area? Keeping these broader systems in mind, what solutions do you see that offer synergistic improvements in nutrition AND sustainability?
A senior UCD academic from the SPHPSS has contributed to Airfield’s Education and Research Committee since 2020.
The collaboration has enabled student training and research relevant to sustainable food systems through BSc human nutrition undergraduate work placements, and MSc dietetics and PhD nutritional science projects for over seven years. It has allowed Airfield Estate to establish itself as a research body on both national and international stages.
UCD gains access to the public and use of the farm, gardens, restaurant, and demonstration kitchen for practice-based training of students and research studies.
Airfield Estate gains access to academic processes and research project supervision.
This UCD-Airfield Estate collaboration provides a mutually beneficial, relatively low-cost structure to create research, train students and access the public.
Background:
Airfield Estate is a 38-acre working farm and gardens located in the suburbs of Dublin, Ireland. Open every day to the public, its aim is to become Dublin’s Sustainable Food Hub in a world-leading, sustainable food city. Run as an organic and regenerative farm, the Estate completes the farm-to-fork story with a restaurant and farmers market supplied by the farm and gardens. As an organisation that has 230,000 visitors a year, and which has both an educational and research remit, it offers an opportunity for its local University, UCD, to collaborate on a range of projects. UCD, a public research university with over 38,000 students, is Ireland’s largest university.
Collaborations between Airfield Estate and UCD range from undergraduate professional work experience (9 months) to postgraduate masters and PhD projects. The Estate also facilitates UCD conferences and summer school visits that focus on the practical application of sustainable food systems as well as consumer behaviour change.
UCD students and supervisors work in partnership with the education and research department of Airfield Estate to create research projects from hypothesis to dissemination. Critical to this is the facilitation of ethical approval for these projects through the University. The participation of a high level UCD academic on the Education and Research Committee at Airfield Estate is also important as it supports Airfield Estate positioning itself for academic grant applications and ensuring that the Estate engages in relevant research.
The success of the collaborative approach between UCD and Airfield Estate is based on offering academic staff and students a whole system understanding and approach to food systems as well as access to and working with both food production experts and consumers. The research conducted by students on the Estate is consumer-centered and intervention-driven creating a testbed for programmes with potential to be scaled to national and international levels. Airfield Estate has email and social media access to a large public cohort offering an invaluable reservoir for conducting surveys, creating focus groups and accessing audiences for research dissemination events. UCD provides academic supervision of all placements and projects ensuring that they are ethically and rigorously conducted.
Lessons Learnt
1) The symbiosis of academic and non-academic education and research partners creates novel opportunities for education and research.
Having a non-academic partner with a focus on educating the public, advocating for sustainable food systems and a large database of customers, members, and followers on social media offers the academic partner a unique opportunity for education and research into consumer behaviour and consumers’ relationships with food. The facilities and proximity to the academic partner (3 km) allow for easy access for student placements and supervision, summer school educational visits, conference outings, and lectures. The provision of restaurant meals with food supplied by the farm and gardens demonstrates the practical application of a food systems approach.
UCD has been critical to the establishment of Airfield’s education and research department, contributing ethical review and approval for all research projects undertaken, the students to undertake the projects, and academic supervision. This ensures an ethical and rigorous process that protects vulnerable population groups is in place as well as facilitating the submission of high-quality research findings to national and international conferences and for peer-reviewed publication. The students and researchers from UCD working with Airfield Estate also provide an opportunity for the Estate to measure the impact of internally driven projects and programmes which is critical to future grant funding applications.
2) The non-academic partner must have a structure capable of planning and managing research.
Airfield Estate’s strategy contains several pillars, one of which is ‘Powerful Research’. As such, it has developed an Education and Research Committee with both external and internal stakeholders that meets quarterly and has created its own 5-year research strategy. The Board, Trustees and Senior management of the Estate are all supportive of the research conducted at the Estate and a model of both internal research (supported by 9-month work placements by BSc human nutrition students and an in-house research officer) and international research (European Union Horizon projects) has developed.
3) Selection of topics for research must be relevant and robust for both parties.
So as not to waste time and limited resources, as a self-funded non-academic body, Airfield Estate needs to plan and strategically and critically evaluate research that is relevant to its remit and to its potential to submit successful future grant applications. Hence, the decision-making process on what research projects are undertaken must be robust and meet the needs of both the non-academic and academic partners. The research data and end user of the intervention must also be clearly identified in advance, utilize the expertise of academic staff and must fulfil students’ academic programme requirements.
Food for Thought • How can a non-academic partner contact a university (and vice versa) to begin a conversation on collaborating? Is there a structure within your organization or university for this? • Memorandums of understanding are important to define the aims, relationships, and resources needed for the partnership. • Piloting small interventions through local non-academic partners brings research to life for the public, enriches the offering and grant potential of the organization, and provides a high-quality and engaging learning experience for students.
Contact Information:
Prof Clare Corish, Professor of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, University College Dublin, clare.corish@ucd.ie
This project developed a handbook with 60 hours of ready-to-use coursework on implementing the Planetary Health Diet and educational formats on transformative action and sustainability in training dietitians in Germany.
This project was funded by The German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) and run by KLUG e.V. (German Association on Climate Change and Health), VDD e.V. (German Association of Dietitians), and the School of Dietitians at the University Hospital Münster.
Lessons Learnt: Topics of sustainable and healthy diets and transformative education can be implemented as a singular course or integrated throughout the training of dietitians.
Background:
Nutrition, health, and the environment are closely linked and mutually dependent. In Germany, common dietary patterns and the associated food production pose a significant risk to the health of the population and the climate and health of our planet. The Planetary Health Diet developed by EAT-Lancet provides crucial starting points for a healthy diet within planetary boundaries.
However, the scientifically based, holistic concept is still insufficiently applied in the nutrition and health sectors and is missing in dietetic education curricula. The potential of such a diet, not only in the fight against planetary crises but also for improving population health, is still little known and is not used strategically.
Figure 3: Implementation of the PHD in the teaching kitchen; own picture
The project aimed to develop educational formats on the Planetary Health Diet and transformative action for training professionals in the nutrition and healthcare sector. The model and implementation were tested in a dietetics class.
After a successful trial of the model week on “Planetary Health and the Nutrition of the Future” with students from the School for Dietitians at the University Hospital Münster, the content was evaluated, revised, prepared and passed on to teachers at other dietitian schools in a train-the-trainer seminar with the purpose of scaling.
All materials are available to all schools via the VDD member area or the project lead of KLUG e.V.. Based on these elaborated materials and the evaluation, the design and implementation of a multi-part training course for already working dietitians and nutritionists (across associations) follows. In addition, an adaptation of the materials to the training of physiotherapists and occupational therapists is in preparation.
Food for Thought Besides an increase in knowledge, students experienced an increase in drive, confidence, and assumption of responsibility towards fighting the climate crisis.
TABLE’s mission: ingredients for better dialogue. TABLE is a food systems platform that sets out the evidence, assumptions and values that people bring to debates about resilient and sustainable food futures. They explore the data, the biases and the beliefs behind those debates in order to support better dialogue, decision making and action.
TABLE is for everyone with an interest in food. Acting as an interface between the worlds of research and practice, our work reflects and interrogates real and relevant food system debates. We are in constant dialogue with people working within the food system, including civil society, policy makers, advocates and practitioners.
TABLE puts together many resources such as explainers, blog posts, podcasts, letterbox series, other publications in their resource library, and a list of events and job opportunities. They have a page in Spanish as well. TABLE es MESA en América Latina.
A useful resource for busy people is their summary series which break down some of their explainers into a brief format. Short summaries are now available for the following explainers:
What is regenerative agriculture?
What is ecomodernism?
What is feed food competition?
What is the land sparing-land sharing continuum?
What is agroecology?
What is food sovereignty?
Soy: food, feed and land use change
Rewilding and its implications for agriculture
Agricultural methane
What is malnutrition?
What is the nutrition transition?
What is ultra-processed food? And why do people disagree about its utility as a concept?
This issue brief explores the connections between food systems and human health and well-being in the Canadian context, as part of the Determining Healthseries of the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. It is also available in French. This issue brief is intended for public health practitioners, decision-makers, researchers, and students looking to learn about the public health relevance of (industrial) food systems and the urgent need for their transformation.
The resource is divided into four sections:
Section 1 introduces food systems and their major components, defining food systems as the “webs of activities, people, institutions and processes that bring food from the fields, forests and waters to our plates, and beyond”.
Section 2 explains why food systems matter for public health policy and practice. It describes their importance for meeting populations’ nutritional needs and highlights key issues with Canada’s industrial food systems, the dominant type of food system in the country.
Section 3 draws on peer-reviewed and grey literature from 42 sources to explain five pathways linking industrial food systems to health inequities.
Section 4 concludes the document and underscores that all public health practitioners and organizations have a role in helping build healthier, more sustainable and just food systems.
Use this resource to
Build understanding of food systems and their major components
Facilitate discussion on how industrial food systems contribute to health inequities in the Canadian context
Support food system-related public health interventions
Browne S, Corish C, Nordin S, Carlsson L. Sustainability-informed dietetics education: key messages for educators and national dietetics associations. J Hum Nutr Diet. 2024; 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/jhn.13322
Background
Dietetics curricula currently fail to meet the educational needs of the future dietetic workforce to contribute expertise in sustainable, healthy food systems in the settings in which dietitians work. A ‘Global Networking Event on Sustainable Food Systems in Nutrition and Dietetics Education’ was held in June 2023 with the goals of building relationships among international stakeholders and informing the development of shared curricula.
Methods
Plenary lectures, panels and roundtable discussions were held over 2 days, designed to provide the background required to generate informed actions. Topics included recent research from practice and education, competency standards and relevant policy documents, examples from the field, ‘big questions’ about scope and student perspectives. Key messages were summarised thematically to inform educators and national dietetics associations.
Results
Fifty-five delegates attended from 11 nations representing education, research, dietetic associations, industry and diverse practice backgrounds. Key priorities identified for educators included co-development of curricular frameworks and pedagogical theory, practical training supports and solutions to limited time and expertise. Key recommendations for national dietetics associations included strategic promotion of sustainable food systems in dietetic roles and practical supports.
Conclusions
Outcomes are anticipated to stimulate ongoing discussion, collaboration and actions on sustainable food systems education within the dietetics profession leading to shared curricular models and supports.
Highlights
Sustainable food system (SFS) competency requirements and curricular integration are inconsistent globally and lack robust frameworks to support dietetics education.
There is a need to define the scope of practice for SFS within dietitians’ roles.
Current opportunities in education include scaffolding existing topics and activities with signature pedagogies for sustainability, harnessing transferrable knowledge and skills to adapt to future SFS roles, and establishing interdisciplinary food systems teaching and learning activities.
National dietetics associations can act to support SFS in the professional role of dietitians.
Citation: Powell, R., Carlsson, L., & Callaghan, E. (2024). Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals Sustainable Food Systems Knowledge Seeking Behaviour. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2024.2321231 (paywall)
Abstract
Sustainable food system (SFS) competence is a new and recognized knowledge area for nutrition and dietetics professionals (NDP). This research seeks to describe the SFS knowledge-seeking behavior of NDP.
Secondary data analysis of 231 anonymous self-assessments collected between September 2020 to December 2021 indicate a high proportion (41%) of self-assessed “beginners” in this topic at a mixture of career stages.
There was a preference for learning about topics that already have significant public attention globally. More advanced practitioners sought more applied information.
These results are informative for updating education and professional development tools for NDP.
The Coalition of Health Professionals for Regenerative Agriculture is a growing movement of health professionals and a multidisciplinary set of people and organisations connecting the dots between soil health and human health. This manifesto aims to give voice to a European Regenerative Healthcare movement and incentivise actions across the food, agriculture, and healthcare systems. This piece aims to align the voices of different stakeholders to achieve One Health in Europe.
The One Health concept highlights that the health and well-being of humans are inseparably linked to the health of other ecosystem components such as soil, plants, and animals. As health professionals, we recognise our unique role in mitigating the climate, food, and health crisis by promoting One Health.
Regenerative Healthcare is one of the practical solutions of One Health, where soil health connects to human health. The cycle starts with the farmer, who grows nutrient-dense food through agroecological practices. The food is then provided to hospitals and other public institutions as a tool to treat and prevent disease.
This chain demands that health professionals and all the different stakeholders involved have a holistic understanding of agriculture, nutrition, food systems, and also prevention-based measures to tackle human and environmental health crises. Training healthcare providers in regenerative healthcare promote soil, plant, animal, and human health, and it can scale regenerative agriculture and agroecology.
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