Metrics and sustainable diets was the focus of a presentation by Thomas Allen of Bioversity International delivered at the Joint Conference on Sustainable Diet and Food Security co-organized by the Belgian Nutrition Society, The Nutrition Society and Société Française de Nutrition on 28 and 29 May 2013 in Lille, France under the auspices of the Federation of European Nutrition Societies, a conference on Sustainable Diet and Food Security. : A system approach to assessing Sustainable Diets. Read more about Bioversity International’s work on diet diversity for nutrition and health http://www.bioversityinternational.org/research-portfolio/diet-diversity/

1. Ecosystem sustainability, agricultural biodiversity and diet
quality: A system approach to assessing Sustainable Diets
Thomas Allen 28-29 May 2013
Joint Conference on Sustainable Diet and Food Security, Organized by
the Belgium and French Nutrition Societies, Lille, France

2. 2
 A nutrition-driven perspective
 A complex system of environment,
agriculture and health
 Evidence and knowledge gaps
 An integrated system approach
 Concluding remarks.
Structure of the presentation

3. Sustainable diets:
A nutrition-driven
perspective

4. 4
Sustainable
diets
Sustainable
diets
Sustainable
food systems
Sustainable
food systems
Sustainable
agriculture
Sustainable
agriculture
Nutrition as part of Development
When applied to agriculture
and food systems, the three
pillar-concept of Sustainable
development (UN, 1987)
should not miss its ultimate
purpose: Nutrition.
Food consumption is not just
about food and nutrient
intakes: Understanding what
shape dietary consumption
patterns is essential.
Source: Allen et al. (2013)

5. 5
A nutrition-driven perspective
 Food security is also about food quality,
not just supply or access
 Increasing recognition of the double or
even triple burden of malnutrition
 Increasing focus on dietary patterns,
rather than single food or nutrient
 Increasing demand from consumers about
the health, environmental, economic and
social impacts of their food choices.
Research and policy agenda on agriculture and food system sustainability
has to introduce nutrition as one of its core dimensions
Source: Wellen and Hotamisligil (2005)

6. 6
Sustainable diets are those diets with low
environmental impacts which contribute to
food and nutrition security and to healthy life
for present and future generations.
Source: FAO and Bioversity International. Sustainable diets and biodiversity. FAO 2012. Also the INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM:
BIODIVERSITY AND SUSTAINABLE DIETS UNITED AGAINST HUNGER, 3-5 NOVEMBER 2010, FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION
OF THE UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, ROME
Sustainable diets protect and respect
biodiversity and ecosystems while being
culturally acceptable, accessible, affordable,
nutritionally adequate, safe, and healthy.
Concept

7. A complex system
of environement,
agriculture and health

8. 8
From Biodiversity to Ecosystem Services
Understanding processes: Human activities impact biodiversity in
ecosystems, and thus influence the provision of ecosystem services
and vice versa
 Biodiversity as a
community of
interacting species
providing...
 Ecosystem services,
“the benefits
people obtain from
ecosystems” (MA,
2005)
Source: CICES (2010)

9. 9
Food as an ecosystem service
Source: Scholes (2010)
Food and nutrition security is the
product of many variables
including material factors:
 Ecosystems provide food,
through natural or managed
landscapes
 and other supporting,
regulating and provisioning
services crucial to food system
functioning (water, etc.).
When biodiversity is altered, the
functions provided are likewise
altered.

10. 10
From Ecosystem Services to Nutrition
Analyzing interactions between the environment and human society
requires an integrated system approach. A crucial question: defining the
spatial scale and temporal scope in a more complex and global environment…

11. Evidence and
knowledge gaps

12. 12
Major facts:
Erosion of biodiversity (CBD, 2010)
Increased consumption of energy-rich but nutrient-poor
foods (Drewnowski and Spencer, 2004)
Non-communicable diseases are growing causes of death
and disability (Lancet, 2013).
Although current agricultural and food industry practices
have had many positive effects, they have lead to reduced
agricultural biodiversity and simplification of human diets.
Agricultural biodiversity and
intensification

13. 13
 Agricultural intensification led to a production model
where only a few crop species dominate our
nutritional intakes
 Around 100 crop species for about 90% of our food
supply derived from plants (Heywood, 2013)
 Rice, wheat, and maize – the three main staple foods –
represent half of the world’s food energy (IDRC/CRDI, 2013)
 Balanced diets depend not just on diversity of crops,
but on the diversity within the crops.
Simplification of human diets

14. 14
Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS) vary in their
nutritional properties:
Some are nutritionally rich (Johns and Sthapit, 2004)
 A local fruit, Berchemia discolor, was found to contribute in a
low cost manner to closing nutrient gaps in Kenya (Termote et
al., 2013)
and adapted to low input, resilient agriculture
practiced by smallholder farmers.
INFOODS initiative: improving the quality, availability,
reliability and use of food composition data.
Contribution of NUS to nutrition

15. 15
A nutrient-based ecological tool
Nutritional functional diversity (NFD):
Metric based on species and varieties composition on the farm and
the supply of nutritional components of these species and varieties
Measures the potential of ecosystems to provide the nutritional
diversity required for adequate and healthy diets
Help identify key species contributing to nutrient availability in
agroecosystems.
From NFD to diet diversity?
Spatial scale and temporal scope?
Distribution and market dynamics?
Cultural acceptability and consumer behaviours and utilization?

16. 16
When species and varieties composition of ecological
communities are altered, the functions provided by these
communities are likewise altered (DeClerck et al., 2011)
Maintaining high biodiversity as:
a source of traits for crop and livestock improvement
a source of resilience and stability against biotic and abiotic
threats
a source of increased income and improved livelihoods
(Frison et al., 2007).
Views on biodiversity

17. A integrated system
approach to metrics

18. 18
If data are sufficient, some environmental outcomes, such as GHGE, can be
reliably treated as pseudo-food attributes and directly related to diets.
However, given the ecological complexity and multidimensional nature that
biodiversity information is required to encompass, it is very difficult to assign
biodiversity impacts to a product, and therefore to diets.
Current approaches in Sustainable Diets
In a nutshell:
Coupling Food Nutrient Composition, with similarly framed Food GHG
Emission tables
By analogy with energy and nutrient intakes, treating GHG emissions as
food attributes
On the basis of consumption data calculate diet-related GHGE

19. 19
A system-orientated approach to…
Diet outcomes: Food attributes or system outputs ?
The concept of sustainability evolved from an approach to agriculture to a
system property (Hansen, 1996)
Diets – and related outcomes – are the results of complex interactions
among interdependent components within food systems
Food systems can best be conceptualized as Coupled Human-
Environment Systems.
A system approach enables the necessary consideration of the many
intricately related factors involved in getting food from farm to fork.
Reconciling the indispensable nutrition perspective with a system
approach requires multidisciplinary assessment methods

20. 20
“Econutrition integrates environmental health and human health, with
a particular focus on the interactions among the fields of agriculture,
ecology, and human nutrition” (Deckelbaum et al., 2006)
Circular processes
Source: Deckelbaum et al. (2006)
Households trapped in poverty
are caught up in vicious circles;
unproductive agricultural
practices leading to worsening
environmental degradation,
further lowering yields and
contributing to malnutrition,
along with increases in illness,
affecting labour productivity….

21. 21
Bio-Economic modeling
A fully systemic approach:
Linking agrobiodiversity and diet diversity at farm level: A farm-household
bio-economic model to assess the contribution of agrobiodiversity to
dietary quality and diversity
Methods:
Bio-economic model: Integrated system combining biophysical and socio-
economic models
Farm-household system simulation: Expanding existing model to include
agrobiodiversity and diet diversity at both ends
Focus on small-holder farmers
Multidisciplinarity: Agronomists, ecologists, economists, nutritionists,
sociologists
Application to high burden countries in Africa and elsewhere.

22. 22
Nutrition
assessmen
t module
Household
consumption
models
Farm
production
models
Bio-physical
models
Biodiversity
assessment
module
Bio-economic farm-household model for
agrobiodiversity and nutrition

23. 23
Nutrition
assessmen
t module
Household
consumption
models
Farm
production
models
Bio-physical
models
Biodiversity
assessment
moduleMouysset et al. (2011; 2012)
Louhichi et al. (2013)

24. 24
Conclusion
Sustainable diets stresses that:
Nutrition is a core dimension of understanding resilience and
sustainability of agriculture and food systems
For guiding change, characterization should be system-oriented,
predictive and allow diagnosis
System analysis and simulation models are tools that incorporate all
these elements
…joint efforts are key.

25. Thank you
Supported by the Daniel and Nina Carasso
Foundation and CGIAR Research Program
A4NH
For more info: Thomas Allen, t.allen@cgiar.org
Nutrition and Marketing Diversity Programme
Bioversity International