Nutritional Impact of For-profit Vegetable and Fishpond Production

Given the low access that women in rural Bangladesh have to productive assets, their crucial role as caretakers, and their high vulnerability to micronutrient deficiencies, numerous NGOs target women for food-based income-generating activities. Three such programs were examined. The programs promote adoption of polyculture fish production (two sites) and commercial vegetable production (one site). The programs evaluated had income generation—not better nutrition—as their primary objective. The fish and vegetable technologies were found to be more profitable than rice production, but rice production provided a higher share of total income. On the basis of the evidence collected, there is little reason to believe that adoption of the two technologies has improved the micronutrient status of members of the adopting households through better dietary quality. There was no finding of adopting households’ disproportionately high consumption of the fish and vegetables they had raised. The impacts on overall household income, although positive, were not strong. The effects of adoption on women’s status and time allocation do not change this conclusion. It is consumers in general who benefit from research, extension, and credit programs to increase the market supply of vegetables and fish. All other things being equal, increased market supply will lower prices for these foods. Although inflation-adjusted cereal prices in Bangladesh have fallen by 40 percent over the past 25 years, real prices of lentils, vegetables, and animal products have increased by 25–50 percent. Real fish prices have perhaps doubled. Dietary quality for the poor may be declining due to these price effects.