Policy Brief

The Impact of Education Across Sectors:

Food Security
Introduction
The fact that hunger, illiteracy and lack of schooling affect many of the same areas and people
is no coincidence... Hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity erode cognitive abilities and
reduce school attendance. Conversely, illiteracy and lack of education reduce earning capacity
and contribute directly to hunger and poverty.

-FAO, State of Food Insecurity, 2004

Large areas of the world suffer from the double burden of malnutrition and illiteracy,
as shown in Figure 1. It is no coincidence that the first two Millennium Development
Goals address the challenges of cutting hunger and ensuring universal primary
education, as both are essential to human development. While the negative spiral
between illiteracy and hunger is clear, the reverse is equally true: there are strong positive
correlations between food security and education. Schools can educate children about
agriculture, nutrition, and hygiene, and provide basic literacy training, all of which can
lead to higher standards of living and greater food security. Additionally, schools can
provide food directly to children to promote their attendance, nutrition and attention.
Children who are food secure perform better in school: they have higher cognitive
abilities, longer attention spans and better attendance rates. Importantly, girls benefit
immensely from the promotion of both food security and education. Educated girls
make better decisions about how to feed and care for their own children later in life,
and families may chose to send their girls to school in part because food is available
there. This policy brief explores ways in which the education sector contributes to the
creation of food security, as well as how a more food secure population can have better
educational outcomes, promoting an upward spiral of better nourished, better educated
citizens.

What is Food Security?

Food security is defined by the Rome Declaration as the state when “all people, at all
times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet
their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (World Food
Summit, 1996). This definition encapsulates a number of different concepts, so food
security is often broken down into four complementary components:

1. Availability of food, which focuses mostly on agriculture and food production.

2. Access to food, which includes both physical access (markets and infrastructure) and
economic access (resources available to the household or individual).
3. Utilization of food, which emphasizes health and nutrition factors.
4. Stability of food supply, which incorporates the risk that conditions may change, for
example due to seasonal or temporal variations, shocks, or disasters.
The Impact of Education Across Sectors: Food Security

Figure 1. Correspondence of high rates of illiteracy and undernourishment

Simultaneously achieving the four components of food security is a complex challenge

that cannot be addressed by any one sector but requires an integrated, multi-sectoral
approach. The Feed the Future (FTF) initiative, launched in 2010 by the United
States Government (USG) to assist developing countries to fight hunger, reflects this
understanding. To achieve the goal of sustainably reducing global poverty and hunger,
FTF has two objectives: to promote agriculture sector growth and to improve nutritional
outcomes, especially for women and children. FTF reinforces the importance of
leveraging the impacts of interventions from all sectors by incorporating objectives from
health and nutrition, as well as agricultural production and economic growth. USAID,
the lead USG agency for FTF, took further steps toward this integrated approach by
creating a new cross-cutting Food Security Bureau in late 2010. This bureau capitalizes
on expertise from agriculture, economic growth, private sector development, and other
sectors.

This policy brief builds on this integrated approach by exploring the mutually
reinforcing roles of food security and education, including the contributions of the
formal education sector, which have not been fully elaborated under FTF. The education
sector can contribute directly to the creation of food security through each of the four
components: 1) food availability (for example, school gardens); 2) access to food (e.g.,
distribution of food through school feeding); 3) utilization of food (e.g., sanitation,
hygiene, and nutrition education); and 4) stability of food (e.g., channeling disaster
assistance to students and their families). At the same time, food security directly
improves learning outcomes through a variety of mechanisms such as improved
cognitive function and school attendance.

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Options for Promoting Food Availability, Accessibility,
Utilization, and Stability through Education
The education sector can contribute to food security through multiple channels,
including school gardens, school feeding, and the development of literacy skills,
especially for girls. Depending on the design and implementation of these activities, they
can address one or more of the four components of food security.

School Agriculture
Schools can directly improve food availability through school gardens where students
grow food crops or raise livestock on school grounds. The food produced by the school
can be consumed by students, increasing the aggregate food availability for children
who may face limited quantities at home. In some cases, vegetables, milk, and other
fresh foods produced in school gardens are added to staple foods, such as maize or rice,
provided by government or private school feeding programs. These additions can signifi-
cantly enhance the quality of the students’ diet. At the same time, vegetables, milk, eggs,
meat, animal fodder, trees, honey, or other products from school agricultural programs
can also be sold to meet cash needs for schools.
In addition to the direct improvements in food availability, school gardens can pro-
mote better utilization; for example, teaching children the importance of consuming a
nutritionally balanced diet. Experimental learning activities can be developed in school
gardens to teach children about weighing and measuring, plant growth, the nutritional
content of different foods, weather, etc. Desmond (2004) traces the history of “garden
based learning” back to 19th century Europe and discusses how school gardens can
improve academic achievement, environmental education, health and nutrition, and
provide skills-based vocational training. While school gardens aimed solely toward in-
creases in food availability may distract students from educational pursuits, garden based
learning can meet multiple food security and educational objectives. The most success-
ful school garden programs not only increase food availability, especially for vegetables
and nutrition-rich foods, but also provide practical lessons in agriculture and natural
resource management. Students can develop business skills and entrepreneurship, and
transfer these skills to the community (see box on 4-H).

Youth education and the 4-H movement

At least 10 African countries now operate 4-H clubs to educate youth about agriculture.
Most of the clubs are associated with schools and led by teachers, operating either
as an after-school program or a part of the school curriculum. The clubs focus on
building entrepreneurial skills, improving agricultural practices and encouraging youth
to consider agriculture as a viable career path. A pilot program in Tanzania uses cell
phones, the internet, and emerging technologies to reach young people and develop
their knowledge about improved agriculture. Members often divide the food produced,
taking it home to contribute to their family’s food supply or selling it to generate income
for school fees or other cash needs.

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The Impact of Education Across Sectors: Food Security

School feeding programs

School Feeding Programs (SFP) have been used in developed and developing countries
for decades with the goal of enhancing food availability and access for school children,
increasing attendance and improving academic performance. A systematic review of
18 SFP studies (Kristjansson et al, 2007) demonstrated that children from low income
countries who were fed at school gained more weight than control groups, attended
4–6 more days of school per year, had higher math achievement, and received higher
scores on short-term cognitive tasks. Similarly, SFPs have been shown to increase school
enrollment and attendance, especially for girls, by providing families with an incentive
to send their children to school (Jomaa, McDonnell & Probart, 2011).

In the past, many SFPs in developing countries involved the direct delivery of imported
food aid, such as maize or rice, to schools, with a simple goal of providing a social safety
net for children. Over the years, as a result of research into the costs and the efficacy
of SFPs, programs have grown increasingly sophisticated. As it became clear that SFPs
had educational benefits, the function expanded to include livelihood promotion for
children. More recently, many SFPs have been transformed into ‘home grown school
feeding’ programs, where local farmers grow food for schools, benefitting the local
economy in addition to the students. Some SFPs incorporate health, nutrition and
sanitation components, while others provide take-home rations for the family as a
reward for school attendance, especially for girls (Devereux, Sabates-Wheeler & Pascual
Martinez, 2010).

While debates continue about the costs and benefits of various SFP models (Galloway,
2009; Adelman, 2008), the programs are very prevalent around the world. The World
Food Program currently provides more than 20 million children in 68 countries with
school meals. Even more significantly, the governments of India and Brazil—two
countries that have made significant strides in reducing food insecurity—provide
120 and 40 million children respectively with school meals as part of their national
development programs.

Schools can also contribute to the stability component of food security (Bundy et al,
2009). After the Indian Ocean tsunami, emergency school feeding programs helped
deliver food aid to affected zones. Emergency school feeding programs have also been
used effectively to provide short-term indirect income support to vulnerable households,
such as during the 2008 food price crisis.

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Kenya’s Healthy Learning Project

School feeding programs can have a positive effect on school attendance, but in Kenya,
the programs traditionally have relied heavily on imported food aid, so the cost and
sustainability were questionable (Adelman, 2008). In 2008, the Ministry of Education,
the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation, and Technical Assistance
(VVOB) and the World Agroforestry Centre established the “Healthy Learning Project”
to reduce costs and enhance the sustainability of providing food at schools.

The project encourages schools in arid and semi-arid zones to develop projects to grow
vegetables to supplement school feeding programs, rear livestock, plant fruit trees, and
promote sanitation. The program also encourages community participation and benefits
to increase the sustainability of projects. The projects encourage active, relevant learning
for children and help develop life skills that will help them reduce their own risk of food
insecurity in the future.

Basic literacy and learning

In addition to enhancing food availability and access through school gardens or feeding
programs, education can improve food utilization. In many countries, high levels of
mild to moderate malnutrition continue to exist in areas that produce plenty of food.
Even when food is available, millions of children are physically and mentally stunted due
to low quality diets with limited diversity (for example, an over-reliance on basic staples
like maize). Poor hygiene and sanitation practices lead to disease and malnutrition
even when food is available. Education can improve food though basic literacy, skills
development, and direct learning.
It has long been understood that the skills derived from basic literacy enhance options
for future earnings, which translates into poverty reduction and future food security.
Educated children learn how to process and acquire new information and are therefore
more likely to be economically productive than illiterate children. In addition, schools
teach students about subjects relevant to improved food security, such as health (e.g.,
learning to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS or other diseases), agricultural practices,
and nutrition knowledge.
Educating students, especially girls, pays off later in life when they provide better care
and feeding to their own children. In 2000, the International Food Policy Research
Institute conducted a study of the factors that helped reduce child malnutrition by 15
percent in the developing world between 1970 and 1995. The results demonstrated that
increases in women’s education accounted for 43 percent of the total reduction in child
malnutrition, by far the largest contribution, with improvements in food availability
coming in a distant second (Smith & Haddad, 2000).
By attending school, children can also learn skills that contribute to the stability element
of food security. Food security is closely correlated with diversity in income or diet:
households that depend solely on rainfed maize production, for example, face a very
high risk of food insecurity in the event of a shock like a drought. Educated households

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The Impact of Education Across Sectors: Food Security

develop skills and resources that allow them to diversify their income sources (e.g., set
up a small business or raise small livestock) and enable them to withstand shocks (FAO,
2000).

How Food Security Improves Learning

While it is clear that education plays a role in increasing food security, the reverse is also
true: populations that are more food secure are better able to benefit from education.
There is a strong, proven link between nutrition and brain function, including learning
capability and behavior (Dani, Burrell, & Demmig-Adams, 2005). Students who are
food secure can concentrate better during the school day than hungry students, and
also are less likely to be pulled out of school seasonally during periods of peak demand
for agricultural labor, or leave school early to earn income for their families. Children
suffering from malnourishment achieve lower scores on achievement tests, are more
likely to become sick and fall behind in their studies, and have lower energy levels.
Moreover, chronic undernourishment has a lasting effect on cognitive development
and school performance (Center on Hunger, Poverty, and Nutrition policy, 1995).
Overall, food-secure children are more likely to stay in school and benefit from learning
opportunities, especially if school feeding programs are in place.
The evidence that children who are food secure generally perform better in school
indicates that food-related interventions are a cost-effective way to improve academic
performance. For example, a unique longitudinal analysis of Filipino children found
that early nutrition programs in a developing country could return at least three dollars
worth of gains in academic achievement for every dollar invested (Glewwe, 2001).
The analysis supported a causal link between nutrition and academic success, even
controlling for factors such as parental input and home environment; although they
were unable to make a definitive causal inference.
However, it is important to note that increased food availability alone is not sufficient
to improve educational performance. Inadequate food utilization also negatively affects
academic performance. Childhood anemia, caused by an iron-poor diet and/or intestinal
parasites, has been linked with cognitive impairment and negatively correlated with
educational outcomes, including grades and attendance (Bobonis, 2006). It is therefore
important that children have both a sufficient quantity of food and also a well-balanced,
healthy diet and healthy, sanitary eating practices. For example, school-based iron
supplementation and deworming programs may be an effective means to improve food
utilization, food security, and academic performance.
For maximum educational benefits, food security needs to be ensured before children
enter school. When children are poorly nourished during their first 1,000 days of
life, their cognitive abilities are impaired and they are less educable later. Deficiencies
in certain vitamins and minerals, especially in early childhood, permanently disable
children from learning. For example, iodine deficiencies can reduce a child’s IQ by
an average of 13.5 points (FAO, 2004). While school feeding programs can improve
attendance and may increase retention, the impact of SFP on cognitive abilities and
educational performance is less clear. Whaley carried out a rigorous study in Kenya and

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demonstrated that cognitive increases can take place in school-aged children when their
diets are supplemented by animal sourced foods, but academic abilities did not change
significantly with the addition of grains or milk (Whaley, 2003).
The benefits of enhancing the food security of children from 0-5 years, in terms of
increased educational attainment, lifetime economic productivity, and overall well-being,
are clear. Since the most critical phase for cognitive development is in the pre-school
years, educating young girls and boys about proper nutrition, health care, sanitation,
and agriculture practices can benefit the food security of future generations.

Conclusions
Education and food security interact in multiple, mutually reinforcing ways. Although
some of the options described in this brief have been used widely around the world
for decades (e.g., school gardens and school feeding), new research has identified ways
that these activities can contribute to multiple food security and education objectives,
if properly designed and implemented. School gardens should not focus on increasing
aggregate food supply but on developing “garden-based learning programs” with a focus
on nutrition and entrepreneurship. Likewise, home grown school feeding can benefit
the entire community, strengthen agriculture markets and value chains, and improve
school attendance and learning outcomes. Food secure children are more likely to enroll
in school on time, miss fewer days, and repeat grades less frequently than food insecure
children.

Designing food security and education programs with an explicit recognition of these
positive linkages can benefit both sectors and contribute directly to the achievement of
Millennium Development Goals 1 and 2.

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The Impact of Education Across Sectors: Food Security

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The Impact of Education Across Sectors: Food Security

Acknowledgements
This paper was written for EQUIP2 by Michele McNabb (AED), 2011.

EQUIP2: Educational Policy, Systems Development, and Management is one of three

USAID-funded Leader with Associates Cooperative Agreements under the umbrella
heading Educational Quality Improvement Program (EQUIP). As a Leader with As-
sociates mechanism, EQUIP2 accommodates buy-in awards from USAID bureaus and
missions to support the goal of building education quality at the national, sub-national,
and cross-community levels.

FHI 360 is the lead organization for the global EQUIP2 partnership of education and
development organizations, universities, and research institutions. The partnership
includes fifteen major organizations and an expanding network of regional and national
associates throughout the world: Aga Khan Foundation, American Institutes for Re-
search, CARE, Center for Collaboration and the Future of Schooling, East-West Center,
Education Development Center, International Rescue Committee, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.
Foundation, Michigan State University, Mississippi Consortium for International Devel-
opment, ORC Macro, Research Triangle Institute, University of Minnesota, University
of Pittsburgh Institute of International Studies in Education, Women’s Commission for
Refugee Women and Children.

For more information about EQUIP2, please contact:

USAID FHI 360

Patrick Collins Audrey-marie Schuh Moore
CTO EGAT/ED EQUIP2 Project Director
USAID Washington 1825 Connecticut Ave., NW
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20009
Washington, DC 20532 Tel: 202-884-8187
Tel: 202-712-4151 Email: aumoore@fhi360.org
Email: pcollins@usaid.gov Web: www.equip123.net

This paper was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) under Cooperative Agreement No. GDG-A-00-03-00008-00. The contents are the
responsibility of FHI 360 through the Educational Quality Improvement Program 2 (EQUIP2) and do not necessarily
reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

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