Do agri-food market incentives improve food security and nutrition indicators? a microsimulation evaluation for Kenya

María Priscila Ramos,Alfredo J Mainar-Causapé,Emanuele Ferrari,Estefanía Custodio,Pierre Boulanger,Sofía Jiménez

doi:10.1007/s12571-021-01215-2

Abstract

The sustainable development goal #2 aims at ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030. Given the numbers of food insecure and malnourished people on the rise, the heterogeneity of nutritional statuses and needs, and the even worse context of COVID-19 pandemic, this has become an urgent challenge for food-related policies. This paper provides a comprehensive microsimulation approach to evaluate economic policies on food access, sufficiency (energy) and adequacy (protein, fat, carbohydrate) at household level. The improvement in market access conditions in Kenya is simulated as an application case of this method, using original insights from households’ surveys and biochemical and nutritional information by food item. Simulation’s results suggest that improving market access increases food purchasing power overall the country, with a pro-poor impact in rural areas. The daily energy consumption per capita and macronutrients intakes per capita increase at the national level, being the households with at least one stunted child under 5 years old, and poor households living areas outside Mombasa and Nairobi, those which benefit the most. The developed method and its Kenya's application contribute to the discussion on how to evaluate nutrition-sensitive policies, and how to cover most households suffering food insecurity and nutrition deficiencies in any given country.

Highlights

The sustainable development goal #2 (SDG#2) or “zero hunger” aims at ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030
The specific food security and nutrition (FS&N) microsimulation presented in this paper evaluates the impact of an improvement in market access conditions in Kenya using three original insights: (i) the 2015/2016 Kenya Integrated Household Budget survey (KIHBS) that collects economic and FS&N variables, (ii) the biochemical composition, energy, and nutrient yield of food consumed items taken from the Kenya Food Composition Tables (FCT KEN2018) and (iii) the change in food prices and food consumed quantities from a policy simulation model developed for Kenya
Empirical evidence about food security and nutrition in Kenya accounts for deficiencies in food access, sufficiency, and an inadequate diet in terms of daily per capita calories and nutrients intakes

Summary

Introduction

The sustainable development goal #2 (SDG#2) or “zero hunger” aims at ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The challenge of ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people all year round and eradicating all forms of malnutrition is increasingly complicated by the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global estimates on food security and nutrition (FS&N) show that the global community is falling far short in this goal, with numbers of food insecure and malnourished people on the rise. Between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020, and the global burden of malnutrition remained a challenge with 149 million of children stunted and 45 million wasted (FAO et al, 2021). The five targets within the SDG#2 refer to food security, nutrition, and different dimensions of agriculture, assuming the enormous potential of agriculture for contributing to the end of hunger and malnutrition.

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