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Digesting agriculture development: nutrition-oriented development and the political ecology of rice–body relations in India

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  • Carly E. Nichols

    (University of Iowa)

Abstract

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) has emerged as a major development paradigm that works to diversify crops and diets throughout the Global South in order to improve nutritional outcomes. Drawing on a conceptual framework from political ecologies of health that looks at political economic factors, social discourse, and embodied, material experiences of food, I analyze qualitative and ethnographic data from an integrated NSA intervention in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand, India. The analysis shows that while embodied experiences of differing rice varieties (either indigenous or improved) were central to research participants’ conceptions of bodily health, mainstream NSA metrics had trouble ‘seeing’ these relations in meaningful ways. Moreover, although material experiences of rice cultivation and consumption anchored participants’ rice preferences, structural economic realities along with notions of social identity were always interwoven. Yet, while villagers expressed divergent perceptions around how the different rice cultivars shaped their bodily health, agricultural officers tended to view rice experiences as a product of culture, rather than as material and socio-ecological food-body interactions. In sum, this paper argues more deeply engaging with the political economic, socially symbolic, and embodied ways that communities relate to food production and consumption would allow NSA research to develop more grounded and inclusive understandings of agriculture-nutrition linkages.

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  • Carly E. Nichols, 2022. "Digesting agriculture development: nutrition-oriented development and the political ecology of rice–body relations in India," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 757-771, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:39:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10460-021-10285-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-021-10285-z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Junuthula, Shirisha & Kumari, Veenita & Srinivasan, Chittur, 2023. "Identification of Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (NSA) Knowledge Gaps in the Integration of Nutrition into Training by Agricultural Extension Advisory Services (EAS) Providers in India," 97th Annual Conference, March 27-29, 2023, Warwick University, Coventry, UK 334565, Agricultural Economics Society - AES.

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