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July 2nd, 2015

How does the fruit and vegetable sector contribute to food and nutrition security?

Published by LEI, F&BKP,

This explorative study (PDF), conducted by LEI Wageningen UR within the Food & Business Knowledge Platform (F&BKP), looked at the potential of the fruit & vegetable sector for Food and Nutrition Security (FNS). The methodology consisted of a focused literature review mainly concentrated on the following countries: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Indonesia and Vietnam; and semi-structured interviews amongst different growers, traders and workers in the Ethiopian fruit and vegetable sector. The development of the fruits & vegetables sector in developing countries has a positive impact on the FNS of the people engaged in the sector and for urban and rural consumers. Households with fruit and vegetable cultivation appear to have less nutrition-related health problems, which was particularly noticeable amongst women. The fruit and vegetable production and marketing sector are important sectors in terms of employment, income and scale of production. Increased levels of income have widely improved access to fruit and vegetables for African consumers. The production of vegetables has a comparative advantage with cereals and other food crop sectors particularly under conditions where arable land is scarce and labour is abundant. Vegetables have a lower comparative advantage when labour and access to inputs are limiting factors. The background and a more extensive summary of this report can be found here. The Food & Business Knowledge Platform is actively involved in the theme of Fruit and Vegetables: the latest news, events, and our own publications on this theme can be found at the theme page on Fruit and Vegetables.

Curated from knowledge4food.net