Improving household health and food security by promoting agroecological community-based food production

Aim

Global CFaH aims to understand the potential for improving household diet, nutrition, and food security, and reducing the burden of nutrition related diseases by promoting increased community-based food production based on agroecological principles, in small island countries.

The project, funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research, will review the available data on dietary quality, nutrition-related diseases, food sourcing, and to what degree community food production (CFP) uses an agroecological approach.

Having identified the data gaps, the team will collect new data on population and household diet and nutritional status, contribution of food sources to diets; socio-cultural, historical and economic contexts, and enabling factors (e.g. local and national governance and policy frameworks).

Following data collection, researchers will work with local communities and local food producers to assess their needs and co-design, deliver and evaluate interventions to increase local sustainable food production.

The outcomes of the long-term human and ecosystem health benefits of the interventions, and their scalability, will be modelled against ‘business as to inform national and regional policies.

The project team are working in Fiji, the Philippines, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Outcomes

The aim is to engage with 2,600 households through data collection activities, to deep dive with 80 individuals through the living lab workshops, and to share  findings with local communities, national governments and related NGOs and researchers to inform future science and food system policies.