Food policy and nutrition economics in the SDG era

Despite significant global interest in food policy since the 1974 food price crisis, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the first set of international development commitments in which the narrow focus of hunger and poverty explicitly include nutrition (SDG2) – beyond only health indicators related to maternal and child health indicators. This recent (re)appreciation of the role of nutrition as a fundamental element of development policy and a driver of economic growth generates the need for new analytical tools to determine the potential nutritional gains of development programmes and policies as well as the costs of not acting on nutrition imperatives in multisectoral public policy initiatives. This shifts the focus of policy analysis towards multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary domains, creating a need for training and research that spans multiple disciplines in which most graduates and professionals do not yet have the training and tools to conduct appropriate analyses. Capacity is essential to address critical skills shortages and high demand and professional development to keep pace with change. This paper identifies what the implications of recent development imply for agricultural economics training institutions, research and the profession in general and in particular in South Africa.