A Synergetic Linkage between Agriculture, Nutrition and Health

Agriculture is fundamental to economic growth, poverty alleviation and improvement in human well-being. As in other ages, agriculture remains in this century a major source of income for a majority of the world’s poor. It is the primary employment of people in developing economies, with three quarters of the world’s population (particularly in Asia and Africa) depending on it as their main source of livelihood. Agriculture, health and nutrition are synergetically linked as follows: agricultural production systems impact strongly on workers’ health, nutrition and well-being. Agriculture-related health losses account for up to 25 percent of all disability-adjusted life years lost and 10 percent of deaths in low-income countries. That which affects agriculture will also affect health and nutrition. Obversely, health and nutrition have implications for agriculture. Agriculture and disease affect each other in a bidirectional manner: agricultural development projects affect disease causation while diseases that afflict farmers will have negative effect on farmers’ productivity requiring adjustments in labour allocation. Similarly, the health and nutritional status of adults affects their work ability, household welfare and children’s development. A synergy, therefore, exists between health and nutritional status. This study examined the effect of health and nutrition on labour productivity of farmers in Southwestern Nigeria. Within this geo-political zone of the country, primary data was collected through a field survey of 470 rural farmers. Descriptive statistics, Anthropometric measures of nutrition (BMI and DDS) and the Tobit model were used to show the effect of nutrition and health on the productivity of farmers. Estimated results show that body mass index (BMI) and dietary diversity score (DDS), which are nutritional variables, have effect on the frequency of the occurrence of sickness of rural farmers in the study area; thus affecting their productivity. These results help to establish the synergy between health, nutrition and productivity. Moreover, the policy implication of these findings point to the fact that poor health and malnutrition adversely affect productivity of labour, inversely establishing the fact that good health is a key element of development and a driver of growth. The need arises, therefore, to invest more on human capital, especially health in order to enhance the productive capacity of rural farmers.