Governments and development partners looking to accelerate progress in addressing malnutrition have been examining how to use interventions in value-chains to improve diets. However, the links between interventions in value chains and diets involve a range of direct and indirect effects that are not yet well understood. We apply a mixed-method multisectoral diagnostic to examine potential interventions in food systems to improve diets of smallholder farmers in Malawi. We examine entry points for interventions involving public and private-sectors, and explore the methodological requirements for undertaking this type of multisectoral analysis. We find that although food consumption is dominated by maize, a range of nutritious foods are also being consumed; including leafy greens, fruits, chicken, dried fish, dried beans and peas, and groundnuts. Yet important deficits in nutrient intake remain prevalent in low-income households due to inadequate quantity of consumption. While increasing consumption through own-production is one potentially important channel to increase quantity of nutritious foods available (particularly fruits and leafy green vegetables), markets also play a potentially important role. Nutritious foods are available on markets year-round, although strong seasonality impacts the availability and price of perishable products. For beans, peas and groundnuts, supply appears to be available throughout the year, with price fluctuations relatively controlled due to storage capacity and imports. The capacity of markets to supply safe and nutritious food is limited by a number of issues, including poor hygiene; lack of infrastructure for storage and selling; limited information on nutrition, and weak coordination among sellers and producers. Other bottlenecks include: on-farm constraints for expanded production, consumers with limited purchasing capacity, intense competition among sellers and few services for sellers to increase volume of product sold during peak demand. The diagnostics identify the role of information-related interventions to optimize decisions related to food choices, involving a range of different foods and value-chains, that could potentially lead to short- and medium-term improvements in diets. Longer-term and more resource-intensive interventions are also identified, such as improving capacity for product differentiation, processing, storage, and market infrastructure across a different range of food chains, so as to maximise coherence between short- and long-term planning. The findings highlight the benefits of applying a strategic, food systems-based approach of identifying specific and complementary actions for both the public and private sectors that can improve the diets of low-income populations.

希望加快解决营养不良问题的政府和发展伙伴一直在研究如何在价值链中使用干预措施来改善饮食。但是，价值链干预措施和饮食之间的联系涉及一系列尚未被很好理解的直接和间接影响。我们采用混合方法的多部门诊断方法，以检查食品系统中潜在的干预措施，以改善马拉维小农的饮食习惯。我们研究了涉及公共部门和私营部门的干预措施的切入点，并探讨了进行此类多部门分析的方法学要求。我们发现，尽管粮食消费以玉米为主，但也食用了多种营养食品。包括绿叶蔬菜，水果，鸡肉，鱼干，豆类和豌豆干以及花生。然而，由于消费量不足，低收入家庭仍然普遍存在营养摄入严重不足的问题。尽管通过自产增加消费是增加可用营养食品（尤其是水果和多叶绿色蔬菜）数量的潜在重要渠道，但市场也发挥着潜在重要作用。全年市场上都可以买到营养食品，尽管季节性强势会影响易腐产品的供应和价格。对于豆类，豌豆和花生，全年似乎都可以供应，由于存储量和进口量的原因，价格波动得到相对控制。市场提供安全和营养食品的能力受到许多问题的限制，包括卫生条件差；缺乏用于存储和销售的基础架构；营养信息有限，卖方和生产者之间缺乏协调。其他瓶颈包括：农场在扩大产量方面的限制，购买能力有限的消费者，卖方之间的激烈竞争以及在高峰需求期间很少为卖方提供增加产品销量的服务。诊断人员确定与信息有关的干预措施的作用，以优化与食物选择有关的决策，其中涉及一系列不同的食物和价值链，有可能导致短期和中期饮食的改善。还确定了长期和资源密集型的干预措施，例如在不同食物链范围内提高产品差异化，加工，存储和市场基础设施的能力，以最大程度地提高短期和长期计划之间的一致性。