AGR-IGN No. 7 UA)/ AGR - Interim Guidance Not,;.No. 7 ANALYZING NUTRITIONAL EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS Pasquale L. Scandizzo Economics & Policy Division Agriculture & Rural Development Department July 1981 ANALYZING NUTRITIONAL EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS Thble of Contents Page No. Introduction .................................1 I. Identifying Nutritional Effects of Agricultural Projects 2 II. Information Gathering ............................. ...... 3 III. Nutrition Effects and Project Design .................. ... 5 IV. Nutrition Effects in Project Appraisal ....8..............8 V. Techniques to Quantify Nutritional Effects ............... 10 (a) Nutritional effects of agricultural projects ....... 10 (b) The nutrient indicator ............................. 11 (c) Income effects .. 13 (d) Social surplus effects .. 15 Appendix I: Checklist of Critical Questions for Analyzing Nutritional Effects of Agricultural Projects Appendix II: Draft Terms of Reference. ANALYZING NUTRITIONAL EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS Introduction 1. The purpose of this note is to outline simple methods that may be useful to analyze the nutritional impact of agricultural projects. All agricultural projects may have important implications for the nutritional status of the population affected in that they influence food supplies, marketable surpluses, prices and incomes. Because nutritional problems are part of a broader context of poverty, however, they may be difficult to identify and to attribute to specific causes. As a consequence, both project design and evaluation can be improved by paying attention to the nutritional consequences of specific project actions through a systematic approach. 2. While it is in no way suggested that the methods outlined below be used for all agricultural projects, the main objective of the paper is to provide a basic survey of alternative approaches that can be used when the nutritional impact appears to be specially important, when its direction is uncertain and its consideration likely to make a difference to project design. 3. This paper should be read in conjunction with the report by Per Pinstrup-Andersen on "Nutritional Consequences of Agricultural Projects: Conceptual Relationships and Assessment Approaches", AGREP Division Working Paper No. 38. The following books and articles are also recommended as being useful background reading: (i) Population, Health and Nutrition Dept., Toward an Operational Work Program for Nutrition, The World Bank, Sept. 1980. (ii) Reutlinger, S. and M. Selowsky, Malnutrition and Poverty, World Bank Staff Occasional Papers No. 23, Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. (iii) Knudsen, 0. and P. Scandizzo, Nutricion and Food Needs in Developing Countries, World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 328, 1980. -2- (iv) Scandizzo, P. and C. Bruce, Methodolop..es for Measuring AgriculLural Price Intervention Effect., World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 394, 1980. (v) Perret, H. and F. Lethem, Human Factors in Project Work, World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 397, 1980. I. Identifying Nutritionally Important Projects 4. Economic and sector work should generally be given the task of identifying the agricultural projects with more important nutritional implica- tions. The problem of malnutrition is in fact a country-specific one, depending on the level and the security of its food availability as well as of the equity iof its income distribution system. 5. As a consequence of the fact that countries are becoming increasingly aware of their nutritional problems, a significant number of agricultural projects will be specifically designed to improve the nutritional conditions of some of the country's population groups. In these cases, because nutrition is one of the explicit targets of the project, some analysis of its nutritional consequences will be in order. 6. In addition to such explicitly nutrition-oriented projects, there will be several where the effects on food supply and household availability will be less apparent. In these cases, whether to proceed to any analysis of nutritional effects is clearly a matter of judgement and will depend on the extent of the envisaged effects as well as on consideration of staff time and priority in relation to other issues. One criterion that can be indicated to usefully supplement the judgement of managers and project officers is known as "primo non nocere". This means that, as in medical practice, the over-riding consideration in matters of human health (of which nutrition is part) is not to cause damage. Thus a nutritional analysis is recommended in all cases where -3- it is suspected that the project may worsen the nutritional condition of the populations under its influence. Projects that may give rise to this situation can be classified into two basic categories: (i) projects that promote a drastic change in the cropping pattern and particularly shifts from subsistence crops to cash crops, and (ii) projects that cause an increase in the marketable surplus. In both cases, some attention to nutritional considerations is advisable since it may set back the conditions of the poor and enhance the chances of project success. II. Information Gathering 7. Two basic methods can be used to collect project specific nutritional data: (i) direct visits to the project area during preparation and appraisal and (ii) surveys. While the first method may be conducive of casual empiricism and biases of various sorts, these can be reduced by a systematic pursuit of the basic indicators of malnutrition and of its causes. 8. Similarly to the country-wide analysis, the first objective of the field work is to identify the people who are deprived of food, their social and economic status, their place of residence, and their occupation. In addition to their functional identification, however, project related activities will seek to identify the ways in which the hungry and the poor participate, benefit or are adversely effected by the project. 9. The indicators that can be used to find the malnourished should thus be first general indicators of poverty, such as the quality of the housing, the number of agricultural or household tools, the type of clothing, etc. These indicators can be estimated through a broad-based survey of the project area, taking care to cover the areas further from the road and the households that are more likely to be among the destitute on a priori Zrounds: the landless, the sharecroppers, the unemployed. -4- 10. As a few of these households are interviewed, some nutritional indicators can be estimated. For example, basic family statistics that can be established from a conversation with members of the household are: (i) infant and child mortality and (ii) heights and weights of household members. Food intake information can be more difficult to obtain and liss reliable, but the characteristics of food supply of the household, its origin and variability can also be estimated in broad orders of magnitude through informal questioning. 11. Additional information on the nutritional status of the project population can be collected by visiting the local health facility (birth weights, morbidity statistics, infant and child mortality rates) and by interviewing the professionals dealing directly and indirectly with nutri- tional problems: doctors, nurses, paramedicals, pharmacists, community workers of various types, etc. Site visits can also be used to determine the availability of potable water, markets*for foodstuffs, and general conditions of health and hygiene. 12. A pre-project household survey should be conducted when either a priori consideration or the informal data gathering activities suggest that a specific*effort should be put into acquiring knowledge of the nutritional problems of the project population. The experience accumulated by experi- mentatiun and monitoring and evaluation work suggests that this survey should be of minimal proportions and possibly random. Its size should normally not exceed what can be managed by a few enumerators in two weeks and would thus be expected to range between a minimum of 30 and a maximum of perhaps 200 observations. Objectives of the survey would be: (i) to identify the part of the project population nutritionally at risk, (ii) to obtain information as to -5- the causes of food deprivation, and (ii) to estimate some crude relationships between food consumption and nutritional status on one hand and the main elements of the project on the other hand. In order to achieve these objectives, the survey would seek to collect data on: (i) food consumption and expenditure of the various me mbers of the household on a 24-hour recall, (ii) the proportion of food supply coming from home produced and purchased food, (iii) the seasonal variation in food supply, (iv) anthropometric measurements of the children, (v) birth-weights, (vi) infant and child mortality, and (vii) indicators of economic and social status (such as cash income and ownership of land and other assets). 13. The volume of the data collected by the survey, as well as its timing and cost should be such that it may be properly utilized in the design and evaluation of the project. A small, inexpensive survey, geared at obtaining few critical data on the household consumption pattern and its likely reaction to the modifications induced by the project can also be easily updated during the project life and become an instrument for effective monitoring and evaluation. III. Nutrition Effects and Project Design 14. The information collected on the distribution of food and the security of its availability is especially important in the phase of project identification and design. At these early stages of the project cycle, it is first of all important to discriminate between the situations where it is appropriate and the ones where it is superflous to address the nutritional issue. The analytic information described gives the possibility of excluding a large number of cases either because: (i) there is no major nutritional or food security problem in the country or the project area, or (ii) the areas affected by the project are not nutritionally at risk. -6- 15. Where the above conditions do not hold, in general agricultural projects will have nutritional effects and considering what these might be can suggest alternative projects and project designs. Some of the methodologies developed in nutritional planning guidelines 1/ may be a useful first step to incorporate nutritional considerations in project selection, to the extent that they are based on the premise that nutritional deficiencies are to be tackled as a development problem rather than as a disease problem. 16. While nutrition planning is not generally focussed on agric!xltural projects, its main principles that are naturally extended to agricultural and rural investments are: (i) some quantitative assessment of the nutritional problem in the project area, (ii) the diagnosis of the causes of the nutritional problems and the possibility of acting upon them through investment projects, (iii) the establishment of general goals and quantitative targets, and (iv) the systematic assessment of the consonance of key elements of project design with the nutritional objectives. 17. Although accommodating nutritional consequences may depend on components such as extension and community programs, the main nutritional effects of agricultural projects are likely to be built in the following major elements Qf their structure: (i) the cropping pattern, (ii) the technology choice, (iii) the marketing arrangements, and (iv) the pattern of storage and transportation. 18. The design of these elements is typically determined by considera- tions related to the technological package promoted by the project and by the desire to increase income of the beneficiaries by increasing their markntable surpluses. Important, often overriding considerations relate to national 1/ See Lynch (1979) for a comprehensive review. -7- production goals of export promotion and/or import substitution. These considerations may be ultimately determining the structure of the project, even once nutritional effects are taken into account. A careful assessment of nutritional effects, however, can answer two important questions: First, is it advisable to use the projects as an instrument to achieve nutritional goals? Second, is it possible to minimize the adverse nutritional consequences of the project , if any? 19. Two recent examples where the above questions have been addressed are: a rural development (RD) project in Papua New Guinea (1978) and a resettlement project in Malaysia (1980). In the Papua New Guinea case, 1/ the project was designed to help introduce the rural population to the cash economy and to the modern world in general. It was recognized, however, that malnutrition was of such proportions among the project target groups that a mere shift from subsistence to cash crops could worsen the nutritional situation particularly among the children of plantation workers. Moreover, studies had found that families of workers in the cash economy who lived at home and continued to tend their gardens and participate in local affairs were nutritionally better off than those wholly dependent on the subsistence economy or those who had to live away from home to find work. 20. Several features of the rural development project were thus designed to taken into account these nutritional considerations. First, the sites for coffee, tea and cardamom blocks were widely separated to enable workers, as far as possible, to live at home and continue to tend their gardens. Second, employers under the project were encouraged, to the extent 1/ Report No. 1385-PNG. -8- feasible, to recruit as many part-time workers as possible. Third, the coffee and tea blocks were generally located on land that was not devoted to subsistence crops. Fourth, consideration was given to provide investment and purchase outlets to limit the amount of cash used for luxury items and drinks and channel the additional cash into food products and other basic need goods. Finally, a component including nutrition education, extension and demonstration plots was also added to the project. 21. In the Malaysia project 1/ close attention was paid to the effects on nutrition of basic infrastructure, together with the application and strengthening of nutrition-related programs (home gardens, poultry and fresh-water fish production, supplemental child feeding). To support this effort the project also financed approximately 36 man-months of local professional expertise to undertake a baseline nutrition/health survey, assist in training settler services staff, supervise ongoing monitoring of nutrition and health conditions, and undertake a post-project evaluation. 22. A survey of agricultural projects currently in the pipe- line which are likely to have nutritional consequences has revealed that in most, if not all cases, nutritional considera- tions analogous to the ones discussed above have not been a major issues in the early stages of the project cycle, despite the importance of the project in terms of increase in food supply, substitution of cash crop for subsistence crop, and the severity of the countries' nutritional problems. IV. Nutrition Effects in Project Appraisal 23. The analysis of nutritional effects at the appraisal stage can accomplish three interrelated objectives. First, it can provide a more 1/ Report No. 2845-MA. -9- thorough and correct evaluation of the costs and benefits of the project. Because cost/benefit analysis requires quantitative estimates, conscious value judgement and a systematic breakdown of project effects into simpler components, its use can help make nutrition evaluation more concrete and reliable. By quantifying expected nutrition effects and weighting the orders of magnitudes obtained against the other consequences of the project, the cost/benefit framework gives the possibility of forming a judgement on the desirability of the project and of its design. It also broadens the scope and strengthens the justification of the economic performance indicators (the net present value and the internal rate of return) that would otherwise be estimated on a partial and possibly biased base. 24. Second, the appraisal analysis can achieve further insights into the impact that the project may have on the quality of life of the populations affected and suggestions for restructuring some of the project components. At the appraisal stage, in fact, the characteristics of most of project components are well known and related data on hand. Precise institutional arrangements have been or are being made and it is more difficult to overlook facets of the project that were not evident at the appraisal stage. 25. .Finally, the attempts at measuring and quantifying the nutritional effects may shed light on the key indicators to be measured in the monitoring and evaluation stages of the project. This function of the appraisal analysis is critical for effects on nutritional status will only be rarely and imper- fectly measurable before the project starts rolling. The evaluation of nutritional effects at the appraisal stage is thus also largely a blueprint for the analysis to be conducted during the later phases of project life, and a useful tool for its improvement. -10- V. Techniques to Quantify Nutritional Effects (a) Nutritional effects of agricultural projects 26. The first step in analyzing the nutritional impact of the project is a detailed description of the foreseen expansion or contraction of the output of the major agricultural products. In general, an agricultural project may be expected to have three types of effects: (i) a change (positive or negative) in the quantity of food retained for self-consumption, (ii) a variation in relative prices, and (iii) an increase in incomes. 27. The quantity of food retained for self-consumption may fall, as a consequence of the project, if the project output is an export crop or a domestic cash crop. Even if the main effect of the project is to increase the production of food, certain characterist:its of the project will predictably reduce the portion of farm output retained for subsistence. These character- istics include, among others, commercial orientation, profit, comparative advantage and crop specialization. 28. While in the case of non-food crops the amount of consumption may fall as a consequence of straight substitution, the effects obtained in the case of increased food production are more complex. Because the overall supply of food is increased, one should expect a decrease in the prices confronting all consumers if food is a domestic (non-traded) good. In this case, even though the price decrease resulting from the project may be small, the overall increase in consumption and consumers' welfare can be much larger because all consumers in the country (or market area as appropriate) partici- pate in the gains. Therefore, while the project may be subtracting some food availability from the balances of the producers in the project area, it will add at the same time to the availability of consumers in the country (or the -11- project market area) at large. Even in the case of a small country freely importing or exporting food products, some price effect should be expected if transportation costs, marketing margins and market imperfections are substantial and there is a wide margin between the import and export parity prices. (b) The nutrient indicator 29. Some of the nutritional impact of the project can be quantified by converting the increase (decrease) in food consumption fostered by the project into nutrient terms. In the simplest case, the main effect of the project is expected to be an aggregate increase in domestic food availability, with minimal import substitution and income effects., In this case, consump- tion will increase in the various population groups if the augmented supply is allowed to cause food prices to fall. Unless more elaborate models of market demand and supply are available, the fall in price can be estimated using the following back-of-the-envelope calculation: Price Elasticity of Supply Percentage Percentage Increase in + Absolute Value of Price Decrease Nutrient Availability T Elasticity of Demand for in Price Caused by the Project the Nutrient 30. In the basic case of a calorie supply increase, the elasticity of supply can be assumed to be closely related to the own price elasticity of supply of grains, which are in most cases the main source of energy for human consumption. Depending on the country, a short-term value for such an -12- elasticity will range below 0.1 and 0.3, 1/ while the long-term value, particularly relevant for large increases in supply, would probably be slightly above 1. If domestic producers are protected from price decreases by government policies, this will be tantamount to the use of zero supply elasticity. 31. As for demand elasticities, recently collected cross-country evidence suggests values in the neighborhood of 0.5. 2/ Therefore, in most cases the short-run percentage decrease in price will be a multiple of the percentage increase in net domestic availability of calories, probably ranging between three and ten times such an increase. In the long-run, however, the price decrease is likely to less than or barely proportional to the supply increase because of the larger negative response of domestic producers. 32. Once the price decline has been estimated, it has to be translated into an estimate of consumption increase of the groups of concern. Several methods again can be used. If one has estimates of demand elasticities for these groups or groups of similar incomes and socio-economic characteristics, obtaining an estimate of the consumption effects of the project by class of beneficiaries is straightforward. In the absence of these estimates, orders of magnitude based on cross-section analysis can be used. 33. If demand elasticities are not available, a more direct method consists of computing the cost of alternative food bundles, with variable relative content in terms of basic nutrients: for example, a bundle mainly 1/ See Scandizzo, P. and C. Bruce., op.cit. 2/ See Knudsen, 0. and P. Scandizzo, "The Demand for Calories in Developing Countries", AGREP Division Working Paper No. 26, World Bank, October 1980. -13- based on cassava and cereals for the poorest, one based on a larger proportion of legumes and meats for the less poor, etc. A decrease in calorie prices will thus affect more the "poor" food bundle than the "less poor" ones. In order to obtain an estimate of ensuing calorie increase, we assume that food expenditure of each income group remains unaltered in absolute terms and that the relative proportion of these nutrients in each bundle also remains constant. In this case the percentage increase in calorie will simply be equal to the negative of the percentage decrease in price. 34. The estimates obtained with the latter method may seem to be overly biased since neither total food expend-ture nor the proportion of the different nutrients are likely to remain constant, The two effects, however, are in the opposite direction and are likely to offset each other at least partially. If some information is available on these effects, it can, of course, be incor- porated in the estimate of the calorie increases using the identity: Percentage Increase Percentage Percentage in Food Decrease in Increase in Expenditure Calorie Price Calorie Intake Percentage Their + Increase in X Proportion the Intake of in Food Other Nutrients LExpenditure LL (c) Income effects 35. A third, general class of effects of agricultural projects is given by the increase in income of the project beneficiaries. As a consequence of -14- these increases, food consumption of poor households will rise in accord with their food income elasticities. Nutrient intake will also rise in similar proportions. 36. In general, household consumption increases following income growth are easier to estimate than price-induced increases, as far more data and studies are available on income than they are on price elasticities. Recently gathered evidence 1/ points to calorie-income elasticities of about 0.4 or above for poor households and 0.3 or less for the others. These are notional values, however, and more precise estimates can be computed for specific countries from income elasticities for food items. 2/ 37. As for price effects, an alternative to elasticity based estimates is provided by directly computing the cost of typical food bundles consumed by different population groups in the project area. The effect of a small income increase on the diet of the poor can be evaluated by assuming (i) that the composition of the food bundle does not change and (ii) that the percentage of income devoted to food consumption stays constant. This means, for example, that a 10% increase in income of the poor will result in a 6% increase in calories (and all nutrients) if 60% of income is being spent on food. 38. .For larger increases in income, on the other hand, even very poor people may be expected to switch to higher "quality" bundles, so that a judgement has to be made on the likely composition of the diets induced by the 1/ See Knudsen and Scandizzo, "The Demand for Calories, etc." op.cit. 2/ Scobie provides an annotated bibliography of studies in the area of consumer demand equation estimates. Results from consumption surveys in 55 developing countries are reported in FAO (1979). See Scobie, G., "The Theory and Estimation of Complete Systems of Consumer Demand Equations: An Annotated Bibliography", Dept. of Economics and Business, North Carolina State University, Feb. 1980 (mimeo) and FAO, Review of Food Consumption Surveys, Rome, 1979. -15- income change. In practice, this may imply an estimate of a diet consistent with the increase in income either by trying to guess the increased proportions of higher grade cereals, meats, eggs and other higher income products, that will be consumed as a consequence of the income change, or by taking the bundle consumed by richer households as the norm. (d) Social surplus effects 39. In determining their food demand and nutritional patterns, private parties may not conform to the community's standards for nutrition and health because they lack information or access to food or because they do not share the standards. Furthermore, the poorest population groups may find themselves unable to achieve the standards because their incomes are too low, prices are too high, or both. In all these cases, the social and private values placed on a given amount of food consumption by the poor (in terms of the nutritional standard) tend to differ and market prices and private consumers' surplus will under-value project benefits (or its costs) where these are related to the improvement or deterioration of the nutritional status of the poor. 40. Because many countries already spend large amounts of public funds in trying to increase food consumption of the poor, upper bound estimates of the benefits of a unit increase in food consumption of the malnourished can be obtained from the unit cost of food distribution programs. A recent study 1/ shows that these programs are rather expensive and their average cost ranges from $1.2 for each dollar value of food distributed to the poor to about $5. Thus, in a country where the cost is $2, for example, the benefit that can be attributed to an increase in food consumption of the poor as fostered by an 1/ Scandizzo, P. and J. Graves, "The Alleviation of Malnutrition: Impact and Cost Effectiveness of Official Programs", AGREP Division Working Paper No. 19, January 1981. -16- agricultural project should not exceed $2 since the same consumption effect can be obtained at this cost by existing programs. 41. A direct method to estimate the social benefit from the food consumption increase of the poor is to use the concept of social demand. This is defined as the sum of aggregate private demand for food plus the amount of food transfer necessary to close the difference between private demand and a minimum consumption standard (the "nutrition gap") I/. The social price consistent with this concept is given by the following formula: Nutrition Gap/Market Consumption of the Non-Poor (Social Price) = Market Price 1 + Price Elasticity of Demand for the Non-Poor and represents the market clearing price consistent with a program where the poor are given the full difference between the requirement and their market demand. 42. As in the case of the poverty measures the above formula critically depends on the nature of the nutrition gap as the difference between private consumption and social standards. While these standards are largely arbitrary, the measures obtained using this fomula do not appear to be overly sensitive to the level of the standard set for basic needs except for two extreme cases: (i) where the standard is high and places more than 60% of the population in need or (ii) where it is low, indicating that nearly all of the population have achieved the standard. This is important in the case of food as one commonly used nutritional standard, the FAO/WHO calorie requirement is the recommended intake estimated on the basis of the average intake of a healthy, moderately active person of a given population and, as a consequence, has been criticized for being an unrealistic high line against which to measure malnourishment. 1/ See Harberger, A.C., "Basic Needs Versus Distributional Weights in Social Cost Benefit Analysis", (mimeo), World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1978 and Scandizzo, P.L. and O.K. Knudsen, "The Evaluation of the Benefits of Basic Need Policies", The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 62, No. 1, (February 1980), pp. 46-57. -17- 43. An alternative way to establish a social norm is to use the criterion that some percentage, for instance, the bottom 30% of the popula- tion, are to reach some minimum level of basic needs, e.g,, the level at which the top 70% of the population are above. The particular percentile level that is chosen could depend on the degree of current deficits, sizes of the target population, and the perceived commitment of society to the alleviation of poverty. Several applications of this criterion using a social norm based on 30% being at least above the consumption level achieved by 70% of the population 1/ shows that the social price computed with the formula given above would generally be between 10% and 25% higher than market price. If this method is applied, it can thus be expected that a reasonable evaluation of the benefit coming from the increase in food consumption of the poor would range between 10% and 25% of the economic price. 1/ Reported in Scandizzo and Knudsen, op.cit. -2- How Are They affected by the Project? Are the producers cash incomes being increased as a consequence of the project? Is their variability (risk) going to increase/decrease? - Is their cash crop production going to increase? Their food production going to decrease? - Is the income/consumption distribution going to change? - Is the seasonality of their labor use going to change? - Is the seasonality of their food supply going to change? - Is their on-farm consumption likely to be decreased? Is its variability (risk) likely to change? - Is there going to be an increase/decrease in local market supply of food- stuffs as a consequence of the Project? Is this going to occur at constant/increasing prices? - Is the diet of the households affected going to change as a consequence of the output/income increases and price changes induced by the project? - Is the diet of the poorer household going to be significantly affected? Is the diet of women and children going to be affected? Is the Project Adequately Designed? - Does the project provide for marketing outlets for food, for additional food supply, for access to existing food markets? - Does the project make provisions for a period of adjustment to a higher level of marketed output? For example, is home gardening encouraged as a-means to integrate household supply of food in the interim period? - What facilities does the project provide to improve nutrition and food supplies: storage, transport, distribution, processing? - What facilities are provided to meet seasonal food constraints? - What facilities/provisions are made to offset perishability and port harvest losses? - What facilities/provisions are made for the population nutritionally at risk? -3- What are the Nutritional Consequences of the Project? - What are the output effects of the project: which crop production is going to increase, which crop is going to decrease? Is the crop (breed) new to the area? How long is the planting-to-harvest period (breeding cycle)? Is the crop likely to be consumed in the project area, elsewhere in the country or is it likely to be exported? - What are the consumption effects of the project: if cash income is going to increase, what will be the foreseeable pattern of expend- iture? How much is wheat, rice, roots, pulses and other food con- sumption likely to increase/decrease as a consequence of the project? - Are there going to be foreseeable price effects? Does the project significantly increase area supply of any particular crop? At which prices are the local markets likely to readily absorb the additional production? If additional demand for purchased food is being generated, at which prices are local markets likely to readily supply the additional food? Appendix I CHECKLIST OF CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR ANALYZING NUTRITIONAL EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS Identifying the Population Groups Who are the households affected by the Project? - What are their economic characteristics? income levels land/labor relationships - What are their social characteristics? education settlement patterns behavioral models habits beliefs - What are thei.r demographic characteristics? regional location age S ex - What are their health characteristics? infant and child mortality morbidity rates rates of frequence of infectious diseases life expectancies - What are their anthropometric characteristics? bir'thweights height/standard height weight/standard weight by age and sex - What are their nutritional characteristics? % people consuming below the calorie (protein, vitamin A, etc.) standard size of nutrient gap (standard minus nutrient consumption) the food consumption and the nutritional content of their alternative diet Appendix II Proposed Agricultural Project: Pre-Appraisal or Appraisal Mission Terms of Reference for Consultant on Nutrition Effects On or about you will proceed to for a period of about three weeks to study the nutritional consequences of the proposed project. You will be responsible for: (a) Identifying the population groups that are nutritionally at risk and may be affected by the project, and collecting information on their social and economic status, their place of residence td their occupation. (b) Obtain information on: (i) food consumption and expend- iture of the poor households in the project area, (ii) the proportion of food supply comming from home-produced and purchased food, (iii) the seasonal variation in food supply, (iv) anthropometric measurements of the children, (v) birth weights, (vi) infant and child mortality, and (vii) appropriate indicators of economic and social status. (c) Analyzing the possible effects of the project on: (i) cash income of the population groups, (ii) land tenure, marketing and credit arrangements, (iii) the supply of self-produced food, (iv) the availability of food in local markets, and (v) the prices of alternative bundles of foodstuff. (d) Discussing the merits and the drawbacks of alterna- tive project design on the nutritional status of the population.