Growing the Next Generation: Sustainable Farming and Nutrition for India’s Youth

In 2006, 47% of India’s children under the age of five were underweight.[1] After ten years, the country has seen slow, steady improvements, but the 2.4% annual decline in children who have experienced stunted growth[2] has not been enough to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals,[3] a set of objectives set forth by the UN in 2000 to decrease poverty and increase health worldwide.  One of these eight goals was to have halved the country’s rate of underweight children from the year 1990 to the year 2015.  Unfortunately, the effects of malnutrition extend far beyond hunger and stunted growth.  In the long-term, children can experience immune system deficiencies and cognitive impairments, including low IQ scores and underdeveloped social skills.  India’s recent economic growth has had a minimal positive effect on the issue, but malnutrition threatens its future economic growth because of the condition in which it leaves the nation’s future.

In order to have healthier children, which in turn leads to a healthier population, communities need to focus on nutrition early in life, including the nutrition of pregnant women.  If fetuses are not delivered the nutrients that they need, then they have little hope of developing into a healthy infant.  In order to take care of their children, pregnant mothers need both knowledge of and access to nutritional foods.  After the child is born, the parents’ responsibility to look out for their health is not diminished.  Even if a mother takes good care of herself, and by extension her child, during pregnancy, the positive effects can be undone by poor nutrition early in a child’s life.  The heavy majority of brain development that every human experiences occurs within the first five years of his life.  In fact, a person develops 90% of his brain capacity by the time he is five years old.[4]  If he doesn’t receive proper nutrition during this time period, then his physical and mental growth will be permanently stunted—stunting his potential contribution to the community.

By investing in sustainable agriculture techniques in Wayanad, Profugo encourages nutrition in the district.  Organically farmed crops have greater nutrient diversity than those that are conventionally farmed because the soil it grows in contains more biomass.  The project also empowers families to take control of their own farm, their own food, and their own health.  With increased diversity in crops and increased nutrition in those crops, parents can more effectively tend the needs of their children.  Please donate here to support families’ efforts to develop their farms in a sustainable and self-sufficient way!

References:

[1] http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/pdfs/sowc06_fullreport.pdf

[2] http://www.firstpost.com/living/despite-19-decline-in-childhood-stunting-indias-battle-against-malnutrition-still-looks-bleak-2701006.html

[3] http://www.in.undp.org/content/india/en/home/post-2015/mdgoverview.html

[4] http://sites.ed.gov/fbnp/files/2013/07/Education-Matters-CFBNP-Childrens-Brain-Development.pdf