Participatory, Agroecological and Gender-Sensitive Approaches to Improved Nutrition: a Case Study In Malawi
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This paper examines a participatory agriculture and nutrition program in northern Malawi that successfully improved child growth, crop diversity, food security through innovative educational strategies and sustainable agriculture. Malawi is a relevant case study, as a low-income country where the majority of people are rural smallholder farmers, and over the last decade the government has pursued an agricultural input subsidy program, with conflicting results. Persistent food insecurity and heav y reliance on maize as a food source in Malawi has multidimensional impacts on families, including low dietary diversity and child undernutrition. Women’s agency and access to agricultural resources is very limited in Malawi, with early marriage associated with low dietary diversity, early pregnancy and high spousal violence for women. Rural Malawian women have less access to education, lower access to land, credit, seeds and other agricultural resources compared to men. In addition they are con strained by highly unequal workloads, including agricultural labor, household tasks and child care responsibilities.