"www.fao.org/about/meetings/sustainable-food-systems-nutrition-symposium The International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition was jointly held by FAO and WHO in December 2016 to explore policies and programme options for shaping the food systems in ways that deliver foods for a healthy diet, focusing on concrete country experiences and challenges. This Symposium waas the first large-scale contribution under the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition 2016-2025. This presentation was part of Parallel session 2.2: Information and education for healthy food behaviours"

2. Integrating Nutrition Education in
Agriculture Extension Services in
Kenya
By Dr. Teresa Tumwet, Head/Home Economics
Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries

3. Presentation outline
• Introduction
• Importance of Integrating Nutrition Education
• Nutrition Education Initiatives
• Opportunities for integrating Nutrition Education
• Gaps/Challenges

4. Introduction
• Agricultural extension agents organize farmers for crop,
livestock and fish production
• Address marketing issues, environmental deterioration, non
farm rural employment, HIV/AIDS , malnutrition,
processing and partner with other service providers.
• Create an enabling environment for sustainable development
and management of resources to ensure the country is food
and nutrition secure.

5. Cont’d
• Nutrition Education will therefore ensure proper utilization
of the foods for nutrient retention and bioavailabilty
• This leads to improved nutritional status at household level,
translates to community and National levels
• Integrating nutrition education to extension services leads to
improved productivity and contributes to poverty reduction
strategies and economic development.

6. Cont’d
• About 2 billion people Worldwide have multiple deficiencies
of vitamin A, Iron, Iodine or Zinc which are mainly available
in fruits and vegetables easily grown in home gardens
• Micronutrient intake is a factor of availability, accessibility
and sustainability
• Also proper processing, preparation, utilization,
preservation and storage

7. Importance of Integrating
Nutrition Education
• The importance of consuming high micronutrient rich foods
cannot be over-emphasized
• It is clear that inadequate nutritional knowledge will make
people consume less diverse foods (<5 food groups), and,
• Use of improper preparation methods that will compromise
on nutritional value of the food leading to malnutrition

8. Cont’d
• Studies have shown that a stunted child will not reach their
potential in life and will most likely give birth to another
stunted child!
• This becomes a vicious cycle of low intellectual ability, low
productivity, reduced economic growth and poverty
• This can only be broken through consumption of
micronutrient rich foods; fruits and vegetables

9. Nutrition Education Initiatives
• Development and implementation of the National Food &
Nutrition Security Policy and Implementation framework
• Integrating Nutrition Education in all Food Security Projects
and Programmes
• Adopting various approaches; e-extension; Farmers Field
Schools; Group; Individual farmer; use of ICT; Public/Private
Partnership
• Development of comprehensive TOT manual

10. Cont’d Initiatives
• Integrating Nutrition Education in Formal school curricula
• Implementing Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) AND
Comprehensive Accelerated Agricultural Development
Programme (CAADP) initiatives
• Reviewing the Kenya Food Composition Tables
• Strengthening collaboration with relevant stakeholders

11. Opportunities for integrating
Nutrition Education
• Use of ICT, Media
• Formal education curricula
• Including Nutrition indicators in routine data collection
activities
• Creating awareness at every available forum

12. Gaps/Challenges
• Capacity building of Counties to upscale and harmonize the
nutrition programmes
• Implementation of a National food and Nutrition security
programme to scale up lessons learnt
• Upscaling the food processing and preservation initiatives to
commercialization level
• Low funding levels

13. Improve nutrition status: Invest in
Nutrition education