How Can We Use Markets to Reach the Poor With Nutritious Foods?

Abstract

To effectively reach poor people, nutritious food must be affordable, available in the market, safe, and must contain the nutrients which it claims to have. Ensuring that nutritious food can reach the most vulnerable cannot be addressed by an individual business or value chain, but rather must be addressed through influencing the market system more broadly. Findings from Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania on how and where value chains and markets might be made more nutrition sensitive and improve access to nutritious foods for the poorest and most vulnerable communities show that markets face many challenges in bringing nutritious foods to the poorest and most vulnerable.