68 DECEMBER 2023 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG Bangladesh (Figure 1). We found that production of specific combinations of aquatic foods and vegetables can simultaneously improve nutrient and economic productivity, therefore promoting NSA. Importance of Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture Food production and income generation are the two main pathways linking agriculture to household nutrition. Increased production of diverse, nutritious foods may improve home consumption by producers and can create spillovers for non-producer households through markets, while income from crop sales may allow households to purchase foods they are unable to produce onfarm to diversify their dietary intakes. Since the 1990s, rapidly growing domestic and export markets Malnutrition is persistent in many countries that experienced the green revolution, despite large increases in staple crop production per hectare of arable land, and per capita, over the past halfcentury. Growing awareness of this disconnect has led to calls for nutrition-sensitive approaches to agriculture that emphasize increasing consumption of micronutrient rich foods, as opposed to prioritizing meeting energy needs with staple grains. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) programs are designed to address the underlying determinants of malnutrition within a population and incorporate specific nutrition goals. Our recent study (Ignowski et al. 2023) analyzed the nutrient productivity and economic productivity from differing combinations of aquacultureagriculture integration from smallholder farms in southern Productivity of Micronutrients from Integrated Aquaculture-Agriculture Systems Liz Ignowski and Ben Belton Malnutrition is persistent in many countries that experienced the green revolution, despite large increases in staple crop production per hectare of arable land, and per capita, over the past half-century. Growing awareness of this disconnect has led to calls for nutrition-sensitive approaches to agriculture that emphasize increasing consumption of micronutrient rich foods, as opposed to prioritizing meeting energy needs with staple grains. FIGURE 1. Integrated-Aquaculture-Agriculture farms viewed from the air, with vegetables grown on trellises over ponds, and fruits and coconuts on pond banks. Photo credit: Md. Mahfujul Haque.
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