This discussion will focus on research opportunities related to gender, resilience and sustainability in the context of food security and nutrition.  Meaningful knowledge generation on agriculture and food systems for nutrition, requires agreement on indicators to measure each step of change, but in many areas these measurement tools are lacking and a comprehensive understanding of what needs to be measured remains an unfinished agenda.  Likewise, though we recognize that gender plays a central role within the food systems to nutrition pathway, there is a need to better understand the causal relationships within the pathways and how we can better leverage gender to facilitate strong agriculture-nutrition linkages. Finally, climate change and population growth are of paramount importance for resilience and sustainability of food systems and nutrition. 

We encourage you to actively engage by sharing your experience and thoughts on additional areas for research. Your engagement will inform USAID as it shapes its priorities for nutrition and food systems investments into the future.

Click Add New Comment below to start or join the conversation. Please consider these questions as they relate to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab literature review (See Event Resources to the right): 

• What interplays between gender dynamics and food systems do we still need to unpack and what knowledge needs to be generated to help development practitioners best design services that maximize both men and women’s contributions to family health?  
• Are we missing any important research questions related to food systems, nutrition, healthy diets, resilience and sustainability? What gaps in the current research discussions have you found?  
• What short-, medium-, and long-term outcome measures are missing to measure change in agriculture and food systems for nutrition?  
• What is the outstanding research agenda for resilience and sustainable food systems and nutrition?     
• What remains to be done to help guide the development of harmonized measurements for consumer outcomes (food-groups and dietary diversity indicators)? Are there other measurements we should be considering? 

This discussion will remain open from November 12-17 2019. Moderated discussions will take place:

• November 15, 10-12 AM EST (UCT 15:00-17:00), Ina Schønberg, Director of Food Security and Resilience, USAID Advancing Nutrition
• November 17, 10 pm -12 AM EST (November 16, UCT 3:00-5:00), Amanda Crump, Assistant Professor of Teaching in International Agricultural Development, UC Davis