Bangladesh

Our Work

The Nutrition Innovation Lab works in Bangladesh and Cambodia to implement operations research of direct relevance to Feed the Future’s Learning Agenda. The focus of these country studies is on unanswered questions regarding appropriate investments in agriculture for improving nutrition and diet quality. Two of the main questions posed by USAID’s Learning Agenda are:

  1. What have been the impacts of different approaches linking Agriculture, Nutrition and Health on dietary diversity and nutritional status (i.e. geographic co-location of programs, integration of interventions, combinations)?; and
  2. Have programs to increase farmers’ incomes resulted in improved nutrition when not coupled with nutrition programming?  

In Bangladesh, the agricultural focus is on aquaculture programming, linked in various ways to horticulture promotion, innovations in drying and storage of products, and behavior change communication.  Located in the Feed the Future zone of Bangladesh (the South-West), the Innovation Lab will work closely with local academic institutions, international partners (such as IFPRI), and implementing organizations (such as SPRING) to generate strong empirical evidence of how food choices are made, how diets change, and what impacts are possible on nutrition.

Research Activities

The two questions Nutrition Innovation Labs are seeking to answer in Bangladesh are:

  1. What have been the impacts of different approaches linking Agriculture, Nutrition and Health on dietary diversity and nutritional status (i.e. geographic co-location of programs, integration of interventions, combinations)?
  2. Have programs to increase farmers’ incomes resulted in improved nutrition when not coupled with nutrition programming?

Findings

The Nutrition Innovation Lab has examined the population-level effects of exposure to one or more agricultural interventions (specifically horticulture and aquaculture) on diets and nutrition. Regional dissemination events were held in the fall of 2019 in the Dhaka, Barisal, and Khulna divisions in Bangladesh to share evidence around the potential for aquaculture and horticulture in improving nutrition and diet quality with stakeholders. Handouts summarizing some of the Nutrition Lab’s research findings were distributed at these events, and can be found below: