Nutrition Handout

The Agribusiness and Market Development—AMDe—program targets strategic value chains to strengthen Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, enhance access to finance and stimulate innovation and private sector investment to sustainably reduce poverty and hunger. AMDe is a five-year Feed the Future program that partners with the Ethiopian Government under the Agriculture Growth Program initiative. Behavior changing Nutrition activities are integrated into the program’s agriculture interventions targeting coffee, sesame, chickpea, honey, maize and wheat farming households. AMDe’s nutrition interventions emphasize maximizing production and consumption of adequate, nutritious food, ensuring food quality, investing income in nutritious food, and women empowerment. In collaboration with agriculture offices and farmer unions, AMDe has reached more than 45,000 smallholder farmers with evidence-based dietary diversity messages, since 2012.       

50,703 farmers (55% men) received nutrition sensitive agriculture and household dietary diversity trainings and messaging.

16 female farmers developed short films targeting nutrition and showed them to over 3000 farmers in their communities.

1,212 lead farmers (24% women) received ToT experience and nutrition posters to expand nutrition sensitive agriculture messages in their communities.

Developed cookbook and distributed 750 copies to home economic agents (HEA), lead farmers.

63 Farmer Union Managers (11% women) and agriculture office heads participated in basic nutrition and nutrition sensitive agricultural interventions.

92 government employed Home Economics Agents received nutrition training Two rounds of Cost of Diet assessment and analysis conducted

Behavior Changing Results: AMDe interviewed 400 farmers to gauge the influence of the nutrition sensitive agriculture intervention on farmer’s actions, and concluded the following:    

New Crop Cultivation 23% said they are more likely to cultivate new crops.

Intercropping 25% said they are more likely to begin intercropping.

Handwashing 23% said they are more likely to wash their hands after using the toilet Nutrition Knowledge 24% said they can identify types of food that provide energy and 33% said they can identify types of food that are important for growth.

AMDe uses two Dissemination Strategies to reach farmers: Cascade Messaging

Participatory Video

Partner with farmer cooperatives through lead Films about diet diversity, recipes, and cooking farmers and government health agents to cascade were shown at community gatherings nutrition messaging to thousands of farmers.

www.feedthefuture.gov

Diet Diversity Inspires Farmer to Rethink Her Farm Ethiopian farmer takes nutrition training to 40 members of her community to teach them simple ways to increase nutrient intake Wudinesh Tilahun, 35, is blessed with fertile land and a perennial stream near to her home. On her land she has always grown one crop, such as corn. After harvesting, she would plant another crop, such as potato. Ever since she was a young woman, she did this in Boji Gebissa, located in Oromia, west of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

Wudinesh is a mother of four and since corn and potato are always in abundance, she never gave much thought to the nutritional aspect of what she and her children were eating. In fact, nutrition just an ambiguous concept. Social wisdom gave credence to the ideas that meat made children strong, corn kept them alive, and vegetables were simply less beneficial.

Then in mid-2015, she was selected to attend a two-day nutrition training taught by the local agriculture office. Trainers used visual aids that promote dietary diversification and display critical food that support key human development stages and highlighted the importance of crop diversity, home gardens and simple agronomic practices that are easily implemented and bring real change, especially for experienced farmers like Wudinesh.

“The training got me interested in the relationship between my family’s health and farming. Following the presentation on the dietary diversity strategies, I went back to my farm and worked on a layout to incorporate more crops on the same plot instead of just planting one crop every season,” she explains.

The training is part of AGP-Agribusiness Market Development’s approach to integrate nutrition education and dietary diversity into the program’s main activities. Over the last year, more than 38,000 (17,000 women) smallholder farmers across Ethiopia received some form of nutrition training. The trainings are carried out in the villages, farmer training centers, and schools. AMDe plans to reach 57,000 farmers by mid-2016.

Wudinesh also received two posters in the local language, Afan-Oromo, to bring the same nutritional concepts to people in her village. She organized the training near her home for 40 farmers from her village, and even took the participants to visit her farm, where she had a variety of crops laid out, cabbage, carrots, and peppers.

She also has mango trees near her house.

“Now I have separate, well-managed gardens that I use for feeding my family and for selling in the market.

When I prepare a meal, I have choices from many vegetables, and try to incorporate eggs and milk products,” she says.

www.feedthefuture.gov