Strengthening food systems to improve food security, diets and nutrition

CNFA recognizes the important role that farmers and other agricultural market actors play in ensuring access to safe, affordable and nutritious foods. Drawing on our expertise in agricultural enterprise and market systems development, we work with farmers, agribusinesses, lead firms and governments to increase local production, marketing and consumption of these foods to improve diets and nutrition. By facilitating access to productivity-enhancing tools, finance, training and business linkages, CNFA helps agricultural entrepreneurs —especially women and youth— increase and diversify production, reduce food loss through value-addition processing and expand markets for nutritious foods. These approaches improve incomes, enabling farming families to purchase safe, nutritious foods that would otherwise be out of reach. CNFA works with diverse market actors to understand the sociocultural factors that influence consumption of healthy diets and then incorporate appropriate nutrition-sensitive behavior change messaging into their marketing and services to increase local demand. Our nutrition-sensitive programs utilize a whole of community approach and foster gender equity, to ensure that all household members, especially nutritionally vulnerable groups like women and children are able to access and consume affordable, nutritious diets.