"www.fao.org/about/meetings/sustainable-food-systems-nutrition-symposium The International Symposium on Sustainable Food Systems for Healthy Diets and Improved Nutrition was jointly held by FAO and WHO in December 2016 to explore policies and programme options for shaping the food systems in ways that deliver foods for a healthy diet, focusing on concrete country experiences and challenges. This Symposium waas the first large-scale contribution under the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition 2016-2025. This presentation was part of Parallel session 2.3: Increasing access to healthy diets through social protection and income generation strategies"

2. LINKING SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND
NUTRITION SECURITY TO SOCIAL
PROTECTION PROGRAMMES

3. Background
• 83% of 1.8 million Basotho resides in rural setting and relies
on subsistence agriculture as a main livelihood
• However, agriculture production and productivity along with
its share to the GDP has been is declining due to among
others:
– cumulative impact of natural disasters and effects of
climate change
– Environmental degradation, loss of soil fertility and poor
rangelands
– high prevalence of poverty (57% of population)
– high prevalence of HIV and AIDS (25% of population)

4. Social Protection in Lesotho as part of GoL
National Vision 2020 and the SDGs
Current social protection initiatives:
– Old Age Pension (OAP)
– Child Grant Programme (CGP)
– Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)
Bursary
– Public Assistance (PA)
– School Feeding (SF)
– Post Primary Bursary (PPB)
– Integrated Watershed Management Public
Works (IWM)

5. 2013-2014 pilot project of linking food
security to social protection
• Drought in 2012 led to the identification of 725,000 (40% of
population) people to be in need of humanitarian assistance
• The Government of Lesotho and FAO initiated Linking Food
Security to Social Protection (LFSSP) pilot complementing the
Ministry of Social Development’s Child Grant Programme (CGP)
with a home gardening and nutrition (HGN) kit
– CGP covers 25,000 households: quarterly cash transfers to
poor households with orphans and vulnerable children
– HGN kit to 800 households for the pilot: 600g of vegetables
(beetroot, spinach, Florida broad leaf, onions, carrot, and
English rape), training material, and shade net

6. 2013-2014 pilot project of linking food
security to social protection
Main findings of impact evaluation conducted by FAO’s Social
Protection Team:
+ Labour constrained households increased their home gardening
activities and thus increased proportion of their vegetable
harvesting (diversified) and reduced food insecurity
+ Labour non-constrained households increased their investment
productive assets, perhaps with intentions of scaling up agricultural
operations
- Increase in children’s time (especially younger girls) devoted to
own-farm and non-farm enterprise work activities (more research
required to understand the implications)

7. 2016: National upscale within El Nino
drought response
• Informed by the results of the 2013-14 pilot, the current
emergency response, GoL and FAO are complementing Social
Protection programmes with improved agriculture production
capacity:
– Home gardening and nutrition kits to 65,000 hhs benefiting
from SP cash transfers or emergency cash transfers
(22,000hhs supported by Nov 2016)
– Livelihood support (staple crops and vegetables) to 25,000
hhs (vulnerable active farmers)

8. Thank you.