Humans Nutrition

Malmutrition is iften the result of economic poverty, not only in the Philippines but also in ither perts of the world. Lack of food supp;y.incorrect dietary food practices, ill health and other factora of under-nutrition generally prevail in conditions of abject poverty.

The Philippine Food and Nutrition Program which represent the collective efforts of the public and private sectors against malnutrition, is an integral part of the socioeconomic development program of the Philipine government. The program, which incorporates poverty-reduction schemes addressed mostly to the ultra poor , seeks to alleviate the social  ills brought about by economic hardships and thereby effect the dynamic involvement of communities in national development.

Self-sufficiency programs

Remedies to the problem of economic poverty in the country have included food sufficiency programs designed to provide agricultural project loans to small producers to enable them to increase their oncome. These include programs on rice, corn , fish, livestock, and other basic food sources.

One of the most extensive of these undertaking is the Masagana 99 Program, a rice-sufficienty program of the government designed as a program for survival,to elevate the country from its formers ststus as a rice-importer.Name sfter the desired yield in cavans per hectare, the program has enabled the country to take great strides in rice production, marking the Philippined not only self-sufficient in the grain but also a rice-exportter.

The Maisagana Program was launched in December 1981 to make the country self-sufficient in yellow corn in 2 years and a corn exportter in 3 years to achieve a saving of at least$50 M usually spent for the importation of the cereal every year.

The Bakahang Barangay, a cattle-financing program of the government launched in 1977, is a non-collatereal olan aimed at providing small farmers with loans for securing up to 8 cattlefatteners. This program is implemented nationwide involving 65 provinces and 634 rural banks and savings and loan associations.

Kambingang Barangay is a goat-fitnancing program jointly implemented by the Bureau of Animal Industry(BAI)Heifer Project International, and the Department of Rural Banks and Saving and Loan Associstion of the Central Bank of the Philippines.

Gulayan sa Kalusugan is the vegetable and legume program of the government strated in 1975 to enable farmers to have additional sources of income and to ensure the continous supply of vegetables in the market.

Biyayang Dagat or Blue Revolution launched on September 11,1979 is designed to help the small fishermen/fishfarmers improve their economic condition, as well as to boost fish production in the country.As envisioned the program seeks to extend credit services to an estimated 60,000 fishermen, and to influence fishermen and aquacultire operators into adopting appropriated fishery projects and technology for increasing fish production.

First of all, it must be stated that we are quite found of planning.We believe it is both necessary and useful. Thailand has already had five Nationl Economic and Social Development Plants.As a planner I first joined the  National Economic and Social Development Board in 1960- just in time for the preparation if the First National Plan.

From my personal experiences, I can confirm that all our five plans invariably contain a nutrition component. The first three plans,going from 1961 to 1976, followed the health approach to the problem of malnutrition with emphasis on curative action. During the Fourth Plan we realized that there were many socioeconomic factors which contribute to the malnutrition problem.We therefore turned to a more delvelopmental approach with more intersectoral linkages.Afood and Nutrition Plan was formulated and incorparated in the National Plan for the first time.However. by the end of the Fourth Plan,the Nutrition Program was not fully implemented and several observationa indicate that many of yhe policies have not been very successful in attaining the set objectives.

The Fifth National Economic and Social Development Plan

The formulation and the launching if the Fifth Five-Year Plan,starting in October 1981, represents a major turning point in our approach to planning. While the nutrition program continues to be included in the Fifth Plan, we have adopted a different planning concept.

Our past Plans employed nutrition programs to eradicate malnutrition. But the Fifth Plan recognizes that malnutrition is a symptom of poverty and ignorance. We now use nutritional programs as stopgap measures to relieve the most severe froms of malnutrition until systematic solutions bring about longterm sustained improvement.

The main thrust of the Fifth Plan’s nutrition policy does not lie in its nutritional program but in its program of poverty alleviation and development of backward areas. This is a major change in development appoach from previous Plans which concentrated almost solely on overall growth while expecting benefits from such growth to trickle down to rural areas.

The Poverty Alleviation Plan is a rural inveatment program targeted at high povery concentration areas which inculde 216 districts and 30 subdistrict in 37 provinces of the North-east,the North and the South. The objective of the Poverty Alleviation Plan is to improve the quality of life for 7.5million rural poor by assisting them to overcome their povertyrelated problems of hunger, sickness,ignorance and general deprivation. To achieve this objective the Plan employs four policy instruments. 1) Rural job creation for three million people during the dry season in 24 poor,high-unemployment districts and subdistricts.2)Village development projects such as village fish-ponds. Village water resources, small-animal disease control project,cattle and buffalo bank and other rural-poor focused development projects to improve the socioeconomic conditions of over a million people in 5,000 villages.3) Provision of basic services such as health facilities, nutrition and clean water supplies, and educational material to the target areas. And 4) help to increase agricultrual productivity and the production of nutritive foods through a food production for nutrition peoject to benefit 160,000 children and 80,000 pregnant women,an upland rice improvement project covering 65 districts in 16 provinces and soil improvement profects.

All these projects have cost several billion bath of Government budget.

At the same time, the Fifth Plan recognizes that the poverty alleviation projects will take time to raise the incomes and the aweareness of rural  poor sufficiently to eliminate malmutrition altogether.Until this is accomplished, stopgap measures are necessary to relieve the worst cases of malnutrition,especially those among vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant and lactating women.

Again,the Fifth Plan has Introduced targeted interventions with specific objectives: 1) to eliminate third-degree PEM among infants and preschool children,pregnant and lactating women,2) to reduce second and first-degree PEM among preschool children by 50% and 25% respectively, and 3) to reduced PEM among school-sge children by 50%

To achieve these objectives, the following instruments are employed: 1)nutrition surveillance across the country to identifly  malnourished children and pregnant and lactating women through anthropometric measurements: 2)provision of supplementary food to 230,000 preschool children with third  degree malnutrition;3) subsidized school lunches for 5,000 school;4) promotion of high-nutrition food production and distribution in 246 high-poverty districts;5) improvement of sanitation and environmental health and provision of immunization for children to increase the effectiveness of nutrition programs;6) nutrition education, including nutritional value of foods and importance of breasifeeding and so on to pregnant and lactating women and the general public through house-to-house visit. The people covered under this program are around 5 million.In addition there are demonstrations which will cover 2.5 million people;7) nutrition related reseach, training and extension.

It can,therefore, be concluded that. Unlike earlier Plans, the current Plan’s nutrition policy follows the economist’s view on nutrition in pursuing policies which attack the root cause which are poverty and ignorance rather than the symptom or malnutrition while at  the same time nutritional programs are used as stopgap measures to relieve the worst froms of malnutrition.

Unfortunately, however, the relative emphasis on these various nutrition programs and hence the budget allocation to each have not been based, as they should, on their relative cost-effectiveness in solving malnutrition problem. Unlike poverty alleviation projects which have been introduce only recently and cannot be evaluated yet, the nutrition  intervention programs have been in effect for a long-enough period to have their impact assessed and relative cost-effectiveness evaluated. Such an assessment may revel that certain programs are indeed very effective and should be expanded while others are costly and ineffective and should be deemphasized or discontinued altogether. Assessment of the cost effectiveness of nutrition planning if the maximun reduction of malnutrition is to be accomplished in the shortest possible time with a limited budget.

In fact the evaluation of the 1982 nutrition program reveals that the problem of PEM has been somewhat reduced.Out of 1.5 million children weighed in 1982, the number with malnutrition problem has been reduced from 53 percent in pre-Fifth Plan period to 48 percent in 1982.

As the focus of this paper is the economist’s view of nutrition problems and of government development programs to alleviate it, I think we should begin with the basic premises and principes on which economics is based. Then we can attempt to see whether and how nutrition fit in the economic picture.

It is a generally accepted premise among economists that people known what is good for them. They rationally allocate their limited income among different use such as food,clothes and education in such a way as to maximize their satisfaction. The economist is not normally concerned as to wheather people spend too much on one item or too little on another if that makes them happy. People spend their income according to their preferences among different goods and services and the relative prices of these items. A pronouncement by the economist or anybody else for that matter that people should spend more on one item and less on another is tantamount to an attempt to impose one’s own preferences on other people.

Then what is all the fuss about malnutrition? If people know what is good for them wouldn’t they allocate their income in such a way as to consume that amount of nutritive foods and non-foods that will maximize their satisfaction? The answer is yes, except that malnutrition is not measured in terms of satisfaction but in terms of protein-calorie intake or anthropometric measurements against certain standards. People are malnourished not because they misallocate their resources. It is rather because the combination of their incomes and preferences and the prices they face does not allow them to have better nutrition.

It must be remembered that people strive for maximum satisfaction not for maximum or even optimum nutrition. Otherwise, poor people would be spending all their income on nutritive foods and on nothing else which is contradicted by empirical observation.

If people are mainourished because they are too poor to afford more or better food then the concern and hence the policy should be directed primarily at poverty and secondarity at malnutrition.This is because malnutrition is merely a symptom and not a primary cause.In fact malnutritions in only one of the many manifestations of poverty. Others would include poor health,illiteracy and poor living conditions.

Development economists are concerned with poverty which they associate with inequality and underdevelopment. But is there a reason for the economist to pay special attention to malnutrition beyond his general concern with poverty? I believe there is. Firstly, malnutrition and poor health diminish the enjoyment of all kinds of consumption, even leisure time. Secondly, they reduce productivity, thus prepetuating poverty. Thirdly, alleviation of poverty is a very slow process while malnutrition is an urgent problem because of its debilitating and partly irreversible effects on health and productivity.Finally,even after people’s incomes are raised malnutrition may continue because of the persistence of eating habits acquired over many years in poverty. But this last point concedes that people may not know what is good for them at least temporarity.

In 1977, the 19^th Session of the FAO Conference passed a resolution (8/77) that the Director-General suggests methods for ensuring that nutritional considerations are, as appropriate, adequately included in FAO’s planning and execution of agricultural projects and programs. Subsequently, the world Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD)in 1979 enunciated in its Key Principles for Operational Guidelines that: nutritional consideration should be explicitly considered in the planning , design and implementation of rural development projects.

As a result of the mandate given to FAO by its member countries,a strategy has been developed for ingegrating nutrition into agricultural and rural development projects. The strategy does not simply mean the addition of special nutrition components. Rather it represents the introduction of measures into the project design to ensure and maximize the nutrition benefits. The strategy, now available in the form of a manual,provides a methodology whereby the planner can integrate food consumption and nutrition considerations into agriculture and rural development projects. In other words. Nutrition becomes an integral part of a development project such that better nutrition is ensured as the project is implemented and sustained after the project is finished.

An economist’s view on nutrition problems

ABSTRACT Although Thailand is food exporting nation and the second leading rice exporter, malnutrition is still a serious problem particularly in the Northeast and urban slums. Malnutrition affects adversely people’s well-being both directly and indirectly through its effect on productivity. Hence, spending to alleviate malnutrition cannot be treated as a purely consumption activity. It should be regarded as an investment which will generate long-term benefits, consistent with the Fifth Plan strategy to develop the country’s hunman resources. In dealing with malnutrition problems, the shift in planning from heath to inter-sectoral approach is a move in the right direction scince there are many socioeconomic factors which contribute to malnutrition. Efficient investment decisions have

It is significant to note in the decadc of the seventies that more than 80% of the increase in production of cereals in the Asian countries has occurred through the increase in productivity. It is equally significant to note that any further increases in production would also have to come largely by increasing productivity,because there is a restricted scope of increasing area under food crops. More than 80% of the arable land is already inder cultivation and the remaining 20% or so is mainly marginal land Therefore, further expansion of net cultivated land will not only be costly, but also ecologically unsound.

While the countries in this region recorded the highest rate of growth(2.5%) in cereal yield in the world during 1971 to 1981 , the actual yield levels of cereal crops are considerably lower than those in developed regions. Average yield of cereals in the Asian region was about 2100 kg/ha against about 3500 kg/ha in Europe and North America during the triennium ending 1981 . Considering the major cereals, rice is the foremost crop of most of the Asian countries. In some of the countries, rice paddy accounta for more than 90% of the country’s grain production. Yields of rice paddy vary widely from country to country. The details are given in Table3.It can be seen that four  out of the 18 rice producting countries, namely China, Korea (DPR) ,Korea(Rep.) and Japan recorded yields of more than 4 tons/ha. There were seven countries whose rice paddy yields ranged between 2 and 3 tons/ha,except Indonesia with an average yield of 3.3 tons/ha. The remaining seven countries produced less than even two tons/ha. The yields of the coarse grains in Asia were still lower and variable,being only about 1500 kg/ha against 2545 kg/ha in the rest of the world. Wheat yields shown in Table4 progressed at a higher rate of about 3.6% per annum but that, too, is considered moderate. The country performances varied considerably. While Japan and Korea recorded 3000 kg/ha, the major wheat producing countries of the region from about 1600 to 2000 kg/ha. From the analysis of yields it is revealed that there is a great scope of increasing the adsolute yield of the major cereals in the region.

The modern cereal production technology is centered around the HYV’s for which adequate quantily of quality seeds, fertilizer and irrigation are the major inputs. As regards fertilizers,despite the impressive 11% annual rate of growth of fertilizers during the 1970s, the average rate of the fertilizer application of about 60 kg/NPK/ha in most of the Asian countries, is far below the recommended doses and the average level of application in some of the countries in the region. The fertilizer doses in some of the countries of the region are even less than 20 kg/NPK/ha. It is further disturbing that the rate of increase in fertilizer use in the Asian countries during the past3 to 4 years has declined.This trend must not only be checked but aslo reversed. Indigenous production and efficient distribution of fertilizers including subsidy and price incentive should be stepped up. Measures must be develop and widely adopted to increase the efficiency of fertilizer use.
Irrigation should receive high priority in national planning. Effective water management will economize the water use and maximize and stabilize production. Water harvesting devices under rainfed counditiona technologies suitable to congenial and stressed crop growing conditions, including rain-dependent agriculture should be developed and widely adapted.

There is an ample scope for increasing cropping intensity particularty in the tropical and sub-tropical Asia. Presenty, cropping intensity in the Asian Region is less than 120 percent. With the increasing availability of fertilizers and water and appropriate crops, especially legumes and their varieties (short-duration photo insensitive), cropping intensity must be increased.