The food-first bias and nutrition policy: lessons from Ethiopia

As in many countries from sub-Saharan Africa, nutrition policy in Ethiopia is dominated by a focus on national and household food production and food security. The results of the 1992 national rural nutrition survey, and a substantial body of evidence and theory from other settings, challenge this view. In Ethiopia, high levels of chronic malnutrition exist in food deficit and food surplus regions alike, and all regions have experienced worsening of nutritional status during the last decade. Moreover, child nutritional status is only weakly and inconsistently associated with size of cultivated area. Nutrition surveillance and other empirically-based efforts to improve policy should give explicit attention to policy education as an integral part of their stated objective and workplan.