How a Food Environment Analysis Can Inform Food Security Programming
Through food systems, market actors produce, process and distribute nutritious products in ways that can benefit consumers, particularly women and young children. In less-developed countries, these systems are often disjointed and not oriented to vulnerable consumers. Currently, there are few tools to help us identify and fill food system gaps within Feed the Future programs, where we support market actors to improve nutrition outcomes.
A few years ago, Turner et al. released an intriguing framework that focused on the interface — or “food environment” — between market actors and consumers. This framework described ways in which market actors can influence and meet consumer demand, and factors that buyers consider when purchasing and consuming foods.
RTI International, along with Malawi-based Imani Consulting and Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, recently utilized the framework to design a food environment analysis and toolkit. Conducting the analysis and testing the toolkit in Malawi over the past year has revealed several key observations:
- Consumer research needs to focus on preferences for specific foods, not food groups. When the nutrition researchers on our team drafted their first tools to assess the factors that consumers consider when purchasing and eating foods, they were inclined to frame the questions within the food groups used for measuring dietary diversity versus specific foods. For example, one food group is “flesh foods,” which includes beef, chicken, sheep, goat and fish. This food group spans multiple value chains and a wide variety of market actors. However, for market actors to be able to use the information to better meet consumer demand, the data needs to be specific to the food products that a processor, trader or retailer sells, or that a government agency regulates. We also learned that it is essential to tailor the way we refer to specific food products. For example, in our pilot, we found that consumers did not differentiate between fresh and processed forms of liquid milk, but they did have strong preferences for specific milk products (e.g., ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk and drinking yogurt). Therefore, we revised our tools to name specific milk products and not milk generally.
- Implementers should select value chains with the greatest potential to improve nutrition through food environment interventions. In Malawi, the most significant micronutrient deficiencies are zinc, folate and iron. Knowing this led us to develop a value chain selection matrix to assess several nutritious value chains in terms of their ability to improve maternal and child nutrition through food environment interventions. For example, we assessed whether the foods were likely to be purchased via the market versus produced at home. We also assessed whether there are opportunities for market actors to transform the product or change the way they sell it to better meet consumer demand. Because food system development also needs to provide income-generating opportunities for women, either in production, trading or value addition, this was also an important consideration. Examining these factors in relation to value chains’ potential for filling dietary gaps led us to select dairy and fish as the value chains with the greatest potential nutritional benefit.
- Market system programming can better target children and other vulnerable groups if food environment analysis informs program interventions. It’s widely accepted that food accessibility and affordability are important factors that influence the consumption of nutritious foods, but robust food environment analysis also assesses food desirability and convenience, which are important factors underlying consumer demand. To obtain this information, we asked mothers why they purchased certain dairy products and fish for their children. They indicated that some foods are more desirable than others. For example, mothers said that liquid milk gives their children energy, some fish are softer to chew and their children like to eat some fish or dairy products more than others. They also identified foods that are more convenient than others. For example, powdered milk must be prepared at home, while a plastic sachet of milk can be consumed on the go. Smoked fish lasts several days and doesn’t attract flies. With this crucial additional information about consumer preferences, market system programs could help market actors better understand and meet market demand in a way that serves target groups.
We look forward to publishing our findings from the food environment analysis in Malawi later this year and also sharing a Food Environment Toolkit. We hope the toolkit will help inform other partners and stakeholders who, like RTI, seek to collaborate with country leaders to achieve the goals of the Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) in sustainably reducing global hunger, malnutrition and poverty.