Agriculture's vast potential to improve nutrition is just beginning to be tapped. New ideas, research, and initiatives developed over the past decade have created an opportunity for reimagining and redesigning agricultural and food systems for the benefit of nutrition.

This book by IFPRI brings together the most intriguing stories from the past five decades to show what works in nutrition, what does not, and the factors that contribute to success. It includes nutrition success stories on the ground in places ranging from Bangladesh, Brazil, Nepal, Peru, Thailand, and Vietnam to Ethiopia and the state of Odisha in India.

The concept of resilience is gaining traction in the development field. As a framework, resilience presents a systems-oriented way of coping with shocks, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

The fundamental purpose of agriculture is not just to produce food and raw materials, but also to grow healthy, well-nourished people. One of the sector’s most important tasks then is to provide food of sufficient quantity and quality to feed and nourish the world’s population sustainably so that all people can lead healthy, productive lives.

This report examines where, why, and how past interventions in agricultural development have succeeded. It carefully reviews the policies, programs, and investments in agricultural development that have reduced hunger and poverty across Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the past half century.

Humanity has made enormous progress in the past 50 years toward eliminating hunger and malnutrition. Some five billion people--more than 80 percent of the world's population--have enough food to live healthy, productive lives. Agricultural development has contributed significantly to these gains, while also fostering economic growth and poverty reduction in some of the world's poorest countries.

Although many millions of people have exited poverty in recent decades, much of the reduction in poverty has benefited people living close to the poverty line rather than those at the very bottom of the income distribution. This book is not focused on poverty per se but rather is focused on looking particularly at those most deprived in society.

Learning from successes in agricultural development is now more urgent than ever. Progress in feeding the world